Chapter Ninety-Seven
“Darla is hoping for another boy,” Jessica said to Jeremy.
“A girl in the families would be nice,” Jeremy said. “They bring fresh air into the place. What is Vernon wishing for?”
“A daughter would not be amiss with him, but our little girls have a way of dying.”
“Ah,” Jeremy said, his customary response to statements requiring no further discussion. Jessica had learned to read its range of emotions as he had the expression of her eyebrows.
“Vernon has confided to me that if the baby is a girl, he’ll insist she call him Daddy,” Jessica said. “He does not like it that Miles calls him Papa. Says it makes him sound and feel old, but Papa was Darla’s preference.”
“Ah,” said Jeremy again.
“Indeed,” agreed Jessica.
It was autumn again, three months from the close of the nineteenth century, a much anticipated event nationwide that had sparked the friends’ earlier conversation in the gazebo. Jessica had informed Jeremy, who enjoyed her sharing the contents of her readings with him, that the purists would have the new millennium begin January 1, 190l, because the Gregorian calendar numbered century years from 1 to 100. She was glad the pragmatists were not following the convention and were going with the ancient astronomers’ idea of numbering years from 0 to 99. She might not be alive to usher in the new century in 1901.
“Now, Jess,” Jeremy cautioned.
“Just stating the practical, Jeremy. The old body is wearing out, so it reminds me every morning I get out of bed.”
“Yes, well…” Jeremy recrossed his legs on the swing of the gazebo, uncomfortable with the mention of the inevitable, Jessica recognized. She was eighty-two, and he ninety-three. She changed the subject. She’d received letters from Sarah Conklin and Tippy. The chamber of commerce had selected Sarah among Boston’s Women of the Century, and Tippy was launching a new line of feminine wear to support the vanguard of women emerging in society determined to be socially useful and personally autonomous.
“Comfortable, practical, and aesthetically pleasing,” Jessica quoted Tippy’s description of her designs to which Jeremy returned his usual “Ah” in approval. Eventually, Jessica got around to the reason she’d sent word she’d like to see him. She reached for a small jewelry box she’d brought to the gazebo.
“Jeremy, dear, I wonder if you’d do me a favor?”
“Anything, Jess. You know that.”
“Would you sell this for me?”
Jessica opened the lid of the box containing the emerald brooch her father had presented her on her eighteenth birthday. Recognition and surprise flared in her old friend’s gaze.
“Jess! That’s the brooch you wore when I first met you!” he exclaimed.
“You have a good memory, Jeremy.”
“How could I forget?”
For a few seconds, Jessica thought his eyes misted over. She averted her glance to the brooch the morning sunlight had set on green fire in her hand. “I never wore it after that night,” she mused. “I’ve been keeping it as a little nest egg. It should bring quite a sum if the sale is transacted by a man adept at negotiating deals.”
“Why in the world would you wish to sell it, Jess?”
“For money to publish my book, Roses. I don’t have enough of my own, and no publisher is willing to pay me for the privilege of printing a history of our families. Who would buy it? And for obvious reasons, now is not the time to ask Thomas for the money.”
“Ah, Jess…” Jeremy took the brooch from the box and inspected it admiringly. “It’s so beautiful, so rare. It looked lovely on you the night of your eighteenth birthday party. Why don’t you keep it and let me give you the money to publish your book?”
“No, Jeremy, dear. That would be going against Silas’s wishes and the agreement he and you and Henri made when we first settled here—the pact never a lender or borrower be to the other. It has stood the families in good stead. Besides, upon my death, I don’t want the brooch to be an issue between Jacqueline and Darla. Knowing Jacqueline, she’d let Darla have it, and I’d rather bury it first. Will you sell it for me?”
“Of course I will. I know just the man who will buy it for the price of its value.”
“And Jeremy?”
“Yes, Jess?”
“No adding extra bucks of your own to the sum. Promise?”
“I promise, Jess.”
He went by train to Houston the next morning. Jeremy made a point to patronize the hometown merchants whenever he could, but the nature of his business today required discretion and anonymity. He was on his way to an establishment from which he had purchased gems of rare quality to give as presents to his late wife. He did not suffer Jessica’s quandary when it came to the dispensation of Camellia’s jewelry to his two daughters-in-law and now Jeremy III’s wife, Beatrice. Camellia would have been proud to see her collection worn by the women her menfolk had married. In all ways, Jeremy considered himself a very lucky man.
Thane and Thaddeus Oppenheimer were twin owners of a jewelry shop only the wealthy entered. Thane sold and Thaddeus bought. It was Thaddeus Jeremy told the elegantly dressed salesgirl he wished to see, and after flicking a glance at his business card and over his expensive attire, she led him directly into the man’s gemology laboratory at the rear of the shop.
“My God, this is exquisite!” Thaddeus declared, studying the brooch through his loupe, a small, handheld magnifying device used by jewelers to assess a gemstone’s quality. “I shouldn’t tell you that. You’ll ask the earth.”
“Which Thane will sell for that and a couple of planets more,” Jeremy rejoined.
“He will indeed,” Thaddeus murmured. He stated a price.
“Done,” said Jeremy.
“This will go into the case immediately,” the jeweler said. “It could be gone by the end of the day.”
“Most likely,” Jeremy concurred.
Jeremy lunched at the Townsmen, his club in Houston, the money for the brooch thick in his wallet. He took his time and enjoyed a brandy and coffee afterwards in the lounge, where he chatted with other captains of industry and met a representative of the state’s new rich. He was a man from Corsicana in East Texas who, in the process of tapping a shallow artesian well on his property in 1897, hit a pocket of oil and gas. After a pleasant exchange with the newcomer, Jeremy checked his gold fob watch and decided he’d allowed enough time for the brooch to be inventoried, cleaned, polished, priced, and displayed under the bright lights in one of the gleaming cases of the Oppenheimers’ shop. He’d best hurry.
Thane was behind the counter. Jeremy saw the brooch displayed in an individual glass case set on a pillar at the front of the store to entice customers as they walked in.
“I’d like to purchase that emerald pin if I may, Thane,” he said.
Thane looked puzzled. “But…you just sold it to us, Mr. Warwick.”
“And now I want to buy it back—for the asking price, of course.”
“Uh…yes. As you wish, Mr. Warwick.”
Jeremy wrote the jeweler a check for the amount of the brooch and said, “No need to have it wrapped up, Thane. It’s going right into the safe when I get home.”
In a voice of barely restrained astonishment since his customer had walked in, the jeweler said, “Not to be worn at the neckline of a lovely woman, Mr. Warwick?”
“Only in memory, Thane,” Jeremy said.
Jessica counted the bills in surprise. “You were paid this much, Jeremy? You promise you didn’t throw in your own money?”
Jeremy held up his hands. “I promise,” he said. “You have there the exact amount the jeweler paid for the brooch. Believe me, he’ll sell it for a lot more.”
Jessica said in a faintly musing voice, “I wonder who will buy it.”
“Perhaps a man who loves a woman very much,” Jeremy said.