“The confidence of youth is so inspiring,” Bea murmurs. She’s still grinning widely.
“How long would you estimate?” I ask her.
“Hudson’s best time in any of these rooms is seventeen minutes.”
“Good luck beating that in the bank,” our guide says. “Your first clue—you only have so much time before the police notice what you’re up to.”
They leave a card with the clue on a faux marble worktop beside the door, meant to simulate where people would once stand inside a bank and sign their checks, I gather, and then they depart, leaving us locked into this room decorated to look like a bank.
My boys grab the clue and rush to the cuckoo-style clock hanging behind the teller stand. “So easy,” Eddie scoffs.
“Such an easy first clue,” Charlie agrees.
“Do you need assistance?” I ask them.
Identical eye rolls answer me. “Watch for the cops. We’ve got this.”
Bea grins at me, and I take another arrow to the heart. I do love her smiles.
“You’ve done this before?” I ask her.
“Yep.”
“This room specifically?”
“No. This one’s new since the last time I was here.” Her smile grows as she watches the boys. Charlie’s climbed onto a chair to inspect the clockface. “But I’ve had a clock clue before…”
“Are they warm?”
“Depends on if the staff changed up how the clue works. They do sometimes. But I think they’re right to be looking at the clock in general.”
“We should help them.”
“We don’t need help, Dad,” Charlie says. “Look. The time’s wrong.”
He moves the clock hands until they’re opposite of what the time actually is.
Nothing happens.
“That’s backwards,” Eddie says. “You have to put the long arm on the minute and the short arm on the hour.”
He starts moving the clock hands differently.
“No, this is what time it is, dummy,” Charlie says. “It’s after four. I got it right.”
I start to move in, but Bea holds an arm out, blocking me.
And a moment later, despite my children fighting over the clock’s hands, moving them this way and that way, a panel beneath the clock opens, revealing a dangling clue.
The boys grab it, each getting a hand on it, and pull it to them, their heads together, both of their mouths moving yet not saying a word out loud.
Bea and I amble the short distance toward them.
“Are we not to enjoy the clue as well?” I ask.
“Shh,” Charlie says.
“This is for your own good,” Eddie adds.
