A Touch of Gold Read online

  After he was gone, I stared at the blank white ceiling for a long time. I drifted in and out, thinking about Max and the explosion. It didn’t seem real. My mind rejected it like a bad dream.

  A nurse came in and gave me a pill along with a pep talk about going home in the morning. The pill helped the jackhammer in my head, but it couldn’t quiet my restless mind. The pep talk didn’t affect me. Of course I was going home tomorrow. With everything else that had happened, the idea seemed trivial and stupid.

  I went over and over everything that had happened at the museum and afterward. I saw Max waving to us from the doorway as he always did. We all began to walk away, and I answered the phone call from Kevin as I started back to the museum after realizing that I still had the gold coin.

  The gold coin. It seemed to whisper to me from across the room. I wondered if the doctor was wrong and I had a head injury after all. While I had strong feelings for certain objects, I’d never experienced anything like this before. It was as though I could hear a voice calling me.

  I tried to ignore the whisper and closed my eyes for a while, only to have them pop open again. But my gaze continued to go back to the bag that held my clothes. My jeans and the Duck T-shirt that I’d worn that day were in there—along with the gold coin from the museum.

  I wanted, needed, to see the gold coin again. I told myself it was because it might be the only piece of the museum still left intact. But it was more than that. There were voices inside me. I pulled up the white blanket and sheet, covering my head. But it was no use. Seeing the coin, feeling it in my hand again, had become an obsession.

  Another nurse came in and checked my pulse and temperature. “Would you like some more ice water, honey?”

  “No. I’m fine, thanks.” I rustled up a smile. “I’m trying to get a good night’s sleep for tomorrow.”

  “That’s right.” She beamed. “You’ll be going home in the morning. Who’s the lucky girl?”

  I might’ve objected to her patronizing tone, but I was too focused on getting her out of there so I could find some way to reach my clothes. It seemed to take her forever to straighten the sheets and check the IV. Why didn’t she leave?

  Once she was gone, I quit asking questions about why I wanted to see the coin again. Instead, I worked on how to get over there. It wasn’t that far. But I was surrounded by so many tubes and wires, I wasn’t sure I could manage to get away from them without alerting someone who might stop me.

  I sifted through the medical spaghetti and realized only one tube was actually attached to me. The only thing I had to worry about was that one line, which led to a bag of glucose hooked up to a tall, stainless steel pole. I moved across the narrow bed carefully until I could throw my legs off the side next to the pole. I used one hand to propel myself off the bed while the other hand held onto the glucose feed and moved the pole closer to me.

  The tile floor was cold under my bare feet, and my knee, which hadn’t hurt since I’d woken up, started hurting again. It was my storm knee. It always hurt right before a storm. Gramps said that was because I’d injured it surfing in the rough waves off the Atlantic side of Duck. He said it was my weak knee because it was my favorite to injure.

  Ignoring the pain, I rolled the pole closer to me as I got off the bed and struggled to keep my hospital gown from exposing my rear. Why did they always show people in the movies with the backs of these stupid gowns closed? Why did they create them that way in the first place?

  The voices from the coin kept me on track, whispering their secrets as I gingerly began to cross the room. Looking back on it, I wonder why I didn’t think I’d lost my mind. Maybe being raised as a finder of lost things made anything seem possible. Whatever the case, I didn’t question my thirst for the coin’s knowledge, and kept moving slowly across the tile.

  I was nervous that one of the nurses would come in and check on me again. They might keep me from reaching the coin and that wouldn’t do. It was the only thing in my mind, and the closer I got to that bundle of clothes, the more important it seemed.

  One of the wheels on the pole squeaked at every other revolution. I cringed each time. What would happen if I couldn’t reach the coin? What if someone else got to it before me? My brain buzzed with the whispers coming from it. What were they saying? If I held it in my hand again, would I be able to hear them more clearly?

