It was a single penny. Dated 1930, so probably had been put in there by the people who originally buried the capsule. But that was it. There was nothing. No memorabilia. No newspaper to show current events. No photographs or artifacts.
Just the penny.
Distraught, we all investigated it, inspecting it from every angle in the sunlight, in case it contained another set of Morse clues. We found nothing.
“A penny?” Benny finally said. “We just risked everything for... a penny?”
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to scream or sob. Had someone else dug it up before us and taken the clue out? Or had we got “deep corners” completely wrong? If so, then why was there nothing left in the capsule?
The Wags fussed and fought about it, desperate to make sense of what we’d dug up. But the fact of the matter was that if there was no clue in here, then we had no idea where to go next.
Had our hunt for the Golden Venus just hit a brick wall?
Chapter 21
Denial is a funny thing when you’re desperate. Needing to believe that the Wags hadn’t just come to the end of our treasure hunt, I told myself that we weren’t wrong about the time capsule or its leering penny. No other treasure hunters had emptied it before us. Mabel was the last one inside it, and she wanted us to find the penny. We just hadn’t cracked what it meant.
Given time, we would.
I had to believe that. I wasn’t sure how or when it’d happened, but I’d come to hope that the hunt was a legitimate path to keeping my place at Harvard and avoiding my father. And I wasn’t ready to give up on that.
So after the Wags disbanded with heavy hearts, and I was back inside Heron Cottage with nothing but my thoughts, I did my best to keep hope alive. But as the afternoon wore on, it became more and more difficult to hold my chin up. Paranoid that we’d be identified, I scanned socials, hunting for any mention of the festival and the time capsule, and even when I didn’t see anything, I still worried that the shoe was going to drop eventually.
And even if it didn’t, I knew I’d have to face that the treasure hunt had just been a diversion. Fun, sure, but it was not a practical way to earn the money I needed to keep my head above water.
The only way I was keeping my place at Harvard this fall wasthrough the man whose biological matter just happened to bring me into this world.You’ve got to face him. Just bite the bullet and do it. No more excuses.
The only thing keeping me from spiraling into a deeper depression was the knowledge that Seb was still moving in the following day. I clung to the thought as if it were a life raft.
After dark, I sat by the lake until midnight, watching the reflected moonlight and talking to Nana in my head.Was I foolish, believing in the Golden Venus? Why couldn’t you have just told me the truth about it, instead of stringing me along with all this hope? Please, if the treasure exists and is possible to find, give me a sign...
I waited, watching the lake. The night sky. The dark beach. Repeating my question like a mantra that would provide illumination. But the dead don’t answer, no matter how many times you ask.
The next day, I was still a little depressed when I woke, but my mood brightened when Seb texted to confirm move-in day. Vigor temporarily revitalized, I spent the rest of the morning getting both the cottage and myself ready, eager to see him and discuss what to do about the treasure hunt.
But after lunch, when I heard the Bronco rumbling up the cottage’s driveway, panic reared its head, and all of Jazmine’s concerns about Seb and I moving in together went haywire in my mind.
My heart raced when a knock sounded on the front door. I jogged to open it, and Seb stood in the doorway with dark shades on and a vertical army duffel bag slung over one shoulder. “Afternoon, miss. Heard you’ve got a room for rent.”
“Sorry, already gave it to another tenant who promised... what was it? Thirty orgasms?”
He grinned and made a fist at the sky. “Dammit! I knew I should have offered thirty instead of twenty.”
Punkin panted up at me, and when I tugged a thumb, signaling for her to come inside, she brushed by me without hesitation, heading to the water bowl in the kitchen.
“I’ll help you bring your stuff in,” I told Seb.
“No need, this is it,” he said, plonking his giant duffel bag on the floor. “Other than an inflatable paddleboard and my old surfboard, which are in the back of the Speed Buggy. When you’re a road scholar, you travel light.”
Wow, okay. I carried more with me to Harvard. But I reckoned half his stuff was over here already, all the clothes and various things I found when I first cleaned up. My eyes fell on something sticking out of one of the outer pockets of his duffel. “What the hell is that?”
His eyes dropped to the bag. “Oh, this? It’s a prop gun.” He pulled out what looked to me like a sawed-off shotgun. “I call it Calico Jack because it’s nice and flashy.”
I frowned. “Come on, Seb. That’s no prop.”
“Have a little faith.”
“You’re the one with all the faith. No guns in this house. Period. The police might be after us for the time capsule—last thing we need is them finding an illegal weapon in here.”
