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  Lydia, calm, cool, and collected, or at least appearing that way after her cleansing breath, assessed their predicament and tallied their resources. “Okay. The last few months of treatment? Forget it. Completely disregard anything we have worked through in our sessions. I was given false information. You were given false information. The last few months of our lives? False.” Clara readily accepted this guidance and Lydia continued, “Whatever is happening, my employers were a part of, and whatever this is, it is all about you.” Lydia tilted her chin in Clara’s direction and made sympathetic eye contact for a few seconds before returning her attention to the road before her. “We are traveling west on Interstate 70. My purse, along with my credit cards and identification are back in my office, not that either of those items would do us any good now, and the only person I know I can trust went missing a month ago.” Lydia let the frustration she felt, which she would normally have subdued. permeate her voice.

  “Here is our immediate plan. Number one: decide where we are headed. Number two: you need to open the glove compartment, take out the map, and plan a route to that location. Number three: there is an emergency bag under your seat. She shook her head in disbelief as she thought of her friend who convinced her to keep that emergency bag. Ollie was not so much a “character” anymore. He was evolving into more of a hero with each passing moment. “We will need to count the emergency cash stashed in the inside pocket of the duffel. There should be enough for a few days’ worth of travel. And finally, number four: get that key and open that locket.”

  “Dr. L, we need to open this locket FIRST! How much gas do we have?”

  Lydia checked the gauge, relieved that she had filled up her tank after work the day before. “It’s almost full. We have can make it about 300 miles before we have to refuel.”

  “Then there’s time, right? I mean, we can get the key and open the locket first, right?” Clara was already reaching behind her seat where Lydia had thrown her briefcase. She made contact with the corner and tried to lift. With Clara’s heavy file and the weight of the glass inside, it was too heavy for her grip. She felt her way to the handle, grasped it and was able to slide the leather case along the back and over the top of the console and into her lap. She looked over anxiously at her doctor, and then released the metal clasps. Clara was determined to have it her way, and Lydia didn’t attempt to dissuade her. She knew Clara deserved to finally have something her way, and she for one wasn’t going to stand between Clara and her present goal. Clara raised the lid carefully from its base as if something venomous lay inside. She removed the paperweight from amidst the crumpled and torn papers Dr. Lindenhurtz had salvaged from the struggle in the lobby of her office building and removed it. She closed the lid and snapped the clasps shut before she returned the case to the floorboard behind her seat, much lighter this time.

  She held the weight in her hands, gazing into its clear surface. “Knowledge is the key to unlocking the past.” She reached up to her necklace which now dangled from her neck on the outside of her ivory sweater. An ivory sweater, which she now noticed, was spattered with blood. She closed her fingers around it as she had done so many times before. She clutched it in her hand, a perfect and comfortable fit, and thought of her mother. Her real mother, the one she longed for at this moment, at every moment since she had lost her.

  “Yes, Clara, but what does that mean? How are these connected?”