  I could always say I was trying to reach the bathroom, I realized. They didn’t have to know my real purpose. If I never told anyone about the voices in the coin, I’d never have to share it with anyone.

  I finally reached the chair and ruthlessly shoved the bag of clothes on the floor so I could collapse where they’d been. I hadn’t known it would be such an ordeal moving a few feet. I was exhausted. Apparently being partially blown up took a lot out of a person.

  But there was the coin to consider, with all of its secrets to learn. Carefully I lifted the bag from the floor with my free hand. I could smell smoke even before I took out the clothes. As I reached in and touched my Duck T-shirt, my fingers began to tingle. It was the same feeling I always experienced when I first touched someone to help them look for something. But I’d never felt it this strong when touching an inanimate object. What was going on?

  My jeans and T-shirt, even my underwear, were full of tiny holes. The sensation of touching all of them at once made me drop them on the floor. The feelings were overpowering, threatening to swamp me with emotions I couldn’t control.

  But I had to have the coin. I put my hand more firmly on my jeans, forcing myself to ignore the sensation, focusing on the coin that was still in my pocket. I never stopped to think it might not be there. I knew it was there.

  I grasped the coin and let the jeans drop. They didn’t matter. The dull gold coin gleamed in the palm of my hand, the bathroom nightlight illuminating it. I held it for an instant, admiring its form and weight, and then my head exploded with a thousand images.

  I saw everything from the moment the coin was made, hundreds of years ago. It was stamped and put into a wooden chest with hundreds more like it. The chest was sealed and put on a ship. The rough seas scraped the chest back and forth across the bottom of the ship. It seemed as though it might be lost to the Atlantic in a terrible storm.

  But other hands took it away from the ship it had sailed on. Rough fingers moved through the treasure, counting and admiring. The gold was new then, shining brightly even in the dull lantern light.

  That wasn’t the end of its journey. The storm that had ravaged the coast caught up with the buccaneer who’d stolen the chest, sending the groaning vessel into the unkind embrace of the icy sea.

  The currents and the years moved the partially raided chest closer and closer to shore. Once again the sun shone on the coin, now crusted with saltwater and seaweed. Still locked in the chest, it had finally reached land and waited to be found by the next person who would admire and covet it.

  A man approached it on the sandy beach, stopping to look at the treasure that waited for him that morning. He glanced around, and seeing only gulls as his company, he picked up the treasure chest and stalked down the shore to his home.

  I gasped for air and opened my eyes, almost drawn into the history of the coin so far that I was afraid I would never find my way back. The voices were those who’d touched the gold, caressed it, desired it to the point that they would kill for it.

  I was sitting on the cold floor, the hospital gown not covering my icy butt as I held the coin in front of me like an icon. It was morning, sunshine streaming in through the window near the bed.

  I realized I’d have to get off the floor and at least sit down in the chair unless I wanted the hospital staff to think I was crazy and keep me another night searching for head injuries.

  I pushed up on the chair and finally reached my feet. My knee ached from the cold and the position I’d been in on the floor for God knew how long. I managed to hobble back to the bed, the coin still in my hand, and was waiting for the morning nurse
when she arrived a few minutes later.

  The coin that had seemed so important that I would’ve happily risked my life to hold it again was dead in my grasp. It was as though I’d absorbed the voices inside of me once I’d seen its story.

  I was freezing, exhausted and terrified as I gazed out of the hospital window. The young nurse chatted about breakfast coming, a doctor visit and the trip to the front door in a wheelchair. I nodded, made the right replies, my mind focused on what had happened with the coin.

  What had happened? Nothing, maybe. It might’ve all been a trick of the injury. And maybe everything. I couldn’t ignore the strange feel of things around me—the bed, sheets and blanket. I was scared to lay my hands on any of it. There was a residual energy to everything I touched. Or I’d lost my mind.

  “Dae?”

  I didn’t even notice Gramps had come in until he was standing at my bedside, frowning at me. “Are you sure you’re okay? I called your name twice and you didn’t respond. Should I get the doctor?”

