There are biting winds in my hollow chest cavity now. Sharp, silvery arctic winds. A crush’s physical effects are just as intolerable as the emotional ones.
We find the third X at two thirty in the afternoon, in a wishing well. It isn’t a proper wishing well. It’s a decorative lawn ornament, with cute wooden shingles and a charming bucket you can pulley up and down. When we come upon it, the bucket’s at the bottom. We crank it up, set aside clear plastic operating as a protective cover, and lift out two plastic-wrapped photographs.
One of the photos is of Uncle Victor, before he got sick, standing in front of the mirror that’s built into the white wardrobe in the living room. His clothing and the salt-and-pepper hair tell me it was taken in the eighties. He’s squinting with a Polaroid camera held up to one eye, flash brightening as he presses down on the shutter release. His other hand is in front of him, pointing down at the floor. The other photograph is exactly the same, identical down to the ghostly lens flares, except Victor’s pointing upward.
I get full-body chills.
“This is weird. I think Victor knew a little more about this whole treasure legend than he was letting on.” I shake my head in disbelief.
Wesley’s not studying the photos. He’s watching me. When I look at him, he scrubs his hands over his face, messes up his hair, and groans into his steepled fingers, “I have a confession to make.”
Oh no. For a moment, the possibility that this is all made up, that Wesley put these treasures here, floats to the surface. But thenhe shows me the card from the first treasure:We’ll always have Paris.There’s print on the back, which I didn’t look at before.
hollywood ice, finest celebrity imitation jewelry.the casablanca collection.
My jaw goes slack. “So the jewelry is...” I can’t bear to finish the thought.
He bites his lip, rueful. “Fake. Yeah.”
“Casablanca... That movie’s in Victor’s VCR.”
“Violet watched it every year on her wedding anniversary. I knew as soon as I saw the card that this must have all been planned by Victor. I’m thinking he buried it a long time ago, to lay the groundwork for a buried treasure urban legend. Either that or he thought of all this while he was sick and got someone to help him. A gift for Violet, to find after he died.”
“Oh.” I am feeling extremely stupid for getting so excited over the jewelry. The rings and bracelet are pretty, but they’re costume jewelry. Probably worth about fifty or sixty bucks, if they’re from a legitimate collector’s edition. “I thought it was real treasure.”
“I should have told you. It’s just that you might have wanted to turn around and stop looking, if you knew this wasn’t real.”
And he wanted to keep going?
I want to ask why. I’m afraid he’ll give me an answer.
Wesley tips up my chin with a fingertip, willing me to meet his eyes. They’re flooded with guilt, and if I weren’t already kneeling on the ground, that touch would have tripped me. But then he second-guesses it, letting go. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s all right. It’s... sad that Violet never found this.” After her husband died, she started filling up the house with junk to replace him. I think it’s likely that she didn’t put up a Christmas tree or ornaments ever again, so Victor’s surprise went undiscovered.I am horribly disappointed on his behalf, and devastated on hers. If she had known he’d left her something like this, maybe it would have changed her grieving process. Maybe she wouldn’t have built the hoard monster that bricked up the door to Victor’s bedroom, keeping his secret dormant until after her own death.
I gather up the rings and bracelet, the cassette tape, the photographs. “Theyarereal, though,” I tell him after a while. “They’re not diamonds, but to Violet, this would have been better than treasure. And this was one of her dying wishes.” I stand up, slipping each piece carefully back into my bag. “We might as well see it through.”
Chapter 14
WESLEY AND I STARTtalking about where we hope we’ll be a year from now (the lady will be presiding over party games in the billiard room with a full house of guests; the gentleman will be avoiding aforementioned party games and guests, exercising a horse he rescued from negligent owners), getting so lost in the discussion that we get physically lost, too. It takes us longer than anticipated to find the fourth treasure: a dollar-store gramophone music box whose horn is camouflaged by the surrounding moonflowers, which plays the first few notes of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” before sputtering out.
A bridge we were supposed to cross to reach the fifth and final X is too crumbled to trust, so we lose an hour figuring out an alternate course. Dinner is a feast for champions: premade Mediterranean salads in mason jars, tomato and cheese sandwiches, and blueberry bars that have gotten so gooey that we have to wash our hands in a stream afterward.
“Nearly there,” Wesley reports, adjusting his pack. It’s coolingoff, sky deepening to ocean blue with a dusting of red over the tree line. I spot the first star, which turns out to be an airplane. By the time I tear my eyes away from Wesley’s grin, three real stars have appeared.
“Shoot.” The metal detector, which I’ve wedged into the center of my rolled-up sleeping bag, falls out. We’re up to our knees in a wide-open field of Indian grass, and the metal detector vanishes the moment it tumbles out. “Hang on.”
Golden stalks ripple as Wesley twists at the waist to look me over. “What’s wrong?”
“Dropped the metal detector.”
He gets out his phone, tapping it a couple times to wake up the white-blue light. I do the same, but before I can drop down to select the flashlight my screen changes and my finger lands on a different button instead. “What the...”
Gemma Peterson is waving at me.
I’ve accepted a video call.
“Oh my god, you answered!” she exclaims. “Where are you? Are you outside?”
