The Treasure Box Read Free Page B

the box in a length of wrinkled butcher paper, and handed it over. “Let me know how it works out for you, will you?”
    Vita didn’t answer. Hap’s cheery farewell mingled with the jangling of the overhead bell and the slam of the door as she made her exit.
    Vita did not go to the grocery store, as she had originally intended.
    She had endured enough of humanity for one day, and she could do without the few things on her list until later in the week. She still had chicken and rice casserole left from last night, and some pasta and vegetables from the night before.
    As soon as she arrived home, Vita went straight to the kitchen sink and unwrapped the Treasure Box. The first item on her agenda was to get the multiple layers of dirt and mold removed, then organize her disks and CDs and select the right place in her office to display her new find.
    Cleaning the chest brought some pleasant surprises. The colors brightened up considerably under a gentle buffing with rubbing compound. The artwork survived intact, and Vita discovered that the appealing little dragon at the edge of the sea actually had a smile on its face. Under several spots caked with mold, she uncovered a blue whale spouting a flume in the Atlantic, an elephant raising his trunk at the tip of Africa, a tiny pod of sea lions lounging on the beach in the Bahamas.
    And underneath the lid, a small inscription, in the same Gothic lettering as the banner on the outside. At first she could barely read it, so obscured was it by time and the accumulated dirt of ages. Then, gradually, it appeared more clearly:
    Love Is the Key That Unlocks Every Portal.
    Vita’s mouth went dry, and the old man’s words came back to her: “You hold in your hands something more rare and valuable than you can possibly comprehend.” A twist in her stomach, some involuntary synapse in her brain, triggered a flood of adrenaline.
    For an instant the metal box felt red-hot—or perhaps ice-cold, for in the first moments of trauma the mind cannot always distinguish between the two.
    But cold or hot, the sensation shocked her. She dropped the chest with a clatter into the kitchen sink. For a moment she stood staring at the maxim, then reprimanded herself for her foolishness. It was just a pathetic, maudlin aphorism created by some teary-eyed Victorian. Nothing more.
    Vita was no sentimental fool. She had chosen the box for utilitarian purposes. If it turned out she had gotten the bargain of the century and the little chest was worth a bundle, so much the better.
    She set the box aside, went to the refrigerator, and peered in.
    As soon as she had finished lunch, Vita would take it to her office, file her computer disks and CDs in it, and do a little research on Victorian memorabilia boxes.
    It was time to find out whether or not this Treasure Box was valuable, after all.

2

THE PORTAL
    W hen she entered her office with the antique box, Vita cast a fleeting glance at the answering machine. Before she left for town, she had erased her sister’s voice from the tape, and now the light glowed a steady red. No new messages. Good. That meant Mary Kate had given up.
    She sat behind her desk and stared out the window for a moment—not that she could see much. Vita’s office had once been a large sunroom on the southeast corner of the house, surrounded by windows on two sides. But the sunlight rarely got in anymore; she had let the privet hedge next to the foundation grow up until it wove into a living curtain of green through which no prying eyes could penetrate. Someone walking by on the sidewalk might see a pinpoint of light or two peering out, like separated stars in a near-empty galaxy, but they couldn’t see Vita, and she couldn’t see them.
    With the Treasure Box at her elbow, she spent an hour and a half thumbing through her large collection of books about antiques. By the time she had turned the final page of the last one, she had a stack three feet