  “I’m fine.” I smiled and touched the fresh bandage on my wrist where they’d removed the IV needle. “Ready to go home. I’m glad you came early.”

  “I brought some clean clothes for you.” He put a green, cloth Harris-Teeter shopping bag on the bed next to me. “I’ll have the hospital throw away the other things you were wearing. I don’t imagine you’ll ever wear them again.”

  “No!” I protested at once, then justified my too-frantic outburst with an explanation. “The fire investigator might want to look at them. I was the closest one to the blast. There might be some residual evidence on them.”

  The frown between his eyebrows didn’t go away, but he nodded. “All right. I guess watching all those police shows on TV is good for something after all.” He paused and put his callused hand on my cheek. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “Of course.” I climbed out of bed, holding the stupid hospital gown closed. Gramps might’ve changed my diaper a few times, but that was no reason he should see my backside again. At least I could use both hands this time. “I’ll get changed and we’ll go home.”

  I picked up the cloth shopping bag and gasped, disguising it as a cough. I could feel the history of the bag, from when it was made somewhere in China to when it came to the U.S., where it was counted and sold.

  “Dae?” Gramps was staring at me again.

  “Sorry.” I thought fast. “It’s the old storm knee. A little stiff and sore this morning after the fall.”

  My green shirt and pink skirt were in the bag. Bless his heart, Gramps couldn’t color coordinate himself out of a fishnet if his pants were on fire. The clothes gave me the same reaction as the Harris Teeter bag.

  I reached for the faucet on the bathroom sink, the flush handle on the toilet, even the toilet paper; all showed me where they started and how they came to be here.

  What was I going to do? I rested my head against the cool, drab tile in the bathroom where no one could see me. How could I live this way? I was overwhelmed by the minute details of all the everyday items that made up life.

  Touching people and helping them see what they’d lost was one thing. It had been a choice to learn to use my gift. The discipline not to see things when I casually met people had become part of me when I was a small child. It was so incorporated in me that I took it for granted. I didn’t remember how I’d learned to do it. My grandmother also had the gift. My mother had learned from her and helped me along, even though the gift had passed her by. There was no one in my life like that now. I felt lost and alone as I stepped out of the bathroom.

  “Ready?” Gramps asked with a wide smile.

  “We’ll have to take a little ride in the pink wheelchair,” a nurse’s aide told me. “Pink is for girls, you know, hon.”

  I had to touch the arms of the chair to sit down. Immediately, I saw the chair being made at a factory in Toledo, Ohio. But that wasn’t all. A strong emotional surge wrenched through me and I knew the last woman who’d ridden in the pink wheelchair was going home to die. She’d fought lung cancer for two years. There was nothing more that could be done for her.

  I bit my lip to keep from crying out at the strong emotions left behind. Then I folded my hands in my lap and tried to ignore the sensations that buzzed through me. It was going to be a long day.

  Chapter 3

  We had no choice but to pass by the museum on the way home. There was only one, two-lane road that ran the whole length of the Outer Banks. It connected the hospital in Kill Devil Hills to our home in Duck.

  “It’s a wreck,” Gramps warned before he got there. “I’m sure you can imagine what it’s like.”

  I couldn’t really. Everything had happened so quickly. It was like one minute I was looking at the museum and the next I was in the road. Even the trip to the hospital seemed surreal.

  As we came around the curve in Duck Road, the sight was even worse than anything I could have imagined. It looked like a scene from some TV-news war coverage. The area where the blue museum had once stood was now flattened, filled with ash, parts of the building and other debris. The whole corner was gone; an old picnic table was the only structure still standing.

  “Stop the car, Gramps!” I had to see it. I wanted to look at it up close. “Please, Gramps. If you take me home now, I’ll be back up here in five minutes.”

