Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
I took another sip of coffee and then stood up myself, grabbing the other two plates on the table. “I’m pretty sure you’re right.”
Forrest opened the back door, his eyes going straight to me, his lips curving in a smile as he saw that I wasn’t traumatized by being left alone with his mother.
“Jerry’s all set,” he said.
Emily nudged me in Forrest’s direction. “I’ve got the dishes. You two go do what you came here for.”
Forrest reached for my hand, and I slid my fingers into his, letting him pull me out the door.
We had a book to find and a code to crack.
Chapter Thirty-Four
FORREST
Sterling and I grabbed cold cans of soda on our way back to the garage. It wasn’t hot, not yet, but the day was warming up. I stood in the doorway, surveying the shelves of boxes. How had one kid accumulated so much crap? I didn’t know, but I was going to find out.
I pulled the first of the plastic storage bins off the top shelf and set them on the floor. Sterling dragged over the bucket she’d used the night before and sat. I did the same with a nearby step stool.
One by one, we opened the neatly labeled bins and went through what was left of my childhood. Baby blankets. My christening gown. Picture books. A bin of artwork, pages and pages I imagined had been sent home from school, dutifully admired by my mother, and then packed away. Only a parent would see anything worth saving in my childish scribbles. I hadn’t been meant for a future as a painter.
I found another box with my mother’s wedding album. A white candle, the wick barely burned, beside a bouquet of dried flowers. I probably should have closed it, but I pulled out the album and opened the front cover. Sterling slid her bucket to sit beside me, her cheek warm against my shoulder as we flipped through the pages. They’d been so young, both of them. My mother’s beaming smile shone through the decades, my father beside her, not just happy but enormously pleased with himself. Love and pride were clear in his eyes when he looked at his bride.
It was hard to imagine they’d ever been apart. I was only halfway through the album when I closed it, feeling like I was violating my mother’s privacy. I knew without asking that she wouldn’t want us going through this box. Not yet. Maybe never.
Sterling seemed to understand. She took the album from my hands gently and nested it in the box as it had been, careful not to disturb the flowers.
“Maybe someday she’ll be ready to look at this again,” Sterling said.
“Maybe,” I agreed.
I lifted the bin back onto the shelves and opened another to find uniforms and patches from Cub Scouts and my short tenure in Boy Scouts, a stack of soccer gear buried in the bottom. We uncovered a bin of Halloween costumes, revealing my youthful obsession with cowboys and knights in shining armor. With a twinge, I thought of my lies and losing Sterling for so long. Some knight I’d turned out to be.
Sterling smiled down at the plastic helmet and sword in her hands. “I bet you looked cute with this.” She flashed me a grin.
“My mom probably has pictures somewhere,” I said. “I’m sure she’d love to embarrass me.”
“I want to see them.” Sterling opened another box and let out a whoop.
“Did you find it?” I asked, leaning over her shoulder.
“Treasure Island? No, but look, books. We must be closer.”
Closer, maybe, but there was more than one bin of books, and while they weren’t big, they were packed full. Painstakingly, we went through them, double-checking all of the covers beneath the dust jackets. And then there it was, halfway through the third box, my much loved and very dog-eared copy of Treasure Island.
My father had read it to me when I was no more than nine or ten, a chapter at a time before bed every night. Later, not long before he died, I’d reread it by myself. Now, here it was, maybe a key to finding what he’d had left behind, what he’d died for.
I handed her the book, and she turned to page one hundred seventy-eight. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to see. A note in my father’s handwriting. Something.
There was nothing. It was just a page like any other. Except it wasn’t. Page one hundred seventy-eight held the scene where they found the treasure. That couldn’t be a coincidence. The next code had to be here.
I let out my breath in a gust of frustration. “What am I missing?” I asked out loud, both to myself and to Sterling, squinting down at the familiar lines of the story. Sterling didn’t answer, her eyes glued to the page. Her finger was running down it line by line, moving back and forth. Something caught my eye.