Always Friday (18 page)

A part of her believed that perhaps Dan loved her enough to
forget that damned elevator company. Any day now, he’d discover that he was not
indispensable to a stupid business that he despised, that his family would be
happier if he’d follow his own dream. But he was stuffed to the gills with
integrity. She sighed. The same strength of character that was making him so
stubborn was one of the many things that attracted her to him. If he were any
different, he wouldn’t be the same man she loved.

Damn! She grabbed a pillow and flung it across the room. It
hit the sampler and set it swinging on its hook. The embroidered words seemed
to mock her. It seemed as if the fates were conspiring against her and
snickering about it.

“But I didn’t get my home, Granny Prophet!” she shouted at
the taunting axiom. “The treasure is gone and the man I love is determined to
become a martyr!”

She got in bed, curled into a fetal position, and pulled the
covers over her head. She might as well accept the fact that she and Dan were
finished. He’d made his decision, and she’d made hers. He wouldn’t change his
mind, and she couldn’t. It was a deadlock. And she was wretchedly bitter and
angry and miserable, miserable, miserable.

If she didn’t stop wallowing in her misery soon, forget
about a life with Dan, and get on with the one she had, she’d go mad. She had
friends and family and businesses to occupy her time and energy. She’d survived
worse things—though, at the moment, she couldn’t recall what.

Maybe, she decided as she got up to get her pillow, she’d
look into the feasibility of hiring a team of divers to search Lake Livingston.
Maybe launching herself into a new project would keep her mind off Dan. Her
option to buy the house still had a few days to go. Maybe she could still
salvage a remnant of her dream. Maybe.

She picked up Casey’s journal and the folder of papers that
the clerk in Livingston had copied for them. She glanced through the sheaf of
plats and deeds and tax roll information, but her perusal was only halfhearted,
and she laid them on her night-stand to wait for another time.

Twisting and turning, she punched her pillow a dozen times
before she finally fell into a restless sleep.

Her dreams were filled with rainbows and pots of gold
chasing her. She tried to elude them, to run and hide, but each time they found
her hiding place and forced her to run again until they chased her into the
basement. Rainbows like giant ribbons of cellophane tape swooped around her,
trying to stick to her head, while pots dive-bombed her like frantic bats and
dumped showers of gold coins with every pass. Covering her head with her arms,
she ran round and round, sinking deeper into the dirt as she tried to escape.
When she was up to her knees and couldn’t move, the floor caved in and an
elevator zipped her to the deck of a Spanish galleon. The deck was piled high
with gold and gemstones that hurt her bare feet to walk across them.

At the helm of the ship stood a woman who looked like Casey
Prophet, in the portrait down the hall. A red-plumed buccaneer’s hat topped her
flowing hair and her long dress billowed behind her like a rainbow-colored
sail. Long strings of jewels around her neck sparkled as she threw back her
head and laughed. “The Bible!” she shouted over the howling wind and pounding
waves. “Remember your Bible verses!”

Heart racing, Tess’s eyes flew open and she sat straight up
in bed. Relieved to find that she’d been dreaming, she lay back down and took
deep breaths, waiting for her heartbeat to slow.

Remembering the bizarre happenings that had seemed so real,
she shook her head. “How weird.”

*    *    *

Even though her day was busy, helping Becky at the Mermaid
in the morning and filling in for Nancy at the Sea Song in the afternoon, the
dream continued to bother her. It popped into her mind at the strangest times.

After dinner that evening, Tess wandered into the second
floor sitting room where the two older women were playing cribbage. “Aunt
Olivia,” she asked, sitting on the arm of her aunt’s chair, “do you remember
much about your grandmother Casey?”

“Oh, my, yes. After Poppa died, we moved back here with her
and Grandpa Marsh. Octavia and I were only six, and she practically raised us.
She was a gas.”

“I remember her, too,” Martha said, laying down her cards. “I
always loved to visit Olivia and Octavia because their grandmother was such
fun. She had a yellow Buick convertible that she would load a bunch of us kids
in, and we’d go zipping around town, singing at the tops of our lungs. What
ever happened to that car, Olivia?”