  Lydia’s passenger closed her eyes, locket still in hand, and allowed herself to reminisce. She gave her mind free reign to remember what it wanted, what it knew to be true, to not repress or push away anything others might deem crazy. Clara was seven, maybe eight years old. It was summer vacation from whichever school she had been enrolled in at the time. There had been so many that sometimes it was hard to remember exactly which school she attended at which time in her life. Summer vacation meant flea markets and visits from Aunt Karen. The trio, Clara, her mother, and Aunt Karen—oh God, Aunt Karen, had they brainwashed her too?— would weave in and out of booth after booth from one seller to the next in search of one of a kind beauty. Melanie was always drawn to unique, one of the kind pieces, a sucker for the extraordinary. She also loved antiques, the pieces that forced you to wonder where it came from and what stories and secrets it held. Melanie always said, “Knowledge is the key to unlocking the past,” and whenever she bought a piece, she’d research until she had unlocked all the secrets it had to offer. Most of the time, there wasn’t much of a history, just something pretty and dusty in need of a good cleaning, but sometimes Melanie hit the jackpot and the story was amazing like the dusty, old canisters she had stumbled across while wandering the outdoor flea market years ago in Pennsylvania. She knew when she bought the smallish flowered set that they weren’t worth much money, but boy, were they pretty. She displayed them in her home and tried to find out what she could about the canisters, but it didn’t amount to much; however, one day long after the purchase, Melanie was packing up her kitchen for the next big move, and dropped the decorative flour tin. It crashed to the floor and as Melanie picked it up, she heard and felt a faint rattle inside what should have been an empty can. She pried off the rusty top and inside she saw that the base of the can was tilted. She pulled on the side that was protruding upward and removed a false bottom. Hidden underneath was a heart shaped locket with a name engraved inside. Melanie did her due diligence and found that it wasn’t worth much, maybe $250 on a good day, but she knew it would be worth significantly more to the original owner. She was able to track down an elderly daughter who cried with delight when Melanie was finally able to reach her by phone. It had been her mother’s years ago. From then on, Melanie was hooked. She bought every locket she could find, though there was almost never any identifying information in or on them. Each time she bought a new locket, she would tell Clara and Karen the story of the first locket, always ending by telling Clara that sometimes you have to dig below the surface to find the truth.

  “Melanie! Look!” Karen all but shouted as she held up a gorgeous oval locket. It swung hypnotically from the long gold chain in the hand that Karen had just thrust forward in Melanie’s direction.

  “Oh my God, Karen! It’s beautiful!” she exclaimed admiringly. “ Ugh! Mark will die if I bring another locket home, but I can’t help myself. It’s an addiction,” smiled Melanie.

  “Oh, it’s an addiction, alright. I think you’ve bought one at every flea market we have ever been to. Ever,” Karen replied with a playful eye roll. “Go ahead,” she sighed, “add it to your collection.”

  “If you insist!” Melanie teased as she snatched the locket from Karen’s grasp and inspected her newest addition. After several failed attempts, Melanie whined, “It doesn’t open,” and gave an overly exaggerated pout in Karen’s direction, “Maybe I should put it back. My favorite part is seeing what’s inside.”

  “Just get it, Mommy! You know you want to! It’s sooooooo pretty! Look! It has flowers on it.” A young Clara suggested. Mommy. Present Clara thought for a moment that eight year old Clara was a bit too old to call her mother “Mommy”, but that thought was soon replaced with warmness. Affection. Love. She let herself sink into this feeling, to be comforted by it. She smiled and thought, “When I see her again, I’ll call her “Mommy”. I don’t care how old I am.”

  “You know what, Honey? I will buy it. I guess some secrets are meant to stay locked away. At least until the time is right. Maybe when the time is right, we can unlock the secrets hidden in this together.” As she said this, she handed the locket to her cherub-faced daughter.

  “How will we know when the time is right?”

  “Sometimes you just know. And knowing—knowledge—is the key to unlocking the past.” Clara grinned as she looked down and studied the locket in her hand and, at eight years old, vowed to never be as cheesy as her mother.

  “Always with the lockets,” Karen chided, “C’mon, you two. Let’s pay and get out of here. I’m starving!”

  “Put it on
, Clara. You’ve always wanted one you could wear, and since this one is “soooooooooooooo pretty” with your favorite flowers, this one can be yours.”

  As Clara put the chain around her neck, she felt the weight of the pendant. It was heavy, but not uncomfortable.

  “Do you love it?” Melanie asked, hopefully.

  “Almost as much as I love you, Mommy.”

  Mommy. Back in the car, Present Clara smiled, but when she opened her eyes, she realized she was crying. Tears that had welled up in her closed eyes streamed down her cheeks in silence. She discreetly wiped them away with the sleeve of her sweater and knew—just knew—what she had to do.

  “Dr. L, this key unlocks my locket.”

