“Rats, probably.” She looked over her shoulder. “I told you my grandma is odd.”
He touched a side table stacked with blue and white ceramic pieces. “I don’t think this is just oddity. It looks like—”
“Hoarding.” Gretchen nodded firmly. “I know. She has this thing about thinking the family is out to take her for all she’s worth. She refuses to part with anything she believes to have historical or financial value. Which, as it turns out, is everything.”
He followed her, unquestioning, up a huge staircase that led to the second story of the house. Here, as downstairs, things were tidily stacked but overwhelmingly in abundance.
She stopped in the middle of a long hallway and pointed up to the ceiling where a string dangled from a square panel. Understanding the gesture to mean he needed to pull, he complied, bringing a folding staircase creaking to the floor.
“Have you, uh, considered getting her some help?” he asked, clearing his throat.
If he thought dressed-down Gretchen was scary before, he was clearly mistaken.
“Yes, Jared. I have considered the possibility of seeking professional advice. In the sixteen years I’ve lived here, I’ve been through all of the steps of bereavement and then some—wheedling, begging, bargaining, clearing stuff away myself and, last year, hiring an organizer. She almost dropped contact with me for good after that one. The only thing I haven’t done is threaten to send her to a nursing home—which is exactly what my sisters are doing, and what I’m trying to prevent by uncovering this stupid treasure.”
He winced. “I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but I could refer her to a good...um, yeah. Never mind. Forget I mentioned it.”
She turned to stare at him, but it wasn’t the cold kind of stare. It was incredulous and amused and exasperated all at once. Come to think of it, that was pretty much the way she always looked at him.
“It took a long time for me to realize that she doesn’t need someone to fix her. She just needs to be accepted for who she is until she can fix herself.” Her stare deepened. “Dealing with forceful and flawed personalities is kind of my specialty, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I’ve noticed.” And he valued it more than she would ever know. Hoping to cover lost ground, he changed the subject and forced a cheerful, “So what’s this treasure we’re after?”
“Theoretically? Millions of dollars. Realistically?” She gestured for him to make his way up the stairs ahead of her. “One of those creepy Halloween masks and a big sign that says Sucker on it. I’m not entirely convinced this isn’t my grandma’s way of reminding me to mind my own business. She doesn’t like people who meddle.”
Gretchen climbed up after Jared and handed him a flashlight. There was supposed to be a hanging bulb up here somewhere, but she hadn’t been inside the attic since she was a teenager. It had been an excellent place to hide her stash of pot.
Still is. Given the thick layer of dust that lay over everything and the way the piles of furniture remained exactly how she remembered them, she doubted anyone had been up here since she’d smuggled her high school boyfriend up to make out in the dark corners.
The chest they were after was a creepy thing, built from oily old railroad ties and banded with iron that had been accented by a scrolling design containing hidden skulls. It had scared the crap out of her to find that thing sitting among the floral stuffed chaise lounge and broken-seated wicker chairs when she was younger—especially when Gran gleefully recited the family tale about how it came to be. Legend had it that some great-grandfather several times back had been a pirate, a privateer for the British during the Revolution. He’d brought a young bride on board during his final voyage, and she’d been so scared at the sound of the creaking ship—which she mistook for cannon fire—that she’d hidden herself inside the chest until the supposed siege was over. The whole ship had looked for her to no avail and eventually assumed she’d fallen overboard. It wasn’t until they disembarked that her ancestor had opened the chest and found her suffocated body.
Of course, Gretchen later learned that Gran had stolen that common urban legend from a book of ghost stories. They weren’t a very creative family.
Still, she could never quite get over the skeleton chest. She’d been watching a horror movie the other day that included the famous story and realized there was only one piece of furniture in the house that would accept a heavy, gruesome key like that.
Also, it was just like Gran to make Gretchen hunt in the one place she’d never go willingly.
“What do you need me to do?” Jared asked, surveying the crowded attic with a calm appraisal.
“I need you to be the muscle.” She pointed toward the back. “Last I remember, the chest I’m thinking of was behind there.”
He straightened and preened a little, and Gretchen had to fight a laugh. She should have known—next to playing it rough, Jared obviously enjoyed any opportunity he could find for showing off his manly arts.
Of course, unless he was a bodybuilder or one of those guys who pulled entire airplanes with their teeth, there was no way he was moving through that mountain of furniture alone. Together, they hefted and lifted, shoved and scurried. No actual rats were dislodged in the process of uncovering the far corner, but evidence of their existence pebbled all around.
Gretchen shuddered as something possibly flew past her head. It could have been a gust from an open air vent. Or not. She wasn’t placing any bets.
“I can bear the clutter and accept the dust, but the idea that this place is a haven for wildlife is scary. I should have a cat instead of a lobster.”
“At least they aren’t howler monkeys,” Jared said. “They bite.”
“Do they?” Then, when she realized he was talking about actual monkeys, swinging from trees, swooping over his head, she stopped her smile short. It was impossible to spend ten minutes in this man’s company and not be reminded of their differences.
