At the kid cussing, anyway. They’re still alternating staring at me and Cooper.
“How is there a second treasure when there’s not even supposed to be a first?” Annika asks.
I study Cooper.
He stares back at me, and again—he’s not amused.
“You know, don’t you?” I say.
“How the fuck do you know?” he replies.
I set the treasure down and roll my right sleeve up.
Point to the pirate flag tattoo between the tattoo of Copper Valley’s famous fountain in Reynolds Park and the tiger I got in honor of a dream I had once. “You’re not the only family with pirate blood in the area.”
Tillie Jean squeaks again.
“Where’d you find yours?” I ask.
“Hidden in the walls of one of the cabins up here that I bought when I started buying everything on the mountain.”
Sloane pumps a fist in the air. “I told you it would be in the walls!”
I smile at her. “You did. And you were right.”
“Now I’m disappointed we didn’t find ours in a toilet.”
“Where’d you find yours?” Cooper asks.
“Root cellar on some property that belonged to my great-something-grandfather.”
Cooper winces.
I stay straight-faced.
The kind of straight-faced I’m very, very good at.
As Sloane has observed. And mocked me for. Hilariously.
Fuck, I’m going to miss her.
Grady’s frowning at me, but he’s sharing that frown with Cooper. “What’s going on here?”
Sloane sucks in a big breath and says what I should but haven’t been able to. “Thorny Rock and Walter Bombeck exchanged identities when they left Norfolk to come inland. The real Thorny founded Sarcasm. The real Walter founded Shipwreck. And if they both had part of the treasure, then the towns probably fight because they each spent their entire lives trying to steal back what they split with the other.”
“Yep.” Annika’s voice is a little hollow as she dances out of her chair and toward the kitchen. “I definitely have to pee. Quit talking until I’m back.”
Tillie Jean looks at Cooper. “Tell me that’s wrong.”
He winces again.
“Now that I’ve said that out loud, I’m forgetting I ever knew it and never repeating it again,” Sloane says.
“I’m peeing with the door open so I can hear all of you,” Annika calls from beyond the kitchen. “Don’t come back here unless you’re my husband.”
Tillie Jean’s still shaking her head. “That cannot be real. This isn’t real—oh my god, that’s real.”
She gapes at the chest that I’ve just opened.
