“Oh shit, is that Nana Malone’s mother? That photo of her looking like Rosie the Riveter over the fireplace.”
Indeed, my great-grandmother. Elsie was Mabel’s daughter, the one with whom she was pregnant when Wyrd Jack went to prison. I spotted Nana’s name in the text, too—Kitty—and that made my pulse race.
We perched on the bed and read it together:
June 7, 1949
My sweetest Elsie,
If you are reading this, our attorney has given it to you. That means I’ve passed through the veil and am no longer with you. Please do not mourn me for too long, my dear. Do me that favor?
I’m leaving everything to you in my will, but this letter concerns things that I cannot declare in any legal paperwork: the Golden Venus. Your father never wanted to part with it, and if you’d seen it, you’d understand why. If it ever were to be sold, it would surely bring in wealth beyond belief. But I have tried to ensure you will never need to do so. Greedy strangers who want it are coming out of the woodwork, circling like hyenas. They already believe your father’s poem will lead them to one of his hidden smuggling caches. So I’ve devised a game to keep these covetous hunters occupied and have hidden a series of clues based on the poem that lead to nowhere. However, if you ever find yourself needing to retrieve the sculpture, know that I have placed it in the smuggler’s hole your father built near the beach cottage. I showed you how to open it using both rings as keys. I’ve buried those in a grave at the foot of the stone tower south of Sleeping Bear Dunes. I know you’ll remember when I took you there to see your father’s old hideout. Hire a boat to take you up the river to the war camp with the tower. The grave is behind the tower, marked with a simple cross.
It is my hope that you’ll never need to retrieve the sculpture and will pass along its location to Kitty. Knowledge of its hiding spot is a blessing but also a heavy burden. Perhaps it will beless of one when Kitty is old enough to understand her family’s history.
Know that I will always be with you, even past the grave.
All my love,
Mama
“Son of a bitch,” Seb whispered, sounding as shocked as I felt.
I blinked at the letter, eyes flicking over the lines again. “We’ve been following a treasure hunt to nowhere?”
“Jumped in that hole in the cave for no goddamn reason.”
“The stupid time capsule!”
“It really was just a fucking generic penny?”
“Jesus.” I pushed off the bed and paced the floor around it. “I’ve been anxiously checking for news that the cops are looking for us since we left the festival. What if we’d gotten in trouble? It was a wild-goose chase the entire time.”
I’m not sure why this smarted, but it did. Maybe it was because this treasure hunt had made me feel like my life was opening up again over the wash-rinse-repeat of this past year, that I was finally letting go of the unending grief.
My stomach felt sick. What an utter fool I’d been. “Why didn’t Nana tell me about this?”
“Maybe she didn’t know.”
“The wedding certificate was hidden behind one ofherpaintings.”
Seb’s face twisted. “Right.”
“Besides, she had to know.” I pointed at the letter. “Mabel told her daughter, Elsie, and I assume Elsie eventually told Nana because she’s mentioned by name—Kitty.”
“Maybe she’d planned on telling you or leaving you a note like this. She definitely didn’t expect to have a heart attack.”
None of us did.
Seb held up his arm to stop my pacing. “You’re focusing on the wrong thing. Fuck the time capsule and the rest of it. We can just go straight to the grave she mentions. A tower near Sleeping Bear Dunes... ?”
Sleeping Bear was a few hours up the coast. It had been designated a national shoreline—one of a handful in the country—and the park included a couple of islands and adjacent coastline on the mainland. Lots of sand. Really beautiful.
“Paige, listen to me. We can find this grave, I just know we can.”
“What if someone already found it? Nana’s mother, or even Nana herself. The instructions for finding it are right here.”
“No way. Nana Malone wasalwaysclear that the Venus had never been found. She wouldn’t lie to us about that.”