“What?” Jared asked. “They do bite, but I promise I’ve long since been cleared of rabies.”
Gretchen had grown eerily quiet. For a few minutes there, he thought maybe things hadn’t shifted between them, that maybe he could pretend yesterday was no more than an unpleasant memory and his Pleasant Park recovery could continue unabated. But despite Gretchen’s light chatter, she was distant. Remote.
He made a move to touch her—not anything overtly sexual, just the reassuring sensation of skin on skin, of the two of them together—but she shifted away.
“You know, it’s funny. When you’re acting all nice and normal, I sometimes forget you have such an exotic past. I sometimes forget who you really are.”
This is who I really am. Not quite nice. Not exactly normal. Just flawed and empty and unsure. “And what happens when I’m not acting nice and normal? When I’m...mean and abnormal?”
“Then I’m like the rest of the town. Dazed. Starstruck. Swoony.”
“That can’t possibly be true.” She liked to yell. And point out all the things he did wrong. She treated him like he was barely her equal—a reality he was so happy to accept as fact he would give up everything if she’d only promise to go on treating him that way forever.
“Oh, the town loves you. Don’t be surprised if they put a statue of you up in Middleland Park before the year is out.”
“Gretchen.” He waited until she turned to face him, and he took a risk grabbing her hand. Her nails were dirty, her palm rough. He refused to let go. “I don’t give a damn about what the town thinks.”
They stood there, in the middle of a dark attic, one deep breath away from a sneezing fit, long enough for a thousand declarations to make themselves known. But all she did was take her hand back.
“Speaking of your personal accolades and the people who adore them, what happened yesterday with your dad? You’ve been surprisingly calm
since you got here.”
“That’s because I’m with you,” he said simply.
She shook her head, refusing to accept his words for the truth they were. “If he’s buried under your porch or something, it’s probably better that I know now so I can avoid that area in the future.”
“Can we talk about something else? Your grandma? Treasure? Monkeys?”
“No. We can’t.”
He passed a hand over his eyes.
“Jared?” she asked, her voice taking on a stern note. “Is your father’s dead body stored in your backyard?”
If only.
After his dad had left yesterday, he’d gotten a total of two hours’ sleep—one of his worst nights in a long time. Never before had he longed for the oblivion of sleep with quite so much fervor, and it wasn’t as though staring at the empty wall for hours had accomplished anything other than reaffirming that he really needed to do something about the wallpaper.
“You’re kind of freaking me out right now.”
He released a shaky laugh. “I didn’t injure him, much as I might have longed to. Shall we move on to this chest now?”
“No.”
That single word, uttered softly and without hesitation, elicited a groan from deep in his throat. Trust Gretchen to see right through him, to demand answers he didn’t have. He gave in. “He wants me to take that job in Washington I told you about. I don’t plan on heeding his advice. That’s the crux of it.”
“The job running Make the World Smile.”
He inclined his head in assent.
“The incredible job you weren’t even going to tell me about.”
“It’s not important.”
“But it is, Jared—can’t you see that? This isn’t like me getting a promotion to head lifeguard or lead coffee maker. I looked it up online last night. The guy who currently holds that position was runner up for TIME’s Person of the Year. The whole person. Of the whole year.”
“Yeah, well.” He’d thought that of anyone, Gretchen would understand that those kinds of high-profile situations were what he was trying to avoid, not embrace. “It turns out I’m not quite the hero everyone believes me to be. The job offer? It’s basically a favor to my dad. Everything I’ve ever accomplished in my lifetime boils down to a favor to my dad.”
He’d done nothing on his own. He was nothing on his own.
He could see the confusion wrinkled on her brow as he strove to explain the situation. It wasn’t easy to summarize his father’s scope of influence in a few sentences—how many strings had to have been pulled, how far back they wove together—but she seemed to understand the gist of it, nodding in all the right places.
“Let me get this straight,” she said slowly. In the entire conversation, she had yet to make physical contact with him, and he didn’t like the implication. Even though he had no intention of leaving Pleasant Park—of leaving her—it felt as though she was already paving the way for it to happen. “You think that just because you had someone helping you succeed, everything you’ve accomplished doesn’t count? That only the actions of a self-made man matter?”
“That’s not what I said.” Was it?
“No, but it’s what you meant.” Finally—finally—she touched his arm. He could survive for months on the press of those fingertips alone. “Jared, when will you understand that no one expects you to be a martyr? I got my job at Java Rocket because the owner’s daughter used to skate with the Spread Eagles. Does that make your tea taste worse, knowing I called in a favor to be able to make it for you?”
“It’s hardly the same thing.”
“Right. Because you save lives and I grind beans.” She didn’t give him a chance to respond. “And my grandma paid for my college—did you know that? All that studying, all those hours in the kitchen. All of it wasted, since it was done on someone else’s dime.”
“Gretchen,” he said sternly. But her fingers dug into his forearm, silencing him.
