A treasure that Tillie Jean Rock-Cole continues to play coy about. “Despite all of the pirate tales, no one in my family knows anything about where the treasure might be,” she told me. “Honestly, if it was ever buried here, it was probably found years ago. Before the internet. When someone could anonymously find a treasure and no one would’ve known.”
This author attempted to get a quote from Pop Rock—patriarch of the town and grandfather to Tillie Jean, Cooper, and Grady—but both he and his occasionally-obscene pet parrot, Long Beak Silver, declined to shed any more light on the subject for us.
One thing is certain—if the treasureisstill out there, it will be found.
Probably soon.
Because this reporter isn’t the only one covering the history of Shipwreck. And the town has the increased tourism to show for it.
“Oh, yes, we have more and more people stopping in every day to ask if we have any secret intel on where the treasure might be,” Sloane Pearce, a volunteer at the Thorny Rock Museum, told me. “Ever since Cooper and Waverly announced they were getting married here, we’ve been slammed. Tourism is up three or four times what it usually is this time of year. People want to find a treasure.”
When pressed on if she thought it could be found, she simply smiled. “I guess that depends on if it exists.”
Whether it does or not, one thing is certain: this wedding and all of its consequences will be one more story for the Rock family to tell its family for ages to come.
1
Sloane Pearce, aka a woman with just a couple secrets who’s mistaken if she thinks glitter is her biggest worry today
If you’d toldme when I was thirteen years old that I’d have one of the most important jobs at the wedding of the century, I would’ve told you good girls don’t go in places where jobs like this are required.
I like being thirty-five so much more than I liked being thirteen.
It’s way more fun.
“Hand over the glitter bombs, gentlemen, and do not make me get specific about what constitutes a glitter bomb,” I say to the twin behemoths that I’ve just cornered near the makeshift stage in the Shipwreck, Virginia town square where Cooper Rock, local hero—don’t tell him I called him that—has just exchanged wedding vows with pop princess Waverly Sweet.
The two men I’m talking to played professional hockey a few years ago down the road in Copper Valley, and if anyone’s going to defy Shipwreck’s glitter ban, it’s them.
Or any one of Cooper’s baseball-playing teammates.
Actually, possibly Waverly. There was an unholy amount of glitter involved in the proposal that led to this wedding, and for once, that glitter wasn’t Cooper’s fault. Directly, anyway.
A few of the locals too. They’re sneaky enough to sprinkle glitter and successfully blame it on someone else.
The twins share a look.
“We don’t have glitter bombs, do we?” one says.
The other grunts an agreement.
I have to suck in a smile. They’re so bad at lying, it’s hilarious. “Look, I love a good glitter bomb as much as the next person, but you can’t launch them with this much security in town today.” On top of half of the professional baseball players in the country and a solid number of professional athletes from other sports being here, there are also a ton of music industry people that I can’t name and a not-insignificant portion of Hollywood that Idorecognize and can name. There are enough important people that the town’s been closed since last night. Nobody in, nobody out, without passing a thorough ID check at the roadblocks on either end of town. Wedding guests only.
I try to look sternly at the twins, which is hella difficult. “Imagine you launched a glitter bomb and a piece of glitter got caught in Liv Daniels’s eye and she had to back out of her next movie because she was recovering from surgery to try to save it.”
The slightly larger twin lights up. “Would she have to wear a pirate eye patch in the movie? That would be cool.”
The other twin grunts again, I assume in agreement.
So I resort to desperate measures. “I have both of your wives’ numbers in my phone.”
They share a look, and I’m soon holding an armful of homemade glitter bombs.
Like, a full freaking armful.
I don’t know how they were hiding these in their suit pockets. There have to be almost a dozen of these things, all the paper towel tube variety.
I should’ve picked a dress with pockets.
