Bess looked at the box and understood what Gladys was getting at. She felt like a dunce for not thinking of it sooner. She pulled her ring of keys out of her purse and thumbed through them. “Well, I’m a fool.” She laughed. “He did, didn’t he? It must be one of these.”
The manager understood. “That solves the problem,” he said, nodding. “Surely it must be one of those.” He used his own key to open the top lock and then slid the box toward Bess. “I’ll leave you in private now.” He gestured toward a bell on the wall. “You can use that to call when you are finished. It rings in my office.”
When he had gone, Charles looked at Bess. “So how are you going to open this without the key?”
Bess smiled. “I spent thirty years with the world’s best locksmith.” She removed one of her hairpins and inserted it into the lock. “It’s not too tricky.” She closed her eyes and tried to feel around the inside of the lock as Harry had taught her. After a few moments, it clicked open. Gladys heard the noise and clapped.
“What’s inside?” she asked.
Bess slid open the lid. Inside, wrapped in velvet, were two dozen heavy gold coins. “Oh, Harry,” she said.
“It’s gold,” Charles said to Gladys. “A lot of it. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Bess held one in her palm and studied it in amazement. “They’re just like the ones he gave your mother on our trip to the Catskills. Do you remember? He must have set some aside.” She handed one to Gladys.
“Are they enough to cover your debts?” Gladys asked.
“Yes, and more.” She looked at Charles. “But you know, half of these are yours.”
Charles stared at her. “Mine? No, I don’t think so.”
“The box was in both our names. He intended these for us both.”
“But you need them.”
Bess pressed one of the coins into his hand. “There are more than enough here. Did you think I was really going to bring you into my life and then cast you aside when I got what I wanted?”
Charles looked inside the box again. “But, Bess—there’s no photograph.”
Bess had almost forgotten about the photograph. She turned the box upside down and examined it, but could find nothing else, even hidden inside. “That can’t be . . .”
“There’s nothing else?” Gladys asked. “Not even a letter? Nothing?”
Bess’s voice cracked. “No.”
“Maybe there is no other photograph. Maybe the whole point was to lead you to find this.”
“No, no.” Bess shook her head. “Money wasn’t the point at all. Of course, there was always the debt issue, but I still haven’t found him. He promised.”
Gladys touched her shoulder. “Why do you want to find him so badly? Isn’t it enough to know that he loved you?”
Bess’s hands began to shake. “It’s not enough. I need to know that this isn’t the end for us. That I’m going to see him again.”
Gladys’s voice was soft. “But perhaps it’s time to say good-bye and move on.”
Bess looked at the cold steel boxes, stacked around them like bricks. “I suppose I’m no different than everyone else. I’m afraid, too, of what there is after all this”—she waved her hand—“is gone.”
“I believe you will see him again, in another life,” Charles said. “But maybe he just can’t find a way to tell you that. You’ll just have to believe it will be.”
“My whole life, I have believed. Believe in the sacraments, my mother said, and I did. I believed. Believe we’ll be famous, Harry told me, and I did. Believe people will come see the shows. Believe Hollywood will embrace us. Believe I will come back.” Her whole body ached; she could feel herself growing older, the slight papering of her skin, the slow laboring of her heart. “But I’m tired of believing. I just want to know.”
By the time they arrived back at Charles’s house, she felt deflated.
Charles cleared his throat. “Of course you both must stay the night here. There’s some food in the kitchen. If you help yourselves, I’ll make up the guest rooms for you.”
She wasn’t hungry. When she was finally alone in her room, Bess closed the door and stood looking at her case. She barely had the energy to open it. It was still early, but she wanted nothing more than to take a bath and put on her robe. In one sense, her search had been successful, but in another, she felt a long journey had come to an end. She had finally, and definitively it seemed, lost Harry.
Charles had made the bed and placed three folded towels on top of the quilt. On the bedside table, he had leaned the cardboard photograph he had found in Harry’s library against the lamp. She lay on her side on the bed and stared at the image. His boyhood face stared out at her, a reminder that perhaps she hadn’t lost everything.
Suddenly, she sat up. She went to the door and flung it open. “Charles! Gladys!” she called into the hallway. “Come quickly!”
Charles rushed into her room, Gladys following with her hand on his shoulder. “What is it?” he breathed.
Bess waved the card in front of him. “This is it! This is the last photograph! It was here all along.”