Serendipity

fact that she’d spent very little time here, the place seemed imbued with her presence. I felt as though I might call out her name and hear her voice answer me in the gathering gloom.

  That first night in Rebecca’s house was strange, unnerving. I slept in her bedroom, in her bed, under the very sheets where she had once lain. At her funeral, her father had told me she’d last been here about a year and a half ago. But it had been another six months since then. So two years had passed since she’d been inside the place. I wondered if the bedclothes had ever been changed.

  The night seemed to last an eternity, and when the first vestiges of morning sun finally came creeping through the window, I wasn’t sure if I had slept at all.

  In the end, nearly twenty nights passed before I saw her for the first time.

  I was lying in bed with only the bedside lamp burning, reading in the quiet of the night. It was late, after midnight, and the only sound in the house was the steady breathing of my dog at the foot of the bed.

  As I lay there reading I heard Tor begin to growl, one of those deep, guttural growls dogs make when they sense danger. My eyes shot up from the book. There, standing near the foot of the bed, was Rebecca. Not a ghostly apparition, a see-through Rebecca-thing draped in hazy white gowns, but a real, live, warm-blooded person, standing ten feet away from me, dressed in khaki shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. She was just staring at me with those almond eyes, a hesitant expression on her face as though shy about disturbing me.

  I felt my heart catch in my throat, and a cold chill swept my body like an arctic breeze. For several seconds I didn’t breathe. Tor crouched in a defensive posture, the hairs on his back standing to attention. He bared his teeth and barked. Rebecca didn’t seem to notice. She just kept staring at me.

  I was frozen in my spot, not knowing how to react. What do you do, after all, when you see a dead person suddenly standing before you? I finally did the only thing that seemed natural at the time: I reached over and turned out the light. When I turned it back on she was gone.

  The next day I tried to reason with myself. It was a hallucination. A figment of my imagination, born out of the emotion of her death. Living in her house, among her things, sleeping in her bed, using her bathroom, cooking in her kitchen – all these things might lead to strange sightings and visions.

  But no. It just didn’t add up. I might well have been capable of hallucinating, but what about Tor? Surely my grief and emotions didn’t extend to him.

  The next night, she came again. This time she smiled at me, that radiant smile that I remembered so well. The hallmark of her existence. Again Tor saw her too and again he growled and barked. I left the light on this time, and after a few minutes she turned and walked out of the room. I got the impression she wanted me to follow her, but when I jumped out of bed and stepped into the corridor outside, she was nowhere to be seen.

  After that, I didn’t see her again for some time. I felt disturbed and distraught, scared but curious. By day I went about my normal routine: caring for the flowerbeds, cultivating the small garden out back, mowing the acre yard, observing the wildlife, doing a lot of reading. But by night I stalked the house like a prowler, Tor at my side, looking for any sign of her.

  Then, after about two weeks, I was awakened one night by a whisper in my ear.

  Serendipity, the voice said.

  I had been sleeping fitfully, plagued by dreams and nightmares, and the whispered word was like a lightning bolt through me. I sat straight up in bed, panting, my heart racing. The room was empty, the moon glowing in through the window. Tor was awake, ears pricked in the darkness as if he’d heard it too.

  Though the voice had been a whisper, I was certain it was hers. I had heard her whispered voice dozens of times, when we would lie awake at night in the Indonesian jungle, side by side on two cots, talking about the day’s events or some other issue that seemed important at the time.

  Serendipity. What had she meant by that?

  I lay awake the rest of the night, the covers pulled up to my chin, staring wide-eyed around the room. The disembodied voice had scared me even more than the sight of her at the foot of my bed. It resounded in my ears as if it were trapped inside my head.

  Serendipity.

  The next day I found an old dictionary inside a bookshelf in the library. Pulling it off the shelf, I sat at the desk, dusted the binding, and opened it to the S’s.

  Serendipity (sèr´en-dîp¹î-tê) noun

  The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.

  [From Persian Sarandip, Sri Lanka, from Arabic Sarandib.]

