Sloane told her I was going to build a house there someday because heritage is important enough to me that I went on a freaking treasure hunt, but that I wasn’t ready to hear it.
She was right.
We’ll build a house on that land one day.
It means something. Just like my cabin where Cooper found the first half of the treasure means something.
I’m coming around.
Slowly.
“Thorny Rock—the real Thorny Rock, the one who founded Sarcasm—had four grandkids,” I tell Levi and Ingrid. “One died in childhood. One moved to Copper Valley—that would be where my family line came from—and the other two stayed in the area up here. The treasure wasn’t where it should’ve been. Either of them. Sloane came up with a theory that Thorny and Walter never told anyone where they were stashing their halves of the treasure, but each of their families had clues. Same clues we had. So we think at least one of Thorny’s grandkids found his half of the treasure, and when the other one found out—she killed him to keep him silent.”
“He wasn’t well-liked,” Sloane adds. “We went back through all of the old letters that Davis’s mom inherited, and figured out who was who, and it’s very likely no one missed him at all.”
“Or a justifiable homicide,” Ingrid muses.
Levi cuts her a look, and she grins at him. “I read a lot. I’m very happy in my own real life though. Probably because I’d never have a reason to justifiably homicide you. So long as we never get a bird.”
“They’re so gross,” Zoe mutters. “Uncle Davis, if you write a book, I’ll edit it for you. You look like the type who’ll use your contractions in the wrong places and leave dangling participles and end sentences with prepositions.”
“Rawk! Contraband glitter! Rawk!”
All of us lean over the railing and look at the square again.
Three tourists are now coated in glitter.
Tillie Jean’s rubbing her temples, then pausing to rub her pregnant belly, then rubbing her temples again.
She glances up, catches us watching her, and visibly sighs. “My brother will never see hell unleashed like the hell I will release on him when he retires in a few months.”
“You sure you want to do that to Waverly?” Levi asks.
They hold eye contact.
It’s theI know somethingkind of eye contact that makes both Sloane and Ingrid sit up and gasp.
“You know, don’t you?” Tillie Jean says.
“That she’s going on tour next year? Yep.”
“Theother thing.”
“Babies,” Ingrid breathes.
The sharp look Levi gives her—thedo not tell the world Waverly’s pregnantlook—confirms what all of us apparently suspect.
Bet that’ll be an interesting tour now.
“Babies are so—oh my god,” Zoe gasps.
I look at her.
She claps a hand over her own mouth. “I don’t know anything. Don’t look at me like you’re doing mind tricks on me. And I didn’t mean it about your grammar. Oh my god,baby.”
Sloane leans over and stares at Tillie Jean, who ducks eye contact and fans herself. “Oof. Gotta get out of this heat. Pop. Pop, get your parrot on glitter patrol. I’m over it. Where’s my husband? I want a lemonade.”
Sloane smiles, then leans back into me. “I like our home.”
