Scout had never wanted the kind of Southern debutante life that her mother wanted for her. Not her style. It was a constant rub of friction with Mother—one of the reasons Scout kept her applications strictly outside the South. Not Great Smoky, not Shenandoah, definitely not the Everglades. Way too close to Mother’s reach.
Scout had been given a love of the great outdoors from her gone-missing father. He was the one who gave her the nickname Scout, a blessed escape from the cringeworthy name her mother had chosen: Magnolia Pearl.Lord, help me, just no.
Shielding her eyes from the summer sun, Scout let out a long sigh and plopped onto a smooth granite boulder, its surface warm from the afternoon sun. The rhythmic sound of the tide filled the quiet, interrupted only by the distant cries of gulls. She squinted out at the skiff, still tied to the tourist boat. “Take your time, Frankie,” she said aloud to no one. “No rush or anything.”
Around Scout, the beach was a patchwork of stone, slickwith seaweed and glistening with brine. A soft breeze carried the scent of salt and spruce from the island’s edge. Seagulls soared past her. She hardly noticed. The envelope inside her jacket kept poking and prodding—like it was downright begging to be read more thoroughly.
She unzipped her jacket and pulled it free, cradling it in both hands. She really shouldn’t open it—it was like snooping through someone’s diary, and Scout wasn’t raised to be that kind of nosy.
Her fingers drummed against the paper.
But then again ... one quick skim couldn’t hurt, right?
Ten or fifteen minutes later, her heart racing and her brain spinning, someone yelled her name, snapping her out of the pages.
“Scout!” Frankie stood in the beached skiff, hands on his hips. “Where’d you go?”
Quickly, she retied the string around the envelope as Frankie jumped from the skiff and stalked toward her. She heaved a sigh. Training him was hopeless. “I told you where I was going.”
“What have you got there?” Frankie’s gaze dropped to the envelope.
“Nothing.” She tucked the envelope under her arm and stood, brushing sand off her uniform. Before she could stop him, he grabbed it.
He flipped it open, pulled out the papers, and the newspaper clipping fluttered out. He grabbed it before it landed. His eyes went wide as he read it. “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.”
“Frankie, give it back.”
Naturally, he ignored her and started to read the papers. His mouth fell to the ground. “This is epic!”
She grabbed his wrist and squeezed, then carefully took the papers out of his hand and tucked them back into the envelope, then tied it with the string. “Let’s go. We’re late. You’re late.”
“Where’d you find it?”
“Behind a loose brick in the wall of the whale oil house. The door was wide open, Frankie. You told me you latched it.”
“Good thing I didn’t!”
“Frankie, we have a boatload of people we are responsible for. Let’s go.”
“I’m serious, Scout. This is, like, history-book-level awesome. You know what this means, right? We’ll be famous! We’ll be rich!”
Scout shook her head. “Not awesome. Not famous. Not rich. Not for nothin’. This goes straight to the superintendent. No detours.”
Frankie scoffed. “The superintendent? She’ll turn it into a park fundraiser. And you know how crazy people get about shipwrecks.”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“Well, they do. Trust me—I know these things.”
Scout raised an eyebrow. “Trust you? Frankie, you didn’t latch the door to the whale oil house. You didn’t close the window. Two things I specifically asked you to do. And then you left me stranded on the island. And you think I should trust you with this?” She held up the envelope in the air.
He grinned sheepishly. “Hey, I came back for you, didn’t I?”
“Only because the skipper did a head count. I’ve told you and told you: Always do a head count before you leave the island.” She tucked the envelope into her jacket. “Now, let’s get back to the boat.”
As they walked toward the skiff, Frankie said, “Pretty incredible we found it, huh?”
Scout turned to him with a glare. “We? We found it?”