“Even Mother Theresa didn’t fight famine alone.” She shook her head, and he could just make out the glint of emotion in her eyes. Real emotion—the kind he’d lived so long without, he was afraid to touch it for fear it might shatter in his hands. “Do you honestly think all those kids you helped cared whether or not your dad whispered the right words in the right senator’s ear to make it happen? Do you think they’d prefer to go back to the lives they had rather than be tainted by a little nepotism?”
And just like that, he felt the reassurance of her words as a wave cresting through him. “Of course not.”
She splayed her arms helplessly. “Well, then?”
“I don’t know. It’s just...emasculating. To think that I had nothing to do with anything in my life.” To be a puppet. A toy.
“Using the state of your manhood as a reason to throw away decades of work is stupid. End of story. You’re going to that dinner in Philadelphia next week.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh, you’re going. And you’re listening to what they have to offer. And you’re going to leave your goddamn pride at home for once. I get that you’re upset and that you don’t like being handled, but you’re deluded if you think you wouldn’t be perfect for that job.”
“But it would mean leaving Pleasant Park.” It would mean leaving you. His throat ached to keep the words inside.
“So it would,” she said brightly, turning away. And just like that, the moment ended. She grabbed the flashlight from his hand and knelt in front of a scarred, weather-beaten chest that looked like it belonged on a movie set. “Which is why you need to help me solve this treasure puzzle before it happens.”
He stared at her for a full minute, hoping for a response other than her sudden interest in the hinges of the chest, but he got nothing.
That nothing scared the crap out of him. Gretchen was the one person who saw through him, who possessed the ability to sort his problems as though they were dirty laundry. If she thought he needed to go to the dinner to see things through, chances were she was right.
And she didn’t even care about the implications it had for the two of them.
She extracted an oversized brass key from her pocket and unlocked the chest. As there didn’t seem to be anything else he could do, he watched, motionless, as the creaky hinges opened to reveal...
Nothing.
“Gah.” The noise Gretchen emitted was composed of equal parts frustration and a sad something he couldn’t quite place. “She’s messing with me. I know it.”
“What does she say about this little treasure hunt of yours?” he wondered aloud. “If I went through the trouble of making my favorite granddaughter undertake a search like this, I’d be sure to follow along so I could watch.”
“She doesn’t know I’m doing it. She got mad when I asked about the money in the first place.” Gretchen felt around the inside of the chest but came out empty-handed. She slumped against the side of it, casting up a cloud of dust as her bottom hit the ground. “To be honest, I’m not sure what my end goal is. I suppose I figure if I can prove to my sisters that she’s not the moneybags they all believe her to be, they’ll stop pushing so hard.”
He settled next to her and took her hand. “And what if you find out she is a moneybags?”
She stared at where their fingers intertwined. “I don’t know. If she’s got millions of dollars hiding buried in the backyard, maybe she does need to be put in a home. I buy her groceries and pay most of the bills around the house. If I left, what would she do? Starve on principle? With a fortune right under her nose?”
“Having never met the woman, I can’t say.” He paused thoughtfully and flashed his light around the room, stopping when it hit a dark patch on the wall opposite the chest. “Is there really a possibility the money is buried out back?”
“Yes. Another family trait, I’m
afraid. The backyard is where I put things I don’t want other people to find. I’m like a squirrel that way.”
“I’ll remember that the next time I make you angry.” He pointed at the wall. “But as your grandmother clearly wanted you to find the chest, do you think maybe that map is the real clue?”
Gretchen sat up, startled. “What map?”
“The one etched into the wood. What kind of a person goes through the trouble of etching something like that? It must have taken days.”
“Gran. Gran is exactly that kind of person.” Gretchen scrambled across the attic. “This is it. See that big circle right there next to the tower? That has to be the pond. Well, what was once a pond. It’s a mud pit now. The tower is a crumbling tree house fort that was there when my dad was a kid.”
“I like the sound of that mud pit.”
“You would.” She cast a wry look over her shoulder, the flash of his light catching her expression at just the right moment. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to take up a shovel with me if I promise to roll around in it later?”
“Hey. I was kidding. You don’t have to bribe me with sexual favors if you want my help searching for treasure. Or for anything. We’re friends.” Jared was hit with the uncomfortable sensation that he might be wrong. “Aren’t we?”
Her eyes widened before settling back down to a more normal size—and if he didn’t know better, he’d say there was a tinge of moisture to them. She blinked rapidly.
“Of course we are.” With a greater sense of cheer, she hooked arms with him and directed him toward a pile of debris they’d passed over on their way in. Was it his imagination, or had his flashlight beam just fallen on a full suit of body armor?
“Now grab those shovels, friend,” she said. “I think I know just where to start.”
* * *
In two hours of moonlit digging, Gretchen and Jared uncovered a vintage whiskey bottle, four unfathomably large boulders, a singing Christmas ornament that Gretchen informed him neither she nor Gran had been able to figure out how to turn off, and a molding cigar box containing the remains of two dead hamsters.
The Derby Girl Page 23