  “Okay. I think we’ve established that. But…”

  “This locket…my mother gave me this locket years ago. My real mother. And this key?” Clara held up the paperweight, “This key unlocks it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  “But…how? How do you know?”

  “The quote. The quote on the front of the paperweight…”

  “Yes?”

  “…It’s quoting my mother.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I have to get this key out of here.” Clara gasped with frantic anticipation. “I need the key.” As Lydia continued to periodically check the rearview mirror for anyone they may have caught up to them, Clara began hurling the solid glass object into the floorboard of the Lumina over and over with such force that Lydia was sure it would break straight through the floorboard.

  “Clara, honey, that’s not going to work.” Lydia soothed, surprising herself with the informal tone and word choice she had just used with her patient. “The paperweight is too solid, too dense.”

  “I need it! I need this key!” Clara heaved the paperweight into the floorboard again, tears revisiting her cheeks. “I want answers. I want answers now!” Clara paused to grab at the pendant around her neck. She used what fingernails she hadn’t chewed off to try to pry open the locket just like her mother had done that day in the flea market to no avail.

  “Stop the car.” Clara commanded. The slow monotone voice Clara used caused concern in her doctor.

  “Clara, I can’t stop the car. You and I both know that people are following us, and those people have proven to be dangerous. If they catch us, there is no way of knowing what will happen to us. To you. We cannot stop this car. Not now.”

  Clara propelled the encased key toward the floorboard one last time and as she did, she turned her head toward her driver and ordered, “STOP. THE CAR. NOW.”

  Out of sheer confusion or lack of knowing what to do next, Lydia did as she was told. Without thinking, she signaled right, pulled as far off the interstate as she could, and activated her hazard lights.

  Before the car had even come to a complete stop, Clara had leapt out of the passenger side door with the paperweight in tow. Over and over again, she chucked the glass weight into the concrete. Each time it made contact, there was a solid thud as the glass chipped and powdered and rolled into the grass but never broke. Not even a little. Out of breath and defeated, Clara allowed Lydia, who had regained her faculties and joined Clara on the side of the road, to pick up the paperweight.

  “I just need the key,” Clara said. She looked up through blurry eyes at the impenetrable object in Dr. L’s hand.

  “I know, honey,” again shocked at her informality, “I know. We both need that key. We both need those answers. But right now, we have to go. We need to get back into the car and drive—fast and far.”

  Lydia placed the paperweight back into Clara’s possession after having briefly played out two outcomes in her head first: Return the paperweight to Clara and cause her to freak out again, or give her the paperweight and place the power, however inaccessible at the present moment, back into Clara’s hands. Dr. Lindenhurtz was almost certain the second scene is the one that would become reality. Luckily, she was right.

  The pair buckled themselves in and was once again westbound.

  Clara wiped her eyes and stared at the puzzle that lay before her. How do I get the key out of this glass? She thought again about her mother. About her love of old lockets. She recalled the story of the first locket, the locket that started it all. And with a smirk, she knew—just knew—what she had to do.

  Clara reached behind the seat to retrieve the briefcase. She placed it in her lap but did not bother to open it this time. Lydia observed quietly, wondering what her patient was planning. Clara situated both the locket and the paperweight on the makeshift table she had created in her lap. She studied them both for a few moments and then, without warning, she held the chain of the locket in one hand, and seized the paperweight in the other, and in one mighty blow, forced it down upon the locket she had worn around her neck for seven years. That one blow crinkled the edge and loosened one of two tiny, semi-hidden hinges on the side. Dr. Lindenhurtz, ever-waiting, ever-watching, ever-assessing, as was her job, remained quiet but vigilant.

  Clara pried at the small opening she had created, but though it gave a little when she pulled, her soft, nonexistent nails buckled under the pressure. She again raised her hand and smashed the paperweight into the locket with such force that popped almost completely open this time around. Triumphant, she pulled the locket the rest of the way open and said slowly, “My mom, my real mom, always said that “sometimes you have to dig below the surface before you find the truth”, but you know what, Dr. L? You know what I think?”

