I linked elbows with Seb. “You didn’t have to do that. He’s not competition.”
He tapped his temple with one finger. “Paige, up here, everyone is competition. But if you ever did decide to leave me, all I ask is that it’s for someone a little cooler than a smarmy poet laureate wannabe in a preppy shirt.”
“Deal,” I said, standing on tip toes to kiss him, feeling giddy to have him here a few days early. If he couldn’t fly out here regularly, I didn’t know what I’d do. The cash we got for the gold bars had come in handy already, that’s for sure. Split four ways, we each ended up with around three hundred thousand, give or take. A small fortune to us.
“Better leave the good stuff till we’re alone,” Seb said against my lips. “I’ve got a big surprise for you.”
“Oh yeah? How big?”
“Thirty-five feet.”
I choked out a laugh. “Whatnow?”
“You’ll see. Can I assume you’re done for the day if you’re being invited to poetry slams? If so, I’d like to show you what I’m talking about.”
“I’ve got to study later, just for a couple hours. But I’m all yours right now.”
He grinned. “Never get tired of you saying that. Come on, Professor Malone. Our chariot awaits.” He gestured toward the long curb at the front of Lowell House, where I spotted the Speed Buggy parked in a no-parking zone.
I did a double take. “Wait, how... ? What’s the Bronco doing here? Didn’t you fly?”
Punkin’s ugly head poked out of the back window. She gave me a little bark as we approached, and I unlinked my arm from Seb’s to scratch her head. “What in the world? Hey, girl! You drove all the way out here to see me? What a good dog!”
“Don’t let her fool you,” Seb said, taking my backpack away from me to toss it inside the Bronco next to Punkin. “She’s a terrible driver and nearly got us killed on the interstate.”
I gave her a good scratch, happy to see her wagging tail, then I got into the front of the Bronco with Seb. “This is nuts,” I told him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were planning a major road trip? How long did it take you to get out here?”
“Two days,” Seb said. “Seven hours the first day, then we spent the night in Rochester. We got up early this morning and made it here before noon.”
I squinted at him. “That was hours ago.”
“We’ve been busy,” he said, barely able to contain a smile that told me he was up to no good. “Now hold on while I input a route into the GPS. Traffic on campus is a nightmare...”
He wouldn’t let me see where he was taking me, but it didn’t matter. I was just ecstatic to see him. His early arrival threw my study schedule off a little, but that was fine. I’d been working ahead in my classes to ensure that we had the entire weekend to ourselves, no distractions. The last time he visited, three weeks ago, we never left the hotel room.
We headed south, off campus, and took a road that hugged the Charles River, talking nonstop about every little thing... His trip here. Punkin’s new flea medication. How Jazmine was adjusting to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and her snagging a spot on the women’s water polo team. And, of course, the app Benny was building in his spare time between classes back in Kalamazoo.
“I truly don’t understand why he thinks he’s going to make a killing from babysitting,” I said. “Babysitters aren’t raking in big cash... are they? What kind of cut does he think he can take?”
“Let him have this,” Seb argued. “He deserves it after dealing with Lulu again last week.”
Benny got a long, handwritten letter from Lulu that she wrote from a women’s correctional facility near Kalamazoo, where she was serving three months for shoplifting clothes when she first met Benny on campus, posing as a college student. I hadn’t personally read Lulu’s letter from jail, but Seb had, and he reported that she’d used the word “sorry” eighteen times while begging for his forgiveness. Benny hadn’t forgiven her, though, and I’m not sure Lulu’s attempt at a prison poem was going to repair the damage she’d done.
“No word from Paul?” I asked as Punkin stuck her head over the front seat and panted in my face.
“Still awaiting trial. But I don’t think there’s a lawyer in the state who can get him off.”
Felony firearm offenses came with mandatory jail time in Michigan. Two years. His dad still had about six months left on his own house arrest. We were all still waiting for the shoe to drop on that, but nothing had happened with Big Burg. He didn’t send anyone after us, didn’t burn down anyone’s house. Maybe he was waiting for the outcome of Paul’s trial.
Or maybe he was waiting to find out what was going to happen with my father.
It took my father nearly two weeks to get bailed out after that horrible day I went to his house. When his new wife finally came up with the bail money, the cops caught him trying to charter a plane to South America, so he earned himself the flight-risk label. Now he was sitting in a cell, awaiting trial, which was due to start in November, around the time of my Thanksgiving break.
I’d already notified my professors about taking time off to testify and had flight tickets booked to return for the trial. Everyone had been kind about it. Ironically, because of all this mess, I had no problem convincing the financial aid office that my father was, indeed, not financially responsible for me: making the news for being kidnapped by the biggest commercial real estate agent in Grand Rapids really helped drive that point home.
It also made the Wags realize that we couldn’t tell anyone about what we found. Not the gold, and not the Venus. If we announced anything, it would be all over the news, and if I thought I was worried about the cottage being broken into before all this, well. Let’s just say that Mabel was right to be paranoid, back when she was responsible for it. And now that we were its guardians, we decided jointly that the best way to do that was to hang on to its secrets. For now, at least.
Seb drove us into Boston proper, where traffic was even worse until we got to Boston Harbor. I surveyed all the sailboats bobbing in the water from my window alongside Punkin, who eagerly sniffed the briny harbor air as if it were made of beef jerky.
