The Time Collector Read online

  His breathing calmed as his mind sifted through all the memories he knew were there, like a movie he wanted to watch again. Two people besides him and Melicent had touched this globe before: one person was a customer from The Trove—a woman preoccupied by her twins fussing in their stroller. She had considered buying it as a birthday present for her mother but put it back down when one of the babies started screaming.

  The mother left the store with a harassed look and an apologetic smile to Melicent. “Thanks, I’ll come another time.”

  Melicent was behind the register, her hair knotted into a twist with wooden chopsticks, just like in the YouTube video. She was bent over the counter working intently on another snow globe.

  She looked up with a smile and waved. Sunlight streamed through the window, framing her in a luminous light.

  Roan was captivated. He could watch that moment a hundred times. He finally left the imprint and moved on to the next.

  The other person who’d handled it was the woman Melicent worked for, Tish. Tish had held the globe for several minutes, gazing at it with a critical eye, thinking it wasn’t that good. Tish’s imprint was a long raveling thread holding a lot of history—and baggage—between the two women.

  Tish was the one who had offered to let Melicent sell her artwork at the store, and she gave Melicent one small shelf in the back corner. The arrangement was that Melicent could keep all the profits from anything that sold. But Tish regretted making the offer. In her mind the crystal globes mounted on chunks of granite took up valuable space.

  Who would want to buy this? was all Tish could think. She’d picked up the rock garden snow globe, all the while wondering how she could steal the shelf back.

  Roan grimaced at the bitter taste in his mouth and moved past Tish’s negative imprint, impatient to get to Melicent again. He adjusted his fingertips on the glass sphere as if fine-tuning an instrument until he was able to capture her.

  Melicent sat at her desk in her bedroom, creating the sculpture. She liked to do a little bit at a time late at night. Her eyes were focused on the task, but her mind was far away as she constructed the miniature rock garden. She was in her pajamas, boxer shorts and a wispy camisole, her hair splayed over her shoulders, with tendrils falling forward as she leaned closer to the desk. Roan felt like a voyeur watching her, his mind’s eye so focused on the moment he could have reached out to touch her.

  It was the first time an imprint had ever frustrated him—because he wanted it to be real. He’d learned early on as a child imprints could never replace the present. The singularity of the present was what gave “the now” its power, but he’d also never wanted to choose an imprint over reality before.

  He watched her work until he drifted off to sleep, and his hands stayed wrapped around the crystal globe, cradling it, like it was the most priceless possession in the world.

  20. THE PEACE PIPE

  THE KEY TO GETTING ROAN WEST TO TALK, Melicent noticed, was to ask him about history. In the fifteen minutes they’d been in the car together, Roan had regaled her and Parker with all kinds of historical trivia, painting a vivid picture of New Orleans as a city steeped in time, a grand melding of cultures, and a living doorway to the past. “The biggest small town in the world” had the country’s oldest public market and the first cathedral in North America. Tennessee Williams had lived next to Gumbo Shop, and Mark Twain had had his fortune read just down the street when he was a Mississippi steamboat pilot before the Civil War.

  The other thing she noticed about Roan was that he sometimes talked about the past in the present tense, describing events as if they were still happening. It was disconcerting. She’d never heard another person do this.

  “Thomas Jefferson tries to buy New Orleans and Florida from Napoleon in 1803 for two million dollars. Napoleon doesn’t answer the offer. So James Monroe goes over to Paris and raises the price to ten million.” Roan was driving them through the French Quarter, giving them a play-by-play commentary on the history of the city.

  “Instead Napoleon shocks everyone by announcing he’ll give up the entire Louisiana Territory, an expanse of fifteen states extending from Florida all the way to Canada, for fifteen million. After the math is said and done, New Orleans is basically bought for seven dollars.” This fascinating discussion of New Orleans was the most Roan had said since they’d met. As they toured through the French Quarter in his car, the last twenty-four hours began to recede in Melicent’s mind like a distant nightmare. But the fire had happened, and now Roan had decided that she and her brother were his responsibility.

