Max grabs both toddlers, who’ve seen toys and want some.
Waverly gapes at all of us.
“It’s fucking real,” Grady mutters.
“Apparently the second fucking real one,” Sloane says.
“Where’d you find it again?” Waverly asks.
“How’d you find it?” Cooper asks.
“What are you going to do with it?” Tillie Jean asks.
“All yours,” I tell her. “Mayor of Shipwreck should have it. Do what you want with it.” I reach into my coat and pull out the journal that Uncle Guido gave us, and the journal that we reclaimed from Patrick before leaving him with Giselle—the journal that Pop’s been hiding—and offer them to her. “These too. And I’ll get you everything my family has. I don’t want it. I like Shipwreck as it is. Up to you to decide if you want the world to know what you know now.”
Annika returns from the bathroom and glances at Grady.
“Don’t hate each other now,” Sloane whispers to them.
Grady slips an arm around his wife and kisses her forehead. “Who needs gold when you have love?”
“Fuck the treasure bullshit,” Annika agrees.
“Fuck da booshee,” her son says. “I have tesh-shure??”
“I have tesh-sha!” Tillie Jean and Max’s little girl says.
“I can’t believe you’ve known it was real forten years,” Tillie Jean says to Cooper.
He holds his hands up. “Look, I can be a dumbass, but even I know the first rule of finding treasure and a diary that tells you your entire heritage is bullshit is that you don’t talk about finding a treasure and a diary that tells you your entire heritage is bullshit. I even went to a hypnotist and tried to have them erase my memory so I wouldn’t know. But I never thought there’d be two of them. I thought Davis knew I found the only one and he figured out where I hid it.”
“Wheredidyou hide it?”
“Safe-deposit box in DC at first, but now it’s behind a secret door in Waverly’s secret second wine cellar in LA.”
Tillie Jean gasps and looks at Waverly. “You have a secret second wine cellar?”
Sloane giggles.
Fuck me, I love that giggle.
“Clearly the most important detail, TJ,” Grady mutters.
“Actually, she has a point,” Annika chimes in. “Or she will. When I’m not pregnant anymore. Waverly picks the best wine.”
“It’s a gift,” Waverly says. “Much like Cooper funding the Unicorn Festival since he knew his family benefited from everyone believing he was a descendant of the real Thorny Rock?”
Cooper Rock, the most shameless person I’ve ever met in my entire life—turns red.
Tillie Jean’s about to gasp herself out.
And Annika—Annika bursts into tears. “Dammit, Cooper, I hate it when I appreciate you.”
I glance at Max, who’s been quiet through all of this.
He just nods at me. “Like your thinking.”
“Are you sure you want to give the whole treasure to the family?” Waverly asks. “I mean, I know you’re giving it to Tillie Jean, but we all know when you give a treasure to one Rock, you’re kinda giving it to all of them.”
