“Ev, there’s nothing there,” I insisted.
“There has to be!” There was heat behind the sheen in her eyes. I couldn’t even blame her. I’d given her hope and then snatched it away.
“Maybe… he moved it?” I suggested.
“Well, we can’t exactly ask him, can we?” The bite of her words was undercut by the break in her voice, grief clouding her expression.
It hurt to see her so defeated.
But then a new resolve seemed to fall over her, and Eva straightened, tugging on the straps of her overalls as she bit her lip. “The fields,” she whispered.
“What?”
A car door slammed outside, and we whipped in tandem to see a deputy step out of his vehicle. Eva gasped and ducked out of view of the window. She snatched her tennis shoes from where they’d been discarded on the moss-covered floor, slipping her feet out of her sandals and stuffing them into socks, then the shoes, urgency in every movement.
When she started rifling through the envelopes on the table, I flicked an anxious glance to the door. Footsteps crunched the gravel outside.
“Aha!” She held up a thick wad of folded paper in triumph before stuffing it into a pocket of her overalls.
“What is that?” I asked.
Eva wore determination in every line of her face. “His atlas.”
“Wha—”
She cut me off. “Come with me,” she said, circling her fingers around my wrist as she dragged me to the cellar door and pried it open with a squeak. Her thumb was warm and rough against the tendon there, just a nudge from my pulse. It sent a shiver down my spine.
No one else could touch me like this.
The cellar was old, used mainly for storing camping supplies and bottled fruit. The instant Eva opened the door, a solid wall of cold rushed up the stairs. Eva descended first, steps creaking. I instinctively curled my toes in my shoes as I followed her down, gripping the rail for balance, braced for a rogue spiderweb to find my face at any moment.
The tug of a chain bathed the sparse gray room in yellow light. I closed the door behind me seconds before a loud knock came at the front door. Panic ran through me. “Is there another way out?”
“Yes.” Eva rushed to the camping shelves and heaved a tent bag off and into her arms, stirring dust.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
Eva unzipped a hiking pack and began stuffing things inside. She tossed a look to the sleeping bag on the top shelf overhead. “Get me that, will you?”
“Eva—”
“I promise I’ll explain!” Her hands shook as she yanked the zipper closed and hoisted the backpack over her shoulders, the tent curled under her arm. When I plucked the sleeping bag off the shelf, Eva nodded to the back wall of the cellar. Unlike the other walls, made from heavy stones, this one contained a slanted hatch made entirely of wood and iron braces, with steps leading up to it.
I remembered this door now, an old, steep-angled entrance we’d never used, and rarely saw, because it had always been covered in greenery. I moved up the steps and tried the handle, but it was locked.
Overhead, we heard the squeak of a floorboard. I sucked in a breath. That wasn’t the heavy groan of Jack’s feet, or the click of Izzy’s heels. A chill swept over me.
The deputy was in the house.
“You got a key?” I pressed.
“Dad kept it in a turtle, I think.” Setting the tent bag down for a moment, Eva crouched and rifled through the keepsakes on the adjoining shelf. Ceramic clinked too loudly. I winced, glancing back in the direction of the stairs.
“Hurry, Ev!”
“I’m trying!” She rattled something loose and thrust it into my hand, turning her attention to the lock.
My fingers smoothed over the glossy ceramic figurine. “This is a frog.”
