The Locket

It was midnight and fireflies swirled through the dark foliage that lined the circuitous trail through the wood. The glow of my flashlight bobbed along ahead of me, illuminating the way back from the latrine to the cabin where our family, for generations, had come every summer. The lightning bugs flittered away from the unnatural beam as though it blistered, leaving my path clear.

I could hear the babble of the river below me beside the drop-off, and the screech of crickets, hidden among the brush. My satin pajama legs made a quiet swish as I walked. In such a deep hush, every snap of a twig or roll of gravel upon the hard-packed dirt spooked me, causing me to look wildly about in the darkness, searching for the cause of the disturbance.

I had seen a deer bound away from the side of the trail as I neared it not long ago and was jittery. My flashlight beam whizzed from one side to the other, whenever it was not needed to avoid a fall.

It was during one of these scans that my eye caught the glitter of gold resting alongside the worn path. I thought, at first, that I had, perhaps, imagined the glimmer. It seemed so abnormal a phenomenon, deep in the unspoiled forest, that I was forced to stop and slide the ray of light back across the trail. I squinted in the darkness as I sought that out-of-place gleaming, just to prove to myself that my tired mind was not playing tricks.

My senses honed in upon the twinkle and I made a bee-line toward it. I stooped down and my fingers scrabbled in the sand, brushing aside the painted sorrel leaves and hoping against hope that I would not discover too late a poison ivy patch. I struck upon something hard and drew it from the dirt with feminine delicacy.

In the beam of the flashlight, I examined my treasure: a heart-shaped locket looped upon a fine, golden chain. The phrase ‘love always’ was engraved in a loopy cursive on the locket’s face.

Puzzled but unwilling to return the necklace to where I had found it, I fastened the soiled pendant about my neck, so as not to misplace it, and continued on my way.

---

I was awoken the next morning by a shaft of sunlight, the color of newly minted gold, that shot through the bedroom window. I turned sleepily, but the ray was persistent and I soon realized additional sleep was a futile dream. With a yawn, I rolled out of bed and, still clothed in my pajamas, trudged along the hall.

Grandma had a pot of oatmeal hung above the fireplace in our pre-technological age kitchen and its familiar aroma engulfed me as I entered the room and found myself seated at the scuffed table. My father was situated across from me, his glasses perched precariously at the end of his thin, pointed nose. He was buried in a book on dealing with death, with only his prematurely gray hair visible over the cover. The emblazoned title’s golden gleam reminded me of something, though I could not think what, perhaps something from a dream.

Grandma came over and tipped some of the steaming oatmeal into my empty bowl, preventing me from placing that familiar glitter.

As she sat down across from me, Grandma’s shrewd blue eyes took in my figure and I was certain she would urge me to eat heartily; she always complained of how skinny I was, blaming my father’s side of the family for the fault. What Grandma said, however, was, “Where did you come by that pretty necklace, Ana?”

I started and glanced down, to determine to what she was referring. There, dangling at the very hollow of my throat, was the pendant I found last night on my way back from the latrine.

“It was on the ground,” I commented, lightly.

My father was glancing over his book, listening, though without much interest. “You know better than to take things that aren’t yours,” he rattled, a bland repetition of the ancient rule. “You’d best hand it in.”

“To whom?” I demanded. “The property is ours, who is there to bring it to?”

My father’s eyes narrowed, his usual sign that I had crossed some line that I never could see, though he acted like it should be apparent. I saw the warm, chocolate orbs travel down to my throat. Then they grew wide, wider than I had rarely ever seen them, not since the night we had gotten the call that my mother had been killed in a vehicular accident.

“Where?” he sputtered, stunned beyond all words. “Where did you find that?”

“By the side of the path,” I informed him, taken aback by this reaction to my worthless treasure.

My father was on his feet now and stormed over to me. His hand shot out, palm open and upward – a demand. When I did not react to this forceful gesture, he hissed, “Give it to me. I don’t know how you came by it, but I’m going to take it and I’m going to bury it and I don’t ever want you to go looking for it. Do you understand?”

I did not. I closed my small fingers around the pendant and held it there, away from him. “It’s mine. I found it and I’m keeping it.”

Grandma had been watching this interaction with her usual keenness. “Do as he says, Ana.”

I knew better than to argue with Grandma, whose sharp eyes and mind rarely failed to see the right of things. Reluctantly, I undid the clasp and handed over my locket to my fuming father.

