The network security lab was where Maddie had first met Kirk. Then she hadn’t known what it was, the slender stone about the length and width of her thumb but flat with a slight indention in the back, that made it inviting to rub between her fingers. It was a deep red-violet as dark as oxidized blood and hung like a pendulum from the chain at her neck, sometimes brushing gently against the tops of her breasts, sometimes it’s comforting presence just the breastbone’s breadth away from her heart. Maybe Kirk, who had finally told her what she had, would understand why she hadn’t been able to let it go to the bottom of the sea, even for 24 hours, it was a part of her, her family’s legacy.
Her grandmother’s hands, Maddie remembered the ivory softness of their wrinkled skin. Nana’s elegantly thin fingers, which were pink as a rose petal on the inside, were flecked with bronze on the back; between her thumb and forefinger she held the stone, it’s steel chain pooled in her palm.
“This is porphory Maddie; the emperors’ stone. Your grandfather brought it to me when we were on our honeymoon in Kauai. He was an amateur geologist and recognized it as something that didn’t belong there. It’s special; I can’t even tell you exactly why, but it’s your’s now though it should have been your mother’s fist.”
Nana’s voice had trailed off towards the end, her face folding up with the memory of her daughter’s death that was clearly an unspeakably painful memory even after 40 years. Maddie hadn’t known what to say so she’d simply taken the smooth, dark purple stone into her own hand, wrapping the chain gently around the tips of her tapered fingers. She rubbed her thumb in the indentation on the back; it still held the warmth of her grandmother’s skin. Now Nana’s breast looked blank; Maddie had never seen her without the stone and she seemed somehow smaller without it.
“Thanks Nana.”
was all she has been able to manage. She hoped that somehow the overwhelming tenderness that she felt for her grandmother could travel through her skin and heal Nana’s heartache along with her own.
Maddie started as she felt the light touch of Kirk’s hand on her shoulder,
“Are you ready?” he asked.
Kirk’s guarded but penetrating look made the stone go heavy in her pocket and it took all of her will-power to overcome her instinct to touch it. Instead, she shifted her weight again; flexing her shoulders under the uncomfortable burden of the tank straps and feeling sweat trickle between her shoulder blades where the combination of the black air tank and the synthetic fabric of her tan suit formed a nexus of suffocating heat.
“Of course I’m ready, Are you?” she snapped, immediately regretting the sharp nervousness of her tone. If she did need to seduce him, this was no way to go about it. She was terrible at being light and inviting and yet men seemed to gravitate towards her anyway. Still, Kirk hadn’t, at least not yet; so far his interest had stopped at the stone.
“Sorry. Nervous.” she ventured a smile that she hoped showed a vulnerability that would appeal to his masculine instincts.
“Sure, we all are, especially you I imagine. You’ve never been without it have you?”
“Well, for the first twenty years of my life yes, for the last 12 no. I feel a bit naked without it.” Maddie tilted her head to one side and shrugged her shoulders, hoping that her tentative smile looked genuine and that perhaps the thought of her naked might at least cross his mind.
“At least if you have to feel naked, you’re near Kaua’i.” Kirk’s mouth tipped up enough at the corners that Maddie could see the beginnings of his dimples; his brown eyes, flecked with amber, warmed for a moment before they returned to their normal state: neutral and unreadable. “Be ready in ten.”
Although it wasn’t cold, Maddie shivered a bit when his hand left her shoulder. It was only then that she realized he’d been touching her the whole time. She nodded to him and turned her gaze back to the shore.
