“You’re a good person, Nurse Sloane,” Beck replies. “It’s an honor to have you marrying into the family. See you at my house. Last one there might go hungry.”
They duck into their car. Vanessa gets into her car, and Mom opts to go with her. Sloane and I get into the car Levi’s team is still providing with Chuck in the driver’s seat.
And we all head back to Beck’s house.
Sloane’s quiet as we drive. She stares out the window and starts humming again.
Same song as before, “When You See Me.”
My heart squeezes itself.
I let a lot of people down when I broke up the band. Learned to live with it. Forgive myself too.
But hearing her humming an old tune of ours twice now—this one hurts.
It hurts that I hurt her.
She seems to catch herself, and she goes quiet once more.
“You okay?” I ask her after another few minutes of silence.
“I’m trying to think like an eighteenth-century pirate. What would you do if you’d retired from piracy and were sitting on a treasure?”
I watch her in the dim glow of the dashboard screen up front. “You think he used it?”
“Imagine spending your life filling your treasure chest and then not using it. It doesn’t make sense. Even if he had to sell it off, there had to be places that he could’ve sold a gem here or traded a gold coin there.”
“Those would’ve eventually resurfaced and been recognized somewhere.”
“But would they? If it was coins that had already been in circulation before the Revolutionary War, thenwould they?”
“I’d use a treasure if I had it,” Chuck says. “Why go to all the trouble of criming if you’re not going to enjoy what you stole?”
Sloane leans back in her seat. “Exactly my point. Why bury a treasure somewhere you can’t reach it? Why have a treasure and not use it? You can be mostly incognito and still use your wealth.”
Both of them slide me a look.
Not hard to understand why. I like to be incognito, and I don’t have many spending restrictions.
But there are still logic gaps in their argument. “You can’t just use as many gold coins as he recorded having in his captain’s log.”
“Maybe he lied in his captain’s log and that’s part of why he and Walter Bombeck had a falling out. Mendolove to exaggerate their…accomplishments.”
Chuck snickers.
“It’s out there,” I tell Sloane. “Even if his exploits were exaggerated, he made enough to retire, enough to have his first mate wanting what he had, and enough to live on.”
She sighs. “My brain and body both need a break.”
She’s not alone.
I’d say it’s a good thing we’re going to Beck’s, except when we arrive, it’s not Beck who greets us.
It’s Pop Rock.
In the driveway.
And he’s pissed.
