“Sounds like a restless spirit.”
It was an apt description. He brushed a kiss on her cheek and then gathered the other items which had fallen from the biscuit tin. A drawing of the Ridge which he’d done sitting beside Dot, a bookmark he’d bought when they’d visited the Carnarvon space museum, and an old coin. He rubbed his thumb over it.
“Where’d you get that?” Tess asked, reaching for it.
He passed it to her. “I found it when I was out riding one day. I figured a prospector must have dropped it.”
Tess turned the coin over and squinted. “Have you got a magnifying glass?”
“Probably.” He got up and searched the tool shed until he found one hanging up. “Here.”
Tess had followed him, and now she tilted the coin to the light and examined it. “Ed, the date on this is 1685.”
He jolted and grabbed it from her. “It can’t be. Australia wasn’t settled by Europeans until 1788.” He’d kept the coin a secret knowing Charlie would want it. He hadn’t even shown his mother.
“I think it’s Dutch. Where exactly did you find it?”
Hell. “I can’t remember.”
Her eyes shone with excitement. “These types of coins are found in shipwrecks,” she said. “And there are a lot of wrecks off the coast.”
“But I found it on land.”
“Maybe they buried some of their treasure.”
Ed chuckled. “Now you’re sounding like Lara. She’s convinced there’s buried treasure at the Ridge. She doesn’t believe the story of the cyclone, and has decided it was a lie to hide the true reason they were in the gulf—to search for treasure.”
“What time does she get home from school?”
“In about an hour.” He loved the idea of buried treasure, but the most likely explanation was a prospector had a lucky coin he’d lost on his journey. Still, he tucked the coin into his pocket to examine later. “Let me put all this stuff back, and then we can make scones for when Lara gets home.”
Tess nodded, though he could tell she was dying to get straight into the trunks. Ed had to admit he was keen to see what information they held about his ancestors, but he also knew that after about six generations of Stokes at the Ridge, if there was something to be uncovered, one of them would have undoubtedly already done it.
As he put the biscuit tin back in the crate, a blue folder caught his eye. He hesitated. Had his mum kept it? He slipped the folder out and stared at it for a moment, memories assaulting him. How excited he’d been about the computers at school, and how proud he’d been when he’d coded his first simple game. His father hadn’t understood the point, but his mother had showered him in praise.
He flipped the folder open. A pocket in the front cover held a CD with his name on it. The folder also contained his report explaining what the game did, and how he’d created it. He smiled as he read the juvenile words, but he remembered the passion which had filled him when he’d typed the report. This was why he’d studied information technology at university. Not to be help desk and answer the same questions over and over again, but to code and create programs which would bring people joy.
Somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten that. He’d replaced it with his love of astronomy. But maybe he could combine the two.
“Ed, are you all right?” Tess’s quiet question made him glance up.
“Yeah. Sorry. I’d forgotten about this.” He tucked the folder under his arm and put the lid back on the box. “Something I did as a kid, but I want to take another look.” He was fairly sure Darcy’s computer still had a CD drive in it.
“We can stay here longer if you want to go through the rest.”
“Nah, it’s fine.” It was enough emotion for one day. He’d look through the rest later, before he went back to Perth. He slipped his hand into hers. “Let’s go make some scones.”
Chapter 17
Tess wasn’t sure how to read Ed’s mood since they’d gone through his things. He seemed a little sad, and he kept glancing at the blue folder he’d brought inside as they made the scones. The third time he did so, she said, “Do you need to do something with that?”
He shook his head. “It’s not important.”
She cut the scones out of the dough and placed them on the tray. “You keep looking at it.”
Ed sighed. “I’m just curious.”
“About?”
