Olivia lived a quiet life for the most part, just outside the city in the home built by her grandfather. An eccentric artist, the home he had fashioned for himself was anything but 'conventional'. Built on a hillside, far enough from the road to be unseen, one might never even realize it existed.
The daily commute to the concrete jungle of her workday reality could be tedious, but she loved this home where she had grown up and the idea of selling or renting it out in favor of moving into a templated box inside a steel tower of similar boxes full of nameless faces rising each morning to march off like lemmings to work each day, and then back each night to lock themselves inside again until the whistle blew the next morning had never even crossed her mind.
Grandfather Miles had lived fairly modestly, selling his paintings to a bit of a limited clientele in the local community. It wasn't until several years after he died that a man had contacted his daughter, Olivia's mother, inquiring about the possibility that there could be a lost painting or two. Indeed there had. The cellar was a literal gallery of works that had stored carefully by the old man.
Olivia vaguely remembered the excitement in the following weeks as her mother and father agreed to allow the forgotten paintings to be shown in an up and coming urban gallery and the flurry as her grandfather posthumously made them all very wealthy with the curious paintings she had grown to love.
She did remember quite clearly, her sadness as a young girl that so many of those paintings which she had spent hours secretly running a finger over while she imagined all sorts of stories explaining the expressions on the faces of the soft faces to typical to the magical little 'people' her grandfather painted. Hours of private entertainment in that cool cellar, seated in front of one of those magical paintings that seemed to draw her inside close enough to feel the softness of the half animal, half humans. All those magical creatures with soft and fluffy, strong and lean, tall and muscular bodies with animal faces and features dressed in various periodic attire posed sometimes upright, sometimes crouched or crawling in a forest or bartering for a loaf of bread and a jug of wine....merry 'men-tigers, lusty wench does, soft and innocent kitten girls....all of them with a story for her to imagine as she wrapped her arms around her young legs and dreamed the day away.... just gone to hang in the homes of wealthy strangers, library hallways, sterile office corridors......all over the world, her childhood memories had been snatched up in a flurry.
After that, her mother and father had enjoyed great wealth, grateful to have the odd paintings of what her mother called "a crazy old man" out of the cellar. She was heartbroken and the paintings, all of them, but one that she had tearfully stolen away and hidden in one of the 'secret' cubbies of her bedroom and then long forgotten. Her parents were delighted, of course. They enjoyed great wealth after that and great relief that these curious paintings were out of their hair.
Olivia had been plucked from her grammar school and sent to private school. She was groomed and educated and refined. Years later, a respected prosecutor for the city, she returned home to live after her parents died of old age.
One summer afternoon, having a light docket that particular week, Olivia drove along the winding road to her home after lunch. She had cleared her calendar and smiled at her assistant as she announced that she would be back the following Monday. Enough was enough and she had made up her mind to tend to her own neglected gardens, get some long-overdue domestic chores done, and basically reap the benefits of her own freedoms afforded by position.
Now, speeding along the winding, evergreen lined road home, she basked in the sun as her long, red hair blew wildly in the breeze as she zoomed along, top down, in her little white sports car. It was a lovely August afternoon and the heat of summer was gradually beginning to yield to the promise of the coming autumn days. The warmth of the sunshine on her shoulders and face as she stretched a toned thigh sheathed in stocking and smiled as the hem of her proper navy skirt slid ever so slightly.
She pulled over, exited the car along the deserted road long enough to remove her jacket, fold it neatly and drape it over the passenger seat, and hopped back in just her skirt and sleeveless ivory silk and lace camisole to continue on with the warmth of mid-day sun on her shoulders. Life was good.
As she sped along, and the drone of the mid-day news on NPR lulled in the background, the announcer's voice suddenly plucked from her mental list-making to slow just a bit and turn the volume up.
"A long thought lost work of Cedric Miles titled "Urisk" resurfaced last week and sold for a surprising quarter million dollars as the works of this turn of the century artist gain in popularity again."
Olivia blinked, not quite sure if she had heard correctly. It was the match to the painting she had squirreled away so many years ago and, until this day, long forgotten. Surely, after all these years, that painting wasn't still there. Was it? She pressed the accelerator, felt the car lunge foreword and her heart raced as her mind swirled in a sudden cyclone of long forgotten memories.