  He’d even sent flowers to her hotel room. When the bouquet had arrived that afternoon, her first thought was that he was trying to make a romantic gesture.

  The card simply said, To brighten up your room. R.

  The gift had been so surprising, but when she knocked on Parker’s door to deliver the jeans and T-shirts she’d bought him at the mall, she’d been stunned to see that Roan had sent Parker a beautiful bouquet as well.

  A swift stab of disappointment hit her. The flowers weren’t a romantic gesture. The man simply liked giving flowers. But then she’d already determined Roan was odd. Maybe it was a condolence gesture since they’d lost the house—a fact she was trying hard not to think about. The shock would be with her for some time before she was ready to face the reality.

  Roan was busy explaining to them how Napoleon had never come to New Orleans, but that uptown streets were named after his battles, and one of the few first copies of his death mask was housed in the Cabildo Museum.

  “What’s a death mask?” Parker asked, perking up in the back seat.

  Roan glanced at Parker in the rearview mirror. “It’s the mold of someone’s face cast on their deathbed. Napoleon’s mold was stolen, so historians are unable to determine which mask was cast from the original mold and which is a copy. The two top contenders are the masks in the Musée de l’Armée in Paris and the one at the Musée de Malmaison.”

  “So if you touched them, would you know the answer?” Parker asked.

  Roan didn’t hesitate before saying “Yes.”

  “Did you ever touch something that was Napoleon’s?” Parker wanted to know.

  Melicent tried not to roll her eyes. Parker was full of questions for Roan, but her brother hadn’t said two words to her since the dramatic revelation that he was planning to run away. Granted they hadn’t had a moment to sit down and talk, but the silent treatment was beginning to wear on her.

  “I did more than that. I found something.” Roan’s eyes had a gleam in them, remembering. “His sword.”

  “Whoa.” Parker leaned forward.

  “I was your age. His insignia was engraved on the hilt. It had been damaged and was illegible, but I still knew. He commissioned the sword to be made after his campaign in Egypt.”

  Melicent glanced over at Roan from the corner of her eye, surprised he was continuing to be so talkative. If she didn’t know better she would swear he sounded nervous—like he was talking to fill the silence. Something had happened to him during their afternoon apart. She focused on listening and used it as an excuse to study him. He was wearing black jeans and a cotton stretch long-sleeved T-shirt that made him look athletic. She had to admit that his gloves looked sexier when he was driving.

  Roan caught her assessing stare. She cleared her throat and looked back out the window as he continued with his story. “The sword disappeared—like so many of Napoleon’s possessions did—when he was imprisoned by the English. We took it to a laboratory that dealt in advanced metalwork testing, and they were able to show the insignia under the right microscope.”

  “You sold it?” Melicent asked. She couldn’t imagine touching something that belonged to Napoleon and sensing his past. The man had controlled entire continents and the lives of millions.

  “For how much?” Parker chimed in.

  “Parker!” Melicent craned her neck around to give him a look. “That’s rude.”

  “W
hat? I’m not asking his salary. It’s Napoleon’s sword. Chill.”

  “One point two million dollars,” Roan answered.

  Parker frowned. “That seems low.”

  “Oh my God,” she said to her brother. “Would you stop?”

  “No, it was low,” Roan agreed, clearly trying to defuse the tension. “At the time, my dad was worried that a public auction would garner too much media attention. So we sold it to a military antique collector in the States. Four years later, when I was twenty, another of Napoleon’s swords came up for auction from the Bonaparte family. The sword was appraised at one point six million but it sold for six point five million and became one of the highest-selling antiquities of all time.”

  Parker whistled and everyone fell silent.

