Beautifully Dark Secrets: Chapter One

PART ONE

BECOMING

“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept … But once you become real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

- Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

1

Present Day

Aubrey Jean stared with childlike innocence – the slightest hint of a sad smile draped across her lips – upon the magnificent beauty of the gothic west towers of Westminster Abbey. Her reflective eyes fixated on the beautiful young brunette with penetrating green eyes standing before them.

A crackle of lightning lit up the thunderous twilight sky outside her bedroom window. Pellets of rain streamlined down the leaded glass design overlooking Westlake Park.

“Good evening,” Mary announced as she walked in the room, her jet-black hair glistening wet. “It’s getting nasty out there,” she said, setting a vase of Purple Dream tulips on the nightstand.

Aubrey’s gaze remained locked on target.

“Is that you, grandma?” Mary noted the faded picture on her grandma’s lap.

Aubrey tilted her neck as her dementia – which revels in playing tricks with the synaptic firings in the brain; redirecting them randomly; chaotically – turned her memories into fantastical wonders of confusion.

“No.” Aubrey shook her head. “This is …” Furrowed her brow. “This is …” Confusion rattled her brain as she struggled with the bewildered familiarity before her.

“Grandma,” Mary coaxed after a short beat.

“This was the last place I saw her,” Aubrey whispered, her glazed eyes grasping a distant memory.

“Saw who?” Mary cocked her brow.

Aubrey lifted her sights as well as the corner of her lips, which parted to answer when her heart stopped, then skipped off rhythm as the television screen stole her attention.

“I’m here live, in front of Westminster Abbey, where the Dean Reverend David Blackwell and Francesca Baker, the first female to hold the position of Procurer – and pioneer of gay and transgender rights – were found murdered earlier this evening. This comes just hours before the unveiling of two extremely rare paintings that were set to display for the first time since their commission in a special exhibition in honor of the 275th anniversary of the completion of the gothic west towers you see behind me.”

Aubrey’s wide eyes filled the room. Her creamy skin shaded translucent as if a ghost were reporting the news.

“The first painting, Canaletto’s Procession of the Knights of the Order of Bath, was commissioned in 1749, four years after completion of the towers. The second painting, Beautifully Dark Secrets of the Hearts, which was inspired by the Canaletto, was commissioned in 1941 by brilliant up and coming artist, Brenda Mary. Rumors that one of the paintings were stolen have yet to be confirmed by Scotland Yard or the Swiss Guard, who, in an unprecedented move by the Vatican, have been dispatched to oversee the investigation.”

“No,” Aubrey puffed out as tears trickled down her pale cheeks. “This can’t be happening …” Disbelief coloring her tone. “Not again.”

“What can’t be happening?”

Aubrey turned frightful eyes on Mary. “Do you believe in Fate?”

“I believe in free will,” Mary countered.

“There’s a very fine line between the two,” Aubrey reacted. “Every day events twisted into a web of love and hate, responsibility, deceit …” Her precise tone captivated Mary’s attention. “Truth.”

Mary sat in silenced anticipation, watching lucid thought form behind her grandma’s eyes for the first time in years.

“If you want to keep a secret …” Aubrey slowly reached for a small package on her nightstand. “You must first hide it from yourself.”

Mary glanced the name on the return address label … F. Baker … London.

“I was hoping this day wouldn’t come until you were ready,” Aubrey said, gripping a rectangular shaped wooden box and carefully sliding it out of its wrappings. “But when I saw this arrive in the mail …” Aubrey’s eyelids sank. “She must have known …”

“Ready for what?” Mary asked, her eyes shifting direction to four intricately designed symbols etched across the top of the smooth cherry oak box. Only two of which she vaguely recognized as a circled five-pointed star and a singular eye. The other resembling cupped hands or a chalice; the fourth a flower Lily on a cross.

“She was one of the first of her generation to pave the way for girls like you.”

“Girls like me?” Mary softened her tone, swallowing hard.

“You know, the term transgender didn’t even exist back in 1941,” Aubrey continued, her sights settling back into the faded picture on her lap. “Maybe that’s why she never told me.”

Mary eagled her eyes on Aubrey’s vision.

“Brenda was my best friend and yet she never trusted me with her secret until …” Aubrey’s sparkling eyes glistened from the slit in her lacrimal glands, her sights set on a vision only her reality could see.

“Until what?” Mary’s delicate manner ballet’d across her tongue.