Later, I would recognize that what Grandma had seen was a man driven too far into the depths of despair, whose demonic misery has just reminded him of its presence by applying a hot poker.

Then, though, this perception was lost on me.

---

I went to bed in tears not long afterward, uncertain why my father’s unreasonable demand should provoke such a reaction, other than that his expression – those brown eyes’ warm embers stoked until the fires raged – scared me. Above my sobs, I heard the door open with a piercing squeal of hinges and then slam shut again. The heavy tromping of boots on the wooden steps told me it was my father and I envisioned him with the locket dangling from his hard fist. I could only think that he had gone out to bury my treasure once more. This imagined image of him treating my necklace with such neglect set my heart aflame and evaporated my pointless tears. In my anger, my childish stubbornness did not long hold against either my fear of Father’s anger or my grandmother’s warnings. I resolved that night to sneak out and recover my stolen jewel.

---

My flashlight beam swung from side to side without finding that golden twinkle of the night before. Even though I ventured into the forest, I discovered nothing of my pendant. I scrambled across jagged rocks in the darkness until my knees were dripping blood. It got cooler the further I got to the top of the mountain’s peak, but I was determined not to give up my quest, even if I had to search all through the night.

With purpose now, my fears of the darkness and all the things that go bump in the night had vanished. I hardly noticed as a raccoon scurried away from me as I went crashing through the underbrush or when a bat swooped near my head in pursuit of its midnight snack of mosquitoes. It was as if the locket I had found – and would acquire again if it killed me – filled me with a strength I had been unable to reach since the death of my mother.

At last, I arrived at the mountain’s summit. Gasping for breath, I paused, dangling my scrapped up legs over the precipice and looked back the way I had come. Far down along the rocky slope, I could see the cabin. A light flickered in its windows, as if a fire had been lit in the grate. I wondered a moment about this odd occurrence – my family generally slept soundly, particularly out here – but I was not long left to reverie.

My eyes, wandering along the path I had taken, focused upon a dark shape trekking up the mountain face. A flashlight beam preceded it as it climbed with great difficulty up the slippery, leaf-strewn rocks toward me. Fear for a moment took me, and I squinted down at the figure. Because I could not identify him as friend or foe from the dim outline alone, I shone my light down upon him. It would not reach, but the person seemed to recognize my intent.

“Ana, sweetie? It’s all right. It’s me. It’s your father.”

He must have followed me! was my bitter thought. He heard me get up in the night and leave. I cursed those shrieking hinges and wished I had dodged through the window instead. He was the very last person I wanted to encounter, out of bed at such a late hour and on a mission I had been forbidden to undertake, but I waited, as any child would, simply because he was my father, and he was all I had left.

When he reached the summit, he plopped down beside me and took a few moments to regain his breath. Then, he looked at me, his soft eyes reflecting the light of our flashlights and of the full moon above. “Honey, what are you doing up here?” His voice was low and in it I could sense his weariness and his anxiety. It struck me as odd that this man, who had screamed at me only this morning, could worry about me.

“I’m looking for the locket.” I didn’t occur to me to lie.

“Honey – why?”

“I don’t know, Father. I just wanted it.” I paused, testing my courage. “Why did you take it from me?” I knew it was foolish of me even to ask, to bring up the sore subject again, but he seemed quite rational at the moment, and at any rate, too winded to shout.

I could see him staring at me. The intensity in his gaze was such that I could feel it as one feels a needle prick, deeper than the skin, and his sorrow, apparent from the heaviness of his tone, clung in the air like humidity in a New England summer.

“You really want to know, huh?” It had more of a statement in it than a question, and behind his exhaustion I could tell he was amused, laughing inwardly at some private joke that he alone knew of.

I nodded, in answer to his assertion.

My father took a moment to fumble in his pocket and produced my pendant, safe and unharmed. I accepted it with glee and sat back to listen to his explanation.

“That necklace was your mother’s. I gave it to her when we were in high school, shortly after we started dating. She lost it the summer just before she was killed. I looked at you this morning, and it was like seeing her ghost back to haunt me.” His voice trailed off.

He sounded so defenseless and I wanted nothing more to tell him it was going to be okay. But words failed me. Instead, I leaned into him, burying my face in his loose button-up pajama top.

We sat there all the night, just the two of us, reminiscing about her, as the fireflies came out of their hiding places to whirl through the air around us.