Rooms - James L. Rubart [129]
A light tapping on the wall just outside his curtain startled Micah. He jerked upright and cracked his knee on the cubicle desk. “Yes?” He winced.
“Just making sure everything is going a-okay in there, Mr. Taylor.”
It was Granny Good-Grin.
“Fine. Thanks.”
He rubbed his knee as his eyes settled back on the box.
Might as well.
He opened it. An old manila envelope sat at the bottom. On top of it was a note from Archie. Micah lifted the card as if it were a butterfly’s wing.
Micah,
I thought you might like to have a reprint.
Archie
A fine layer of dust covered the envelope. Micah unwound the string sealing it, his palms sweaty. He turned it upside down. A photo and a key taped to a note card slid out. Micah stared at a copy of the picture he’d seen at Chris’s house. Chris, Archie, and Rick stood on a fishing boat, their arms around each other, grins splashed on their faces. This he would treasure.
Four lines were written on the note card:
A key to open heart’s desires,
Yours and those beyond,
Cords are cut and chains are broken,
When we live our calling strong.
Micah pulled the key off the card and examined it. “A key to open his heart’s desire.” Archie’s last letter had said the same thing. Micah hadn’t expected a literal key. One side had deep scratches. He looked closer. They weren’t scratches. They were words or numbers. Too small to make out but definitely writing.
He gathered up the treasures, said good-bye to Madge, and dashed down Main Street to find a magnifying glass. After buying one at Trinkets & Treasures, he sprinted to his car, got in, pulled out the key, and shoved it under the glass. The writing leaped out at him.
An address was engraved into the key in a soft, fluid script. He was dumbfounded.
The address was his own.
Then he felt it. A physical sensation this time. His world had shifted once again, even though from where he sat parked everything looked the same. The last vestiges of his Seattle existence had fallen away. He knew it. Only Cannon Beach and the unexplained parallel life remained.
Micah started his car and headed for home. He was so dazed it wasn’t till he shifted into third gear that he realized this wasn’t the BMW he’d gotten out of half an hour earlier but a Toyota Camry.
He took the corner into his driveway at twenty miles an hour. Adrenaline shot through his veins as his tires threw up a curtain of crushed gravel, and he slid toward the bank in front of his house. He slammed on his brakes and skidded to a halt inches from the end of the driveway.
Streams of light poured through tiny openings in the fog bank above him, as if randomly sprinkled spotlights announced his arrival.
The house looked the same. But Micah knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.
He got out and walked to the front door. The beat of his heart increased with each step forward.
The moment he opened the door and stepped inside, he saw the change. The painting. It hung over the fireplace, three spotlights pouring down on it.
It was finished.
The last bit of sky and clouds had been filled in, and a lone seagull skimmed across the wind, its body in partial silhouette against the brilliance of the sun. The sand castle next to the little boy was finished, and the people along the left edge were complete as well. The figure walking out of the painting to the right was Rick. Of course.
But something else had changed. What? He had studied every intricacy of this painting. He knew every brushstroke, every nuance of color. It was subtle, or he would have seen it immediately. The change toyed with him, played in corners of his mind, dared him to discover what it was.
He paced in front of the painting, glanced away, glanced back, as if he could sneak up on the difference by turning his head fast enough.
Finally it clicked. There! A small black streak in the corner of the painting. He knew instantly it was the artist’s signature tucked in among azure and emerald waves. Finally. He would know who painted this masterpiece