“She made me question everything I had been raised to believe … and the reason you were raised the way you were.” Aubrey’s sparkled eyes now filled with pride and danger. “Take this.” She extended her arm. “You must keep it safe.”

“What is it?” Mary hesitantly accepted the peculiar gift.

“Something Brenda sacrificed everything for to protect. What Francesca and I have protected for nearly a century.”

“Brenda Mary?” Mary formed a V between her eyes. “You knew Francesca Baker?”

“It’s been eighty years …” Aubrey’s eyes reflected pools of memories, regrets, passion, and fire. “Eighty years I’ve guarded this secret and never told a soul. And now it’s time for you to guard this secret … it’s time for you to know the truth.”

Aubrey’s solid tone gave Mary pause. “The truth about what?” She swallowed hard.

“The truth about what it truly means to be transgendered, and how girls like you are exactly what this world has been waiting for … You must take this box and find Francesca’s granddaughter … find her and Brenda’s painting before the Swiss Guard does … before it’s too late.”

“The Swiss Guard?” Mary’s vocals trembled slightly. “I don’t understand. Why do we need to find Brenda’s painting? If it’s that valuable -”

“This has nothing to do with its financial value, Mary,” Aubrey interrupted, firm. “And everything to do with Francesca’s murder, Brenda’s legacy and your future.”

“My future?” Mary’s eyebrows raised high north. “Okay, grandma, now you’re starting to scare me … what are talking about? And how do you even know Brenda’s painting was stolen, much less had anything to do with Francesca’s murder?”

Aubrey’s gaze fiercely locked with Mary’s. “This isn’t an easy story to tell,” she prepared; a luminescent glow of sadness filled the room. “The truth that painting reveals … the tragedies it has already left in its wake … that painting holds a secret that will change the fate of every transgender person in the world … but if discovered in the wrong hands – in the hands of the Church – will devastate the lives of millions.”

A low rumble of thunder crackled then burst into a sonic boom, raising the hair on the back of Mary’s neck and arms.

“Listen, grandma,” Mary said, her shaky voice matching her trembling hands. “I’m barely eighteen. How do I know if any of what you’re telling me is real? That your dementia isn’t playing tricks with you again? And even if there is some truth behind what you’re telling me, two people were supposedly just killed over that painting and now you want me to go and find it? Armed with only a cryptic box that you won’t even tell me what’s in it … that’s crazy!” Mary bolted to a standing position, running her hands through her thick dark hair.

Aubrey took a deep breath, understanding Mary’s doubt, her fear and hesitation. “Maybe after I tell you what happened to Brenda, Frankie, and me all those years ago, you won’t think me so crazy … please, sit down.”

Mary wanted to believe her grandma’s dementia was speaking for her, but a terrifying and unfamiliar pull brought her back to a sitting position, eager to hear her grandmother’s story.

Aubrey gazed deep into Mary’s dangerously curious eyes. “It all started with a party I didn’t even want to go to in the first place … but she was so convincing, so beautiful that night.” Aubrey’s saddened heart found a hidden smile, then faded. “Don’t get me wrong, Mary, I loved your grandfather very much. But a woman’s heart is a sacred treasure with only one key. And it’s not always about who you give that key to, but who is capable of using it.”

“I don’t understand,” Mary said as she slid her delicate fingers across the four unfamiliar, yet strangely intimate symbols, hoping tactile kinesis could explain what her thoughts could not.

Another bolt of lightning lit up the stormy sky. Thunder penetrated every structural beam in the house, every bone in her body.

“We don’t have much time before they come looking for you.”

“Why would they come looking for me?” Mary quivered her ask.

“There are children like you being born all over the world. And they are going to need someone to stand proud and show them it’s okay to be their true selves. You can be the bridge between worlds, a light that will touch the lives of so many people, bringing them together from every corner of the world to unite in a common goal.”

“A common goal … just who do you think I am?”

Aubrey’s shaky arm lifted a drink of water to wet her tongue, preparing to dive deep into her cavern of dark material. “To understand that answer … your future, you must first learn about the past … The year was 1941. I was sixteen years old the night of that fateful Labor Day party . . . The day that started us on a journey towards one of the most important discoveries in human history … one that will change the way the world views the transgender community … one that, if I’m right, will change the world.”

“And this box,” Mary swallowed hard, took a slow, deep breath, “and Brenda’s painting are the key?”

“No,” Aubrey stated. “They are the lock … you are the key.”