  “You can see the fire chief and the county arson investigator are here with their people,” Gramps said. “Maybe later might be a better time, Dae. The doctor said you should go right home and get in bed anyway. Leave it for tomorrow, honey. It will still be here.”

  Those might’ve been my thoughts yesterday before the museum blew up. Everything in Duck stayed the same, didn’t it? Nothing ever changed that drastically. Only now we knew that wasn’t true.

  “Please, Gramps.” I saw Cailey Fargo, my fifth-grade schoolteacher who was now Duck’s fire chief. I also saw some of the volunteer firefighters raking through the debris. “We can go home after we stop for a minute. It won’t take that long.”

  “Okay. All right.” He gave in and turned the car into an open space across the street. “But only for a minute. I know how you are, Dae, but this isn’t the time to snoop around. Leave it to the experts.”

  There was nowhere close to the museum that wasn’t covered with tarps and crime scene tape. We had to wait for traffic to pass before we could cross Duck Road. I stared at everything that was left, wishing I was brave enough to pick all of it up and find out what it had to say to me. Maybe this newfound ability would tell me what had happened without the months of investigation that I knew would come.

  I winced as we crossed the road and I saw all of the black skid marks, shattered glass and pieces of someone’s bumper. I realized that most of the accidents these parts represented were caused by my abrupt appearance in the middle of the road.

  Kevin looked up at me as we reached the scene. He’d saved my life yesterday. I didn’t know what I was going to say to him. Everything seemed unreal right now. My heart was pounding in my chest, and it was all I could do not to break down and cry like a baby. Maybe Gramps had been right about going home first.

  Kevin stopped what he was doing and came across the debris field like a man on a mission. His eyes were intent on mine in a way that would’ve made me happy a few days ago. It made me cringe now.

  “Dae!” He put out his arms as we got a few yards from each other. I knew he meant to hug me. There was a warm, expectant smile on his handsome face.

  I took a step back and put my hands in the pockets of my familiar green skirt. “Kevin.” I smiled back but looked away from his puzzled expression.

  He glanced at Gramps. “Should she be here?”

  Gramps shrugged. “Try to keep her from it. I wasn’t any good at it.”

  “I’m fine,” I assured them both. “You don’t have to talk about me like I’m a child.”

  “She wanted to see it,” Gramps continued.

  “Maybe she should’ve waited.
” They both turned their heads to stare at me.

  “Hey! I’m right here!” A little anger made me feel better as I reminded them both of my obvious presence. “Yes. I wanted to see it. I don’t think that’s so unusual, do you?”

  Both men backed off.

  “Do they know what caused the explosion yet? Or if it really was an explosion?” I tried to sound like the mayor of Duck who was interested because it happened in my town. It was that too, of course, but so much more. I focused on a piece of the yellow duck statue that had stood outside the museum for as long as I could remember. It helped me keep myself from falling on the ground and blubbering like Gramps and Kevin obviously expected me to.

  “Why don’t we go say hey to Cailey and that young arson investigator over there,” Gramps suggested. “Dae’s minute is almost up and we still don’t know more than when we stopped.”

  At last, someone was taking me seriously.

  “You’ll have to put shoe covers on to walk across the debris field,” Kevin said. “You don’t want to contaminate the crime scene.”

  He went to what looked like a command center set up near the old picnic table and brought back green cloth booties for us to wear, along with gloves. Gramps started putting his booties on over his worn tennis shoes.

  I bent over to pick up one of the green booties, but the exertion caused immediate jackhammering in my head. I couldn’t bend my sore knee to put them on that way. I tried to shove my foot into the covering without using my hands, but it was useless.

  “Let me help you.” Kevin crouched down in front of me. “Headache, huh? Head injuries will do that.”

  “I don’t have a concussion, if that’s what you mean.” I lifted my foot anyway. I couldn’t do it by myself, and I wanted to talk to Cailey about what happened.

  The first foot went fine, but I lifted the other foot too high and almost lost my balance. I reached out and grasped Kevin’s shoulder.