Rounding the bend, clicking the remote and waiting for the iron gates to roll open, she could feel her heart slamming against her throat. It had been years and years and she hadn't thought of those afternoons in the woods down by the secluded little pond for as long as she could remember. Now, trembling, she wasn't quite sure she was ready to revist those long afternoons as a young woman....a creative, imaginative woman trapped in the expectations of a corporate father and a 'proper' mother. Were those afternoons fantasy? She had been troubled by them and, over time, successfully shoved the memories deep into the recesses of her subconscious and the flood of them now surfacing on a dime was dizzying.
She couldn't stop the avalanche, however, and the vision of that cherished painting...."Iris", stowed secretly away drove her to roar up the winding road to the house waiting like something plucked right out of a Charles Dickens novel, leaving a trail of dust behind her.
The house was odd even for today. Despite all the architect's in the world attempting something avant-guarde and unique, this home stood out. It was as if it had been plucked from a delightful fairy tale and plopped right in the middle of affluent suburbia. Between the palatial and grandiose homes of the Nuevo-riche, sat her beloved family home.
Tucked in the hillside, overlooking the 200+ acres retained by her family, was this cottage her grandfather had built. Like his paintings, it had a magical feel to it and seemed to have a 'life' of its own. It was small-ish, with lots of rounded angles. Built tucked into the side of a rise and looked out over the rolling hills of evergreen and willow trees and beyond so that the main road could be seen from the home, but the home couldn't be seen from the road.
There were hidden gardens and acres of heavily wooded land. A quiet pond fed by a babbling stream running through the property lay down the hill to the west of the house about half a mile. Huge oak, willow and spruce trees shaded the home itself and, on a still night, you could hear all sorts of wildlife off in the distance. It was a magical place.
Olivia parked the car hastily and clipped along the stone walkway. Pausing only long enough to reach and pet King, her faithful companion of many years...a big friendly chocolate lab, she was trembling as she put the key in the lock and pushed open the old heavy mahogany door.
Sunshine streamed in through the stained glass window in the entryway, spilling a pattern of color on to the mirror-like oak floor and she hurried past the old hat tree, leaving the door open and King trotting along behind her, his tail wagging gleefully.
One childhood memory after another now rushing back as if an internal VCR was set on fast forward, Olivia crossed the entry and made her way up the half flight of stairs, around the corner to the bedroom she occupied as a young girl.
Throwing the door open, she crossed to open the drapes and let some light into the room shaded by the massive willow tree shaded this part of the house and under which she had spent hours playing with one of her 'imaginary' friends. In a small nook at one end of the room, stood an antique ladies' writing desk and chair surrounded on three sides by built in bookcases.
Children's books, Nancy Drew novels, teen age romance novels, and undergraduate texts along with dolls, stuffed animals, dried corsages and the like served as a mini-archive to her childhood.
With a deep breath, she slid her hand along the inside of one end of the bookcase facing the desk and felt for the small latch recessed into the hand-tooled wood. For a split second, not finding her mark, Olivia held her breath until she felt her fingers slide over a little wooden slot with a crudely fashioned toggle. Carefully, she pressed and heard a soft 'click' as the latch opened and she pushed tentatively.
One end of the bookcase moved inward, the other toward her and she pushed harder. Slowly, the bookcase turned and she moved to enter into the small, hidden cubby behind the case.
Squinting, in the musky darkness, she waved the cobwebs away as the coolness enveloped her, giving rise to already growing gooseflesh and she shivered. Memory flooding back, her hand rose instinctively, waving in search of a single, dangling string until she felt it dangle against her hand and her pulse quickened as she pulled gently on the string. The tiny room was filled with dim light now and she looked around as she held her breath.
Little cupboards and shelves lined the walls. An old braided rug lay on the floor just as it had thirty years prior and the tape 'whirred' in her mind as she recalled many hot summer days spent curled up in here, escaping the summer heat and the world outside. Her girlhood inner- sanctum, long abandon but never quite forgotten.
As if not to disturb anything, she tiptoed now to the opposing wall and squatted in front of a little-girl height door, turning the small glass doorknob slowly and pulling the small cupboard door open.
Even in the dim light, she could see the back of the cupboard and the Framed canvas wrapped in an old flannel 'doll blanket' propped up against the wall. Her heart thudded in her chest as she pulled it out and, with trembling hands, she walked slowly, carrying it out of the hidden room into the bedroom.