  Melicent crossed her arms and looked out the window again, feeling a weight pressing on her. Finding Breguet’s watch had garnered attention—a lot of attention. She hadn’t had time to see where else the story had circulated besides the L.A. Times and YouTube. Not that she wanted to—it’d only unnerve her more. That video had made her a target. There could be dozens of articles about the pocket watch, and here she was hiding out in New Orleans.

  They left the French Quarter and took Decatur Street, which soon turned into Magazine Street. As they drove down the winding road filled with restaurants, shops, and bars, she thought the vibe felt a lot like Culver City’s walking district or SoHo in New York, which she’d visited once with a friend in college.

  When Roan pulled into a small drive next to one of the houses, Melicent received a momentary jolt. Seeing RW Antiques days after clicking on every available picture of it was unreal. Not once had she imagined she’d be visiting the house, let alone soon.

  The pearl-colored exterior was even more charming than the pictures on the website. A delightful winter garden of pansies and petunias surrounded the wraparound porch and steep patio steps led to the entrance. The entire house was raised high off the ground, in traditional New Orleans fashion, to safeguard it from flooding.

  On the way to the front door she caught Roan taking off his right glove and trailing a hand over the tips of the flowers with an intent look on his face.

  Without slowing his stride, he put his glove back on in one smooth motion before buzzing the front door. The intercom sounded. “Holly, it’s me,” he said.

  A few moments later the front door opened and a silvery-blond woman stepped out. She was in her thirties and dressed in an elegant pencil skirt and silk blouse. She’d accessorized the look with dramatic jewelry, a brass cuff and ropes of pearls around her neck, and a touch too much makeup.

  “Roan! I—” Her smile faltered when she noticed he had brought people with him. “Why hello.” A professional mask fell into place and she stepped back to welcome them inside. “I didn’t realize you were bringing clients today.” Her Southern drawl was pronounced.

  Roan ushered them in. “They’re not clients. They’re visiting from L.A. Melicent and Parker Tilpin, I’d like you to meet Holly Beauchêne.”

  The announcement of Melicent’s and Parker’s names made Holly’s mouth drop open. “Oh my Lord. You’re from the YouTube video.” She looked from Melicent and Parker to Roan in disbelief.

  “You saw it too?” Parker asked.

  “I’m the one who showed it to him,” Holly said, sounding like she wished she hadn’t.

  Everyone stood in the foyer for an awkward moment. Melicent watched the silent exchange between Holly and Roan and could hear the unspoken words: Why did you bring them here? And his It’s a long story look. It was obvious Roan and Holly had a close relationship to enable that kind of nonverbal shorthand.

  Roan excused himself and Holly for a few minutes and they went to the office to talk. They didn’t shut the door all the way, and Melicent could hear every word bouncing off the hardwood floors and the old house’s thin walls—how she and Parker were connected to what was going on with Stuart and how he needed Holly to watch them while he was in London.

  Holly’s voice rose. “You’re leaving? And you want me to watch them?”

  Melicent couldn’t help but cringe. Holly sounded horrified. Melicent felt like going in there to tell her not to worry, she wasn’t about to stay in New Orleans and be babysat.

  Holly shut the office door for privacy, muting their voices. Melicent shook her head and tried to tamp down her annoyance. She moved as far away from them as possible and turned her attention instead to the showrooms.

  She wandered from room to room, much like Parker was doing. But unlike her brother, who was picking up the merchandise, checking the price tags, and making whistling noises, she kept her arms crossed with her hands under her elbows.

  At this point she was afraid to touch anything. Every piece of furniture and collectible in this house had a story to tell or Roan wouldn’t have brought it here, from the Viennese silver spice boxes to the grand chandelier from Bohemia to the fifteenth-century embossed bowls from Nuremberg.

  Melicent moved past an inlaid gaming table and drop-front secretaire that looked like they had graced a castle in Europe. Who were the last people to own these treasures? Her hand almost reached out to touch the gaming table but instead she walked on.

