Thatwas the boy I used to know, with a smile that could charm the scales off a snake.
“Okay, well, obviously I won’t be crashing here, now that you’re back. But are you going to be okay here alone tonight?” He gave me a questioning look. “You could stay with Jazmine, you know.”
Could I? She still hadn’t gotten in contact with me since I left that voicemail earlier. “I’ll be fine,” I told him. “I’ll keep the porch lights on and the doors locked.”
He nodded as if he weren’t completely sure but didn’t know what to do about it.
Maybe I didn’t, either.
“Come on, Punkin,” he told the dog as they headed out the back door. “It was nice catching up with you, Paige. Really sorry about your house again. Maybe you should consider installing some extra locks or at least put up some kind of cheap wireless security camera.”
“I’ll consider it.”
He nodded and gave me a loose salute. “See ya around the lake.”
Without another word, he left the cottage just as he had any other day, back when our lives were still small and uncomplicated.
If I pretended they still were, maybe we could be friends again.
Maybe.
Chapter 4
Funnily enough, working on the Morse code cipher wasn’t as exciting alone. After Seb left, I moved some of the numbers around, played with it, and even wondered if maybe I’d been wrong and all these dashes and dots on the certificateweremerely distracted doodles of Wyrd Jack or his wife, or even someone else in the family who inherited the certificate after Wyrd Jack died.
No way of knowing. Whatever we’d uncovered in this string of numbers, I couldn’t concentrate on it for long. I kept replaying my conversation with Seb, trying to sort out all my old, wounded feelings about him. And the new feelings about why he chose to crash at my place. If he truly did chase away robbers, then I supposed I should’ve been grateful. But I still couldn’t fathom why anyone would choose to break in here.
What were they looking for? More gold bars? Or perhaps this very marriage certificate? If so, why didn’t they find it? They certainly broke the frames of several other paintings. Maybe Seb scared them away before they could get their hands on it.
Would they come back?
I listened for strange sounds. Peered out blinds. But after the fear wore off, I realized how different life was out here. Lake life in the summer was sweet and slow. Back in Cambridge, I stuck to a routine with precious little downtime.
Study. Class. Eat. Sleep.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
That routine kept me from falling apart after Nana died. A loop.
But now that I was out of that loop, mundane worries crowded my thoughts. Things like ordering new glass cut for the broken window and buying some groceries. Finding out what was going on with Jazmine. Trying to get Nana’s old car running, which hadn’t been cranked in almost a year. Washing the sheets on which Seb had been sleeping—and doing God knew what else...
And then there was the worst task on my to-do list: figuring out when and how I was going to approach a father I hadn’t talked to in over a decade and convince him to help me keep my financial aid.
Considering everything that had just fallen into my lap, I could probably take a couple days to figure out how I was going to approach him. Or even find him.
Even so, I spent a restless night thinking about both him and the day’s events. The Morse code cipher on the back of Wyrd Jack’s wedding certificate. My interactions with Seb... But the next morning, my head was a little clearer, and I decided the most pressing thing was tracking down Jazmine at her job.
After taking the hottest, most luxurious shower I’d had since moving into the freshman dorms at Harvard—thank God for good water pressure—I brushed my damp hair into a ponytail, tugged on my favorite T-shirt, and went outside to unlock the old freestanding garage that stood a couple yards from the cottage. At least it was intact, no signs of break-in. Nana never kept a spare key to the cottage out here, but shedidkeep a spare to the garage. It was hidden in a bohemian collection of vintage aluminum signsthat hung on the side of the garage. I nabbed the key that was tucked away behind an old Texaco sign and opened the garage.
My nana’s 1965 Danube-blue Chevy Corvair sat safely inside beneath its dustcover. After pulling the canvas off the car, I unlocked it and slid into the front seat, bittersweetly savoring the musty scent of the interior that reminded me of Nana. For a moment, I felt grief tugging me down into dark waters again but was able to pull myself back.Nana wouldn’t want me crying over a dumb car.Though, to be fair, it was a very pretty car, built right here in Michigan, and she’d taken good care of it.
And despite the model’s bad reputation—“Unsafe at Any Speed” was what it used to be called—it took me only four tries to crank.
“Still got it,” I told the Corvair, patting the hood while I gave it time to warm up.
Once I was fairly hopeful that I wouldn’t break down, after taking a quick test drive down the street, I headed into town, past the marina and last night’s bonfire, and drove a couple miles to Haven’s main public beach, where Jazmine worked.
Jazmine had been a part-time paddleboard instructor since we were sixteen. Unlike me, who only futzed about on the board for fun, she was a serious athlete who was a member of the International Surfing Association, ISA. Jaz dreamed of competing in the Olympics, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her there one day, if the Olympics committee could ever get around to adding stand-up paddleboarding to their events. She’d gotten into University of Michigan in Ann Arbor—a great school, one of the top ranked in the nation—but was taking a gap year before starting this upcoming fall.
