“He wasn’t trying to punish us,” Mirth said. Her voice was thick, but steady. “He was trying to get me to come back. The will, the statue, the conditions. It was all a provocation. The only way he knew to keep a connection to the people he’d driven away.”
“It worked,” Holly said. “Just not the way he planned.”
Her mother looked at her. “No. He got you instead.” Mirth’s eyes glistened. “I think he would have preferred that, actually. You’re more like Oliver than any of us.”
Holly didn’t know what to say to that, so she looked down at Bean, who was dozing beside her with his chin resting on her thigh.
“Mom,” Holly said slowly. “Read the last letter.”
Mirth picked up the d-pad and opened the final file. It was short. Barely a paragraph. There were weird spaces between lines, but the letter was more coherent than many of his recent ones.
Mirth. If you’re reading this, I’m gone, and you’ve come to Moone’s Landing after all. I’m sorry for everything. I’ve left just enough in the station’s account to keep things running. I know they’re stealing from me. Can’t prove it, but I hid the rest with the only one I trust completely. Bean will keep it safe. He’s the only one who never left.
Andrew shook his head. “He left his currency units to the dog?”
“Um.” Holly looked down at Bean as he let out a loud snore. The beagle looked up at her as if to say,what?“Let me check…”
Her fingers found the charm she’d touched a hundred times. Every walk, every scratch behind his ears, every time she clipped and unclipped the leash. It sat there, small and round and unremarkable, on the collar of a dog that Charles Moone had walked twice daily.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Alyce muttered, running a hand over her face.
“Let me see about this.” Holly unsnapped the charm from Bean’s collar and ran her thumb over it, feeling the surface. Everyone leaned in close. Rasker wandered over and peered down. Holly let out a little gasp as she felt it: a hairline seam, nearly invisible, running around the circumference.
Her hands shook. She steadied them, pressed her fingernail into the seam, and pried.
The charm split open like a locket. Nestled inside, embedded in a tiny foam cradle, was a currency chip. It was black, the size of a pinkie nail, and there was absolutely nothing else it could be.
Holly stared at it.
“Is that what I think it is?” her father asked, half out of his chair.
Holly plucked the chip from its cradle and held it up. “Mom. Give me your wrist comm.”
Mirth held out her wrist with the comm around it. Holly pressed the chip to the reader on the device’s surface. The screen lit up, processed for a moment, and displayed a number.
250,000nits.
The room went silent.
Holly read the number again. Then a third time. It didn’t change. Two hundred fifty thousand currency units, hidden in a charm on a dog’s collar, waiting for the person Charles Moone had hoped would come home.
Alyce sat down hard on the dining chair. The composed, unflappable woman who had held the station together throughyears of neglect and crisis dropped into the seat as if her legs had simply decided they were finished.
“Well, look at that,” she said, after a moment. “I can still be surprised.”
Holly looked at the number on the screen. She looked at Bean, blinking at her from her lap, looking a little confused by everyone’s sudden shift of mood. He yawned, as if bored by the fortune that had been hanging from his neck for years. Holly looked at her mother, who pressed both hands to her face. Her shoulders shook with what might have been laughter or tears or both.
She looked at her father, who was grinning so wide it looked like his face might split, then at Rasker, who shook his head in an expression of quiet, profound relief.
Luv’s optical sensors were cycling through every color the robot possessed.
“This changes things,” Holly said.
“It certainly does,” Alyce replied, composing herself with visible effort. She straightened in the chair and met Holly’s gaze with those steady gold eyes. “So. What do you plan to do with this unexpected windfall?”
Holly looked at the currency chip in her palm. Small and black and worth more than everything she had earned in twelve years at Sol-Arc Industries. Enough to pay off the loan. Enough to repair every broken system on the station. Enough to replace the lighting relay and drain the caverns and fix the water main and restore the gardens and bring Moone’s Landing back to what Oliver Moone had envisioned when he sank his fortune into a dome on a small moon in deep space.
She reached out, took Alyce’s hand, and placed it in the astonished woman’s palm.