“As I recall, she drove it off a pier one New Year’s Eve. Jumped
before it hit the water. She said the brakes went out, but Grandpa was mad as a
hornet. He gave her holy hell. Said one of these days she was going to kill
herself with her crazy antics. She just laughed and patted his cheek. Grandma lived
to be ninety-eight. Healthy as a horse until she died in her sleep one night. I
always thought that she died because she missed Grandpa Marsh so much and just
got tired of living without him.”

“They used to give such wonderful parties,” Martha said. “And
how she loved scavenger hunts and treasure hunts. Why, I remember one—it must
have been when you and Octavia were sixteen—that she had us chasing all over
the island for clues. Wade Dorset caught his pants on fire getting one out of
the hotel chimney.”

Before the two launched into any more reminiscences, Tess
asked her aunt, “Do you remember something about Grandma Casey and Bible
verses?”

“Do I ever!” Olivia put her hand on her chest and rolled her
eyes. “There were twenty-seven of them. Momma had to learn them, and Octavia
and I had to learn them. And we had to solemnly promise to teach them to our
children. I remember Grandma teaching them to your mother, too, from the time
she was just a little thing. At least once a year until she died, she would call
each of us in and have us recite. If we complained, she would scowl at us, pat
her Bible, and say, ‘The secret of this family’s blessing is in this book.
Never forget it.’ I think one of the reasons I stayed away from home so much
after I graduated from college was to get out of reciting those blasted verses.”

An elusive childhood memory flitted through Tess’s mind. “Did
Grandma Octavia teach them to me?”

Olivia laughed. “She tried to, but you always got them mixed
up and cried. I think she finally gave up.”

“Do you remember them?”

“It’s been a lot of years since Grandma died. I’m not sure I
can recite them anymore.” Cocking her head and fluttering her long eyelashes,
Olivia said, “I believe the first one was Proverbs 8:21 and the next, Proverbs 8:33. And let me see, I think the next one was in Psalms. Or was it
Ecclesiastes? Maybe it was Luke. Oh, dear, Tess, it’s been too long. What made
you think of Grandma’s verses?”

“Something I dreamed about. I’m going up to read for a
while. If I don’t see you in the morning before you leave, have a safe and fun
trip.” She kissed her aunt’s cheek.

“Are you sure you won’t come and spend a few days at the
farm with us?” Olivia asked. “You always enjoy the races, too.”

“Not this time, thanks.” She bent to kiss Martha good night.

Martha captured her hand. “Tess, I’m so sorry things didn’t
work out with Danny. I was hoping—”

“I know, Aunt Martha.” Tess patted the blue-veined hand. “It’s
okay.” Swallowing the lump in her throat, she managed a smile. She’d hadn’t
told either of the women how far her relationship with Dan had progressed.
There hadn’t been time to announce their engagement before it was broken. Now
it was just as well. “Good night.”

In her room, Tess propped up in her bed and picked up Casey’s
journal of adventures in searching for treasure along the “rainbow trail”
marked by the multicolored stones on the Bible case. She read the whole thing
through again. It ended with finding the four chests near San Augustine in east
Texas.

Laying the book aside, she leaned back against the pillows
and stared at the sampler. Knowing what she did about Grandma Prophet, it didn’t
make sense that Casey would leave a fortune buried in the ground when, even so
many years ago, civilization was already encroaching on the hiding places.

Suddenly, a thought popped into her head and she grabbed the
folder of papers from the Livingston court house. She searched through them
until she saw a familiar name. She froze.

There it was.

She threw back her head and laughed. “Granny, you sly dog!”

In 1889, Acacia and Marsh Prophet had purchased Nathan Power’s
farm for fifteen hundred dollars. They sold it a few years later for less than
half what they paid for it. Tess giggled. Some people probably thought that
Grandma Casey was a poor businesswoman.

Well, so much for the idea of divers. Casey had probably dug
up the other treasure as well.

Still smiling at the bittersweet loss of her last hope for
her house, she looked at the sampler which had belonged to Anna. It was the
only personal thing of her mother’s that she owned, and, for as long as she
could remember, it had hung in the same spot in her room in Galveston. She
glanced to the rocker in the corner and recalled lovely memories of Grandma
Octavia sitting in the chair, with Tess in her lap, telling her stories of all
the wonderful women in their family. Not one of the ladies had ever been
conformists. They’d all been free-spirited, fun-loving, ready to try anything,
and devil take the hindmost. For some reason, only girls had been born in the
family, never a single boy.

