“You think he’d say something?”
I snort at the notion. I haven’t known my dad long, but I know enough to know he’s as far from an open book as it gets and not the type to share the details of a minor ache or pain.
“Here we are,” I say at John Rutledge’s headstone. There’s a sign explaining his significance to the founding of our nation, and where I’d expect the coffin to be buried, a large slab of amemorial stone lies, engraved with his accolades.Donated in 2010,it says.
“Damn,” I whisper when I see it’s almost the same situation at Charles Pinckney’s grave. Headstone, sign, memorial slab on the ground.
Nash chuckles next to me. “They make it look so easy on TV, don’t they?”
I answer with a frustrated sigh, dragging my hands down my face.Think, Rue. Think.
My phone rings from my pocket: the bank. Anxiety vacuum seals my skin around my bones. This phone call could be my saving grace as much as a nail in my coffin.
I answer.
“Ms. Conway. Barry here. From Fontain Bank.”
I glance at Nash. “Hey, Barry. What’s going on?”
“Well—” I picture him blinking like a maniac. “I just wanted to let you know that—” He clears his throat. “Our internal investigation led nowhere.”
“Oh.” It’s a nail in the coffin kind of call. “Now what?”
He tells me about a few more things we can try—divisions to contact and 1-800 numbers to call—but I know it’s hopeless. Our money is gone.
When the call ends, I don’t have to tell Nash what it was about for him to know what it was about.
“Even without the gold,” Nash says, “you know we’ll figure all this out, right?”
At some point, he put sunglasses back on because all I see when I look at him is my own despair-filled face staring back at me.
“I do.” And I really do. With him, I believe it, even if it doesn’t end with the outcome I want. “You know I was serious about Fontain. I can’t leave, Nash. Not with my mom. With—” I’ll savethat for my dinner speech. “If you really want us together—whatever that looks like—I have to be there. I want to be.”
He interlaces his fingers with mine. “And I was serious when I said I wanted to be wherever you are.” He takes a long pause. “We’ll figure it out. All of it. We couldn’t before”—he lifts one shoulder along with his lips—“but we’re older now.”
He kisses me on the cheek as I stare at the Charles Pinckney memorial plaque; it’s new. Really new. Less than twenty years old, according to the date on it. Barry’s phone call delivered a dose of renewed resolve, because I can picture Anson in this cemetery. Right here. With the gold.
“I have an idea,” I say, not looking at Nash.
He chuckles.
“Do I want to know?”
“No,” I tell him. “But I need a shovel.”
Thirty-Seven
With Cap in a wheelchair from Thirsty for History, we head to the last places Anson included in his letter. Nash tried to drag it out with his historical acronym game, but I didn’t back down this time. The little hope I had in the bank recovering our funds vanquished with Barry’s phone call. I’m done playing games.
Plus, I can’t break into the cemetery until after dark.
At the Heyward-Washington House where George Washington stayed during his 1791 visit, we go through every room with a fine-toothed gold-finding comb. I allow myself one momentary pause from panicking about my financial situation to admire the collection of eighteenth-century furniture that fills the space. At the pristine mahogany Holmes-Edwards library bookcase, I put a hand to my chest and fully swoon.
Unfortunately, at every item that looks suspicious or out of place—from the cracks in the floorboards to the most discreet spots of the garden—Cap and Nash poke holes in every single theory I conjure up.
“Too handled,” “Not original,” “You think Anson Burns was able to climb on the roof without anyone noticing?” And perhaps the most damning of all: “Union soldiers were billeted there atthe end of the war—still there in the summer—Anson wouldn’t have been able to do anything except look at the house from the street.”
White Point Garden is no different. They murder every good idea I have with logic and a knowledge of history I don’t have.
