Now it was Fred’s turn to bark out a shocked laugh, which she tried to stifle with her sandy gloved hands. “I have to ask…”
“You want to know what it said?”
She nodded.
He leaned on the spade for a moment. “It said, and I quote: ‘I’ve met someone else. Didn’t know how to tell you. Sorry. Thanks for dinner. Sorry, again.’ ” He shrugged and went back to digging.
“That is brutal. How long had you been together?”
“Three years.”
Fred dusted off her hands, took the spade from him andbegan to dig, while he shook his arms out. “You were together for three years and she broke up with you on the back of a receipt?”
“Yup,” he said, reaching into the hole to secure the sides that were threatening to spill back in. “Do you feel better now?”
“So much better!”
He smiled.
“And did you see her again?” Fred asked.
“We met in a coffee shop, a week or so later, to hand back the last bits and pieces we’d left at each other’s places. She cried a lot; said she was sorry yet again and that she hadn’t gone out looking for anyone else, it just happened. Things had been strained between us for a while. I wasn’t working and I probably wasn’t always the best company. We used to go out a lot, to clubs, fancy restaurants, all that jazz, but obviously all that stopped when I lost my job. The fateful night, in the Nicely Spicy Indian restaurant, was the first time we’d been out in about six months.”
Fred shook her head in sympathy. “Dumped at Nicely Spicy. That is rough. I’m sorry that happened to you, you didn’t deserve that.”
“Neither did you deserve what happened to you.”
“I guess what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger?”
“Do you feel stronger?”
She nodded. “I do. I feel better than I have done for a long time.” She leaned her weight against the spade as it went in…and felt it hit something solid. She tapped it and looked up at Ryan, grinning broadly.
“Bingo!” He smiled back.
Abandoning the spade, she knelt beside Ryan, and they began to swish away the sand with their gloved hands, until the mottled green top of the strongbox was revealed. Between them they ran their hands around the edges of the box to loosen the sand around it and then, taking a handle each, they pulled it out of the hole and placed it down on a flat area in the bunker.
“Do you have the key?” Fred asked.
Ryan grinned. “Of course I do.” Removing his gloves, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small silver key with a length of green ribbon threaded through the hole at the top.
“Where have you kept that all these years?”
“In Dad’s workshop. He never throws anything away, so I knew it would be safe. Do you want to do the honors?” he asked, handing her the key.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Pushing the keyhole cover to the side, Fred slipped the key in and turned. There was a small click, and the lid bounced free. She turned the box toward Ryan. “You open it.”
“Let’s do it together,” he said, his eyes sparkling with a mischievous excitement that made her stomach tickle.
Fred shifted around in the bunker until she was kneeling beside him, by now her knees almost numb to the damp freezing sand. With a hand each on the lid, they pushed it open. On top of the pile of treasure were two sealed envelopes, one addressed to each of them.
“Our letters to our future selves,” Ryan said, with a look of trepidation and curiosity that mirrored her own.
“I’ll look at this later,” she said, shoving hers deep into her coat pocket. She couldn’t remember what she’d written, but given that she was twelve when she’d written it, it was bound to be super embarrassing.