She got up, placed the journal and the papers on her desk,
and went to draw her bath.

*    *    *

Heart pounding and her breath coming in short gasps, Tess
struggled to wake from her dream. Casey Prophet’s laughter still echoed in her
ears, and she could hear her shout over the wind and water, “Remember your
Bible verses!”

Her eyes opened and she jerked upright. It was the same
dream! Every bit of it was an exact repeat of the night before. It was so real
that she felt her hair to see if there were rainbow tapes stuck on her head.

Why had she had the dream again?

She got up, went to the bathroom, and washed her face. The
whole time she brushed her teeth, the words came over and over in her mind.
Remember
your Bible verses.

Pulling on red knit shorts and a matching T-shirt, she went
downstairs. Although the house was empty and quiet, the delicious aroma of
coffee wafted through the rooms. The four had already left for the farm in Louisiana,
but the red light on the pot was on.

“Bless you, dear Ivan,” she said, pouring a mug and taking a
sip.

Leaning against the counter, she took another swallow.
Remember
your Bible verses.
The admonition went round and round in her head, playing
mental hide-and-seek with a vague, elusive memory of something Grandma Octavia
had told her when she was a little girl. What was it?

She filled her mug again and took it upstairs with her. In
her room, she went to her desk and found the little white Bible her grandmother
had given her when she was eight. Opening it, she read the writing on the fly
page.

Suddenly, the memory popped up of Grandma Octavia rocking
her and saying, “Shhhh, Tess, don’t cry. We’ll write them down and put them in
a secret place. And one day, when you have a little girl, you can tell her about
it.”

The secret place.

She walked to the sampler and took it off the wall. Glued to
the backing was an envelope, yellowed with age. Inside was a card which listed
twenty-seven verses. The first two were Proverbs, just as Aunt Olivia had
remembered. What was so special and secret about those verses? Were they
intended as some kind of message? She started to pick up her white Bible to
look them up, but something made her pause.

No, not this one. The other one. She laid the card on her
desk.

Her heart thudded against her ribs as she went to Olivia’s
sitting room to retrieve Violet’s Bible from the old trunk. The familiar smell
of camphor touched her nose as she opened the curved top. She picked up the
stone-studded case and closed the trunk lid. Hugging the wooden box to her, she
resisted the urge to run back to her room. Instead she walked very slowly and
reminded herself to breathe normally.

She placed the case on her bed and ran her fingers over the
meandering trail of stones on the front. The first one was red; the second,
orange; then, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The colors of the
rainbow.

As if in slow motion, she took the Bible from its case and
carried it to her desk. Sitting down, she pulled a pen and pad from a drawer
and propped the card against the crown of a red-plumed buccaneer’s hat.

She sucked in a deep breath and opened the book to the
eighth chapter of Proverbs. The words of verse twenty-one were underlined.

That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance;
and I will fill their treasures.

She wrote it on the pad and turned to the thirty-third verse
of the same chapter. It, too, was underlined.

Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not.

Okay, she thought, the words were nice but was there a
message here? The next was a selection from Ecclesiastes.

I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar
treasure of kings and of the provinces. . .

Her heart began to flutter, and a sheen of perspiration
broke out on her upper lip. Was Casey talking about recovering the treasure?
She quickly wrote down the next five, which were only a few words underlined
from passages in Psalms, Acts, 2 Samuel, and Mark.

From power . . . the church in the wilderness . . . rock
. . .fortress . . . treasure . . . I will shew you . . .

Her heart started pounding in earnest and her hands shook as
a slow grin spread across her face. From power was Nathan Power’s farm; the
church in the wilderness was the place outside Lufkin where the church had once
been near the springs; the rock fortress was the Old Stone Fort. Looking up,
she squeezed her fists in a gesture of excitement. Grandma Prophet had gathered
up the treasure in all the other places. No wonder she and Dan couldn’t find
it.