  “What, Clara?”

  “Sometimes you just have to break stuff.”

  Clara’s laughter turned to tears for the third time today, as she peered into the locket expecting to see her mother and father. Instead, her eyes were met with the same emptiness that had been in her heart these last few months.

  Clara’s head was spinning. For the millionth time she asked her self why this was all happening to her. Why me? She touched her index finger to the inside of the empty locket. “I thought…I thought…”

  “What is is, Clara? What’s inside?”

  A painful pause. “Nothing.”

  Lydia gulped. Had she made a mistake? Again? How badly would this one end? Was this another Stanley? But then she remembered the guns, the lugs in suits, the conveniently armed garage attendant, and she knew something wasn’t right about any of it. She knew that her friend must have suspected all of this. Of course he did. But was the paperweight really a sign? Of course it was. It had to be. It was too much of a coincidence to be anything otherwise. But how did he know, and what exactly did he know. Where was he, and why, oh why, hadn’t he just told Lydia.

  Because he knew I wouldn’t have believed him, that’s why, Lydia scolded herself. He knew I would have just brushed if off like I did with every other crazy theory he had ever had. Sure, he hit the nail on the head from time to time, coincidence I had thought, but mostly he just hammered away at nothing. Poor Ollie. He knew I, his only friend, wouldn’t believe him, so he left a message for me. No, not for me. For Clara, for my patient whom he wanted to save, for my patient who wanted to know the truth. Lydia subjected herself to a few more moments of mental tongue-lashing before steadying her thoughts and asking, “Clara, what are you thinking?”

  Dr. Lindenhurtz knew they needed to get to the bottom of this, but that she could only do that with Clara’s insights. Because clearly I have no insight of my own, Lydia silently reprimanded herself once more. No, get it together, Lydia. What’s done is done.

  “I…I don’t know. Lots of things. Nothing. Everything. All at once. I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

  “One step at a time. One thought at a time, Clara. Right now, this very second, what is the first thought that comes to your mind.”

  “I’m angry. My life was taken from me and I want it back. I want it back the way it was. I wanted there to be something in this locket. I just knew there would be a clue inside. I wanted the truth. What if all of this was for nothing? What if
I was wrong?”

  “Clara, something is going on. We’re going to find out what it was. The locket had to be a clue. It meant something, I’m sure. Clara, we’re one step closer.”

  “The cabin!” Clara shouted.

  “The cabin?” Lydia was confused.

  “That sign, did you see it? Lake Cromwell 10 miles. I don’t believe it.” Clara’s despair had evolved into hope.

  Lydia waited for Clara to explain.

  Suddenly, from out of nowhere, two silver sedans sped up and flanked Lydia’s car. She increased her speed, and so did they. She switched lanes. So did they. Now she was certain they were following her. She slowed; they slowed.

  “Clara, we’ve got company.”

  Clara thought that sounded like a cheesy movie line, and when she looked behind her, she thought she might as well have been watching a movie. The action unfolded as identical silver cars with seemingly identical drivers and passengers follow them. They sped up so that they were on either side of Lydia’s back bumper.

  “Oh my God, Dr. L! Floor it!”

  Clara dug her right foot into an imaginary gas pedal on the passenger’s side of Lydia’s car. Lydia must have done the same because the sheer force of the instantly increased speed pushed Clara’s head back against the headrest for a moment. When she regained proper posture, Clara watched as Lydia swerved in and out of traffic. People honked. People threw up their middle fingers. If only they knew what was happening.

  Lydia felt a pang of guilt as she offended every driver along I-70. She couldn’t help it. She enjoyed her role as a law abiding citizen. She took pride in following the rules and waiting her turn. It was polite to do so. Even in this grave situation, Lydia knew right from wrong and it was difficult to choose the wrong, even if ultimately it was the right.