The Suggestion Box (Volume 1)

Part 4: The Legacy (2)

Based on the following Suggestions:

Names: Teresa, Elena Knight
Times: 1930's and 2030's, a century
Places: Egypt, Uncharted Phoenician island, citadel of Natalys
Objects: Turkish scarf, heirloom watch, a puzzle in 4 pieces, fountain of youth

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TERESA MALLOW
May 1902- January 1939
Beloved Mother, Cherished Friend

Elena Mallow Knight knelt by her mother's grave, as she had done every year for the last fifty. Clutched in her hand was the last letter her mother ever wrote, dated just three months before her death. She pulled it out, and through her tears she read it over again. Every enthusiastic sentence about the discoveries she was making, every promise of her return that would occur very soon—"just a few more sites", her mother said...

The next letter they received from the Egyptian dig sites had been sealed with black wax. The archaeological administrators "regretfully inform Miss Elena Mallow of the passing of Mrs. Teresa Mallow, while participating in an excursion into the deep jungle, the victim of blood poisoning." When they received the body, it was evident that this accident had involved some kind of jungle creature that could leave sizeable marks on Teresa's hand and neck.

People would tell Elena often that it was a mercy they were able to save the body; so many of these archaeological fatalities resulted in the burying of an empty coffin. Well-meaning friends gave her pictures of her mother attending parties or posing with artifacts and told her stories of things her mom said and did, but no one could give Elena what she wanted most—to hear her mother's voice, to even know what her mother sounded like.

She didn't have any memories of her own. Her mother had always been gone; she wrote letters, yes—letters like the one stained by almost fifty years of unrequited tears Elena now clutched in her hand. But "letters did not the woman make," and to Elena, it would never be enough. She would never forgive her mother for the fact that she had been practically raised by "Uncle" Cal and "Aunt" Stella (yet another one of those "mercies" constantly touted around her); there was no part of Elena that felt any association with them. The couple had always been to her a temporary situation—until her mother died, at which time she became their ward until she was old enough to take care of herself. No, Elena had been robbed of the stable childhood she craved; she didn't know if she'd be able to forgive her mother for that.

"Mom!" The voice of her daughter echoed over the somber green fields of the cemetery. "We need to go now or you're going to make me late!"

Setting her lips grimly, Elena calmed the sobs in her throat and wiped the tears from her face.

"Coming, Teresa!" she called.

Standing by her mother's grave so many years ago, Elena had promised herself that she would never do something as dangerous or time-consuming as her mother's archaeological digs, and so deprive her future daughter of the mother Elena wished she had. She filled her own life with ties to keep her home such as friends and social circles, and got a job as an elementary schoolteacher, just so she would never have to leave the country for any reason. While finishing up her Master's of Education, she met Theodore Knight—a laboratory scientist—and settled into a successful life as the wife of a man who was paid far too much to think for long hours while sitting at a desk. Getting an electric shock from an unexpected power surge in the large computer he worked with was about as dangerous as his work got—but the project he and several others were working on earned him (and his friends and family) plenty of attention.

Doctor Theodore Knight (as he was called) was part of a team of scientists dedicated to researching the possibility of survival on the moon, and everything it would require. There had been manned shuttles to the moon, and a space station successfully maintained in orbit by Russian cosmonauts, but all that changed when one brilliant American—an associate of Theodore's—began postulating the likelihood of using what they had learned of manned space flights and space travel to realize a new kind of Manifest Destiny: space was indeed the final frontier. If Theodore and his comrades could achieve their goals, there might someday be a space shuttle with the capacity to exceed Earth's orbit—perhaps even exceed the boundaries of their solar system! But Elena knew that all this would be many generations in the future—neither she nor Theodore nor any children they might have would have to fret over the dangerous journey into the blackness of deep space.