The Opal Legacy by Fortune Kent

Author:Fortune Kent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nurse;scotland;legends;family legacy;older hero;younger heroine;Michigan;Upper Peninsula;paranormal;gothic
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Published: 2015-01-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

On Monday of the following week, Lesley woke first, dressed, and stood at the full-length mirror in the bedroom. She fastened the pendant about her neck, glancing from the warmth of the stone to its flashing reflection.

“I love my pendant,” she said, seeing Jon sit up in bed to watch her.

“The jeweler told me yours was the largest opal he’s worked with in the twenty years he’s been in business. Have you ever had the stone appraised?”

“Never. The opal’s an heirloom. It’s been in our family since the eighteenth century.”

“Yet wouldn’t you be interested in knowing what it’s worth? How much would you guess?”

“I don’t know. Maybe five thousand dollars.” She shook her head. What did the price matter?

“The jeweler showed me a smaller fire opal, one not nearly as brilliant, priced at more than ten thousand.”

“I’m surprised. But my family never thought of the opal as being worth a certain amount of money.” She turned from the mirror and came to sit on a chair next to the bed where Jon leaned back with hands clasped behind his head. He doesn’t understand, she thought.

“To me,” Lesley told him, “the passing of the opal from one generation to the next has always seemed like the forging of a chain, a chain from the first Scottish Campbells to me, here and now, and then extending from me into the future. I’m part of that chain as long as I’m entrusted with the opal, only one link, but I’m terribly important, just as any link in a chain is important. I’m the joining of the past and the future. Oh, I can see I’m not making my feeling for the opal clear to you.”

“The opal is only a mineral dug from the earth.”

“To me, it’s more; that’s what I’m saying. To me it represents our family, the continuity between my ancestors and me. The stone gives me something to belong to, to hold on to; it tells me there has been a past and promises there will be a future.”

“That’s an awfully mystical feeling.”

“Yes, I suppose you could call it mystical. Yet it’s very real to me.”

“Then you’d never consider selling the opal? Or even using it as collateral for a loan?”

“No!” She reached out and laid one hand lightly on his arm. “I didn’t mean to react so strongly. The idea of selling never occurred to me before, and now that you’ve mentioned it, well, I’m sure I couldn’t. Not ever.”

He tousled her hair but she held herself rigid and unyielding. “I’m not surprised about how you feel,” he said.

“Why did you ask how much the opal’s worth?”

“Just curious. Until you told me a couple of months ago I knew nothing of the opal or the power of precognition it seems to give you. I guess I wanted to know as much about it as I could.”

“There’s more to your questions than that. I can tell by the way you avoid looking at me. Something’s bothering you.”

“It’s money; money’s tight right now.

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