  I knew what the word meant, but seeing the definition before me brought meaning to the utterance that I hadn’t considered before then. Was she trying to tell me that she had discovered something, or was she prodding me to make my own fortunate discoveries?

  I glanced back at the page. The word was apparently derived from the ancient Persian name for Sri Lanka. If I wasn’t mistaken, Rebecca had spent some time in Sri Lanka a few years back. In fact, it was her last assignment before being sent to Burma. Could there be a connection there?

  I looked up, sighing. I had been seated for nearly fifteen minutes, hunched over the dictionary in concentration. I leaned back to stretch, and when I did, my eyes fell across the mirror that hung over the desk.

  And there she was, Rebecca, standing in the doorway behind me. I swung around with a gasp, gooseflesh rising on my skin.

  Nothing.

  I went to the door and looked into the corridor beyond. It was empty.

  I called her name. “Rebecca!” I waited, but only silence answered me.

  Stepping back inside the library, I shook my head, trying to clear it. Was it all in my mind? Some sort of self-induced visual fallacy? Could even Tor’s growling, on the previous sightings, have been merely my imagination? A grand hallucination, like an acid dream? I looked in the mirror again. This time, the doorway was just as it should have been: empty.

  Maybe I was going insane.

  A few days later I was sitting in the den, reclining on a plush leather couch, when I found myself staring at the pendulum clock on the wall. It was an antique by the look of it, fashioned from carved mahogany and ornamented with brass fixtures and an elaborately decorated face. Something struck me odd about it and I finally realized what it was: the clock was ticking and set to the proper time. This was a major revelation because I had never touched it. Who, then, had been winding it? Who had set the hands to the appropriate time?

  I stood and walked over to it, examining it closer. It really was a work of art, hand-carved with such intricate detail that it seemed more fit for a museum than a secluded home in central Kentucky. I leaned down and read the imprint on the underside.

  Made in Sri Lanka.

  For a moment I just stared at the words. Then I looked back at the clock face. The brass fixtures were polished and shiny and for a moment I saw her reflection in the metal. A flash of ghostly white skin, with nut-brown eyes like two peach pits, and a mane of dark hair swept back over her shoulders. The image played across the honey-colored brass, twisted and distorted by the angle, and then was gone.

  I wheeled around but knew I would find nothing there.

  I was scared and disturbed but determined to find out what message Rebecca was trying to send me. What was the connection between serendipity and Sri Lanka? Had she discovered something while she was there? Was the clock just another clue or did it hold the secret itself? Was there a secret at all, or was I just making it all up, the mind-games of a man in mourning?

  I examined the clock again. Aside from the stamp indicating it was made in Sri Lanka, and the connection between Sri Lanka’s ancient name and the whispered word I’d heard a few nights earlier, I had no reason to believe the clock had any special significance. Maybe it was just intuition, but I reached up and felt along the top of the clock to see if anything was t
here. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find.

  At first there was nothing. Only dust. But then I let my fingers run all the way to the back and they brushed across something flat and small. A key. I picked it up. It was just a standard metal key, miniature like the key to a jewelry box or padlock. I slipped it inside my pocket.

  The house was big, and it was furnished with decades of accumulated furniture. (In fact, I suspected that whoever had sold the house to Rebecca had sold her the furniture and belongings as well. Maybe it had been the home of an old person who had died without an heir.) In any event, it was nearly a week before I finally discovered where the key fit.

  It was early afternoon and I was in the parlor, seated at the Steinway that was the centerpiece of the room. It was a full grand, and despite the months of disuse it was in moderately good tune. I am no Liberace, and I’m lucky to get all the way through Für Elise without a mistake, but I enjoy playing, particularly when no one is around to hear. I had been seated at the piano for about twenty minutes when the thought struck me that there might be some sheet music in the bench. I leaned over to open it and found it locked. My memory kicked in and I immediately tried the little key from the clock.

  Bingo.

  I opened the lid and stared inside.

  There was an old photograph, black and white and grainy with the passage of time, lying in