  The next room held a beautiful assortment of table clocks: porcelain sculptures from Italy, vase clocks from France, and an ornate Roman chariot where the clock was the wheel. On the wall a painting from Prague had a clock embedded into the canvas as part of the picture. The room made her smile. Of course Roan would collect unusual clocks.

  She finished touring the showroom and stepped through the last doorway at the end of the hall.

  The chill hit her first and then the coldness of the air turned invasive, as if invisible fingers were trying to touch her bones. Melicent wrapped her arms around her middle with a twinge of apprehension.

  Four long tables were draped with black tablecloths. The antiques on the tables were tagged with lot numbers instead of price tags, and many items had a page of typed or handwritten notes tucked beside them. The collection looked Native American and featured everything from beaded ceremonial dresses and matching moccasins to feathered headdresses, musical flutes, and handmade dolls made from hides.

  Melicent placed her hand on her chest to calm her heart and ease the sense of dread spreading through her. She had to know why this feeling, this concentration of sadness and loss, was in the room.

  Making a conscious decision to use her right hand instead of her left, she picked up a small handmade horse from a cluster of toys. If Roan was correct, her right hand was her more receptive hand and would be the best one for reading an imprint.

  Immediately she felt a tug and closed her eyes to follow the animal’s trail through the darkness, to hear the story of a boy who had to leave his beloved toy behind.

  Little Deer was one of thousands of children rounded up by the U.S. government, wrenched from his family, and sent to live in a Native American boarding school. He was forbidden to speak his language; his glorious black hair was shorn off; he could no longer walk freely; he had to march. He wore the same uniform day in, day out.

  Little Deer’s memories resounded in the toy horse, along with his fear, his confusion, his shame. On the table along with the horse were toys belonging to other children, handmade by their grandmothers, which had to be left behind and were only seen again in the summer months when the children were allowed to return home.

  Melicent could hear the sounds of their laughter silenced, feel the brutal push against their spirits to stifle their light. At school the teachers called Little Deer uncivilized and a savage. He was beaten with horse cords and sticks, and when he ran away the punishment was much worse.

  Melicent was trapped in the dark memories, no longer in the room. Like a sleepwalker she put down the horse and moved to the next table, and reached out to touch one of the wooden pipes decorated with banded feathers.

  First she heard the words “Hetchetu welo,” it is indeed a good day, spoken so
clearly, like the man speaking was standing beside her. Then a torrent of imprints hit her.

  The images came like a stampede from the last evening this pipe had ever held smoke. It’d been passed around with great ceremony by the tribe’s medicine man, Yellow Bird, but the ceremony had been interrupted by the arrival of a cavalry of soldiers.

  The soldiers were escorting another band of Sioux and their ailing chief, Big Foot, whom they were arresting. The pipe held the fear of that night and the following day as the soldiers rounded up every weapon from every tepee.

  The killing started when a soldier’s gun went off and shot a deaf man who was resisting the soldier because he couldn’t hear the orders.

  Within seconds the panicked troop fired at the crowds and into the tepees, forever burning that winter day red with blood. Men, women, children were shot like animals while they tried to run.

  “Melicent, let go!”

  Melicent could barely register that Roan was shouting. The grief had eclipsed her.

  His arms wrapped around her, rooting her back to the present. She dropped the pipe on the table with a clatter and buried her face in her hands. Her legs were about to buckle as her whole body shook from the annihilation she’d witnessed. The pipe had showed her the memories of the hundreds of men, women, and children who had died.

  “I didn’t know.” She choked the words out.

  Roan stroked her hair. “I’m sorry. I should have shut the door.”

  Parker came rushing to the doorway with Holly right behind him. “What happened? Mel?” he asked, alarmed.

  “She touched something,” Roan said firmly. “Give us a minute.”

  Melicent was too devastated to care that she was making a scene. The room was spinning; her sense of gravity was gone. The muscles in her stomach cramped and she thought she might be sick.

  “Please give us a minute,” he ordered, sounding short. Holly ushered Parker back to the front of the store.