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HUNTING FOR TREASURE

Jon: We sent her off to sea.

Evie: I can’t believe you set a boat on fire.

Jon: It’s what she wanted.

Evie: …

“I’m going to—” I sneezed again.

The dust had grown thick enough that we should wear masks.

After spending hours in Mimi’s attic, I had little doubt the house wanted me dead.

Amanda pulled a box from atop a shelf that hadn’t been dusted since the Second World War.

Mimi might not be a hoarder in the genuine sense of the word, but she certainly collected a lot of things over the years.

It would seem that if she tired of a possession, it made its way into the attic.

“Aww,” Amanda said, peering into the box.

Gray streaks of dust lined her black t-shirt and covered her jeans.

She lingered, letting the emotions wash over her before breaking into a smile.

"Look at this!" she exclaimed, holding it up for me to see. I thought we’d have the attic cleaned today and move on to the bedrooms on the second floor, but I clearly underestimated Amanda’s love of treasure hunting.

“What is it?” I rifled through a captain’s trunk filled with old jackets. I shut it, pulled a stack of sticky notes from my pocket, and slapped an orange one on the lid. Orange for Twice-Told Tales. Gladys would have herself a giggle fest when she discovered all the junk hidden up here.

“It’s an album of pictures.” Here we go, another trip down memory lane. “Oh, it’s you… wait, no, is that your father?”

She climbed over a box of quilts, an old rocking horse, and a broken chair. We could turn the attic into an obstacle course. Every winner walked away with an allergy attack. The more she touched, the more dust I watched float through the air.

Amanda hopped on top of the trunk. “Is that your dad?”

I took the album to find a bust of my father in his Marine Corps dress blues.

If not for the uniform, it could have been me in the photo.

I flipped to the next page to see another of my dad in his uniform, standing next to my mom in a flowing white gown.

Mimi had shown me the photos years ago when I would drive her to the cemetery.

Birthday. Deathday. Like clockwork, we’d put flowers on their stones and then get ice cream and share goofy stories about them.

“They were so in love,” I mumbled. Dragging my fingers across the photos, I could almost feel the texture of her lace bodice. “He called her Honey. Every day. He’d say, ‘Honey, because you make everything in life a little sweeter,’ and she’d blush.”

On the next page, their faces were covered in cake, almost hiding the shock and laughter in their eyes. Off to the side, Mimi, bellowing hard enough, I could hear her roaring. Every photo attempted to capture the love they had.

“Do you miss them?” Amanda cuddled up to my back, arms wrapped around my waist and head on my shoulder. Everybody knew about the black ice and the car crash that killed them. Amanda was like the sister I never had and one of the few people who brought them up.

“I do. It’s been twenty years, but I still wonder what they’d be like today. I bet he’d still dance while waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. She’d still be cutting sandwiches diagonally because that’s how you say ‘I love you.’”

She gave me a squeeze. “I wish I had met them.”

Turning the page, I found a photo of the four of us in front of the Christmas tree. I wore antlers and a flannel onesie as I tore through a present. I was about to turn the page when Amanda poked the page.

“Do you still talk to her?” She asked about deceased parents with ease, but she danced around saying my sister’s name.

“Sort of. Holiday cards. Birthdays. After they died… Evelyn had very different ways of processing.”

Amanda kissed my neck before stealing the book out of my hands. She continued flipping. We’d never get the attic done.

“They’re so cute and in love.” My parents had that effect. “I see why you love happy endings so much.” She froze. “I didn’t mean?—”

“You’re right. Okay, yeah, they died. But damn, they loved hard.

Someday, I want what they had.” I didn’t say it out loud, but I wanted my own honey, somebody who made life a little sweeter.

Their death might have been a tragedy, but it served as a reminder.

Just like Mimi, there were lessons they taught me, and some part of me feared I hadn’t been paying enough attention.

“Maybe mystery man is your honey?”

I hated how well she knew me. When I came out of the bathroom with a strut to my walk, both she and Mabel congratulated me on the conquest. Mystery man had vanished almost as quickly as he appeared. I had spent the night scrolling through every face, and nowhere did I find somebody that gorgeous.

“Oh. My. God. You haven’t texted him yet, have you?”

Did I say sister I never had? I might need to reconsider our friendship.

“Not yet. I will. But I’ve got to clear out all this junk first.” Even I heard the excuses.

I hadn’t had a serious relationship in ages.

While my parents loved one another with an adorable fierceness, none of my past boyfriends compared.

It was hard for reality to line up with the fantasy I created.

“I’ll do it,” I assured her.

“Right now.” She lunged, trying to shove a hand in my pocket. I spun about, trying to keep it out of her grasp. If she got to my phone, there’d be a good chance she’d say something cute and then follow it up with a dick pic. Amanda might be the worst wingwoman known to mankind.

“I’ll do it! I swear.”

My foot caught on a stuffed teddy bear, and I fell backward. I landed with a thud on an oriental rug. Before I could sit upright, the sneezing took over. Amanda broke down laughing as I fought for air. Death by dust, leave it to me to have the lamest demise.

My phone dinged in between my sixth and seventh sneeze. Lying on my back, album clutched to my chest, I reached into my pocket.

Evie: How are you doing?

Four simple words. I crinkled my nose as I tried to think through the complexity of my answer.

Evelyn and I stayed in each other’s orbit because we shared blood, but we were hardly a family.

Every year, I offered for her to join Mimi and me to put flowers on our parents’ headstone, and she used her job at a boutique hotel to avoid it.

My reply had less to do with our dwindling family and more to do with our strained relationship.

Jon: I’m fine.

“Oh, what’s that?” Amanda had already moved on from meddling in my love life to finding a new treasure stashed away behind an ornate mirror. “You didn’t tell me Mimi had good taste in art.”

“What? She has a velvet picture of dogs playing poker over the fireplace.”

Amanda grunted as she lifted the seven-foot-tall mirror off to the side. “Maybe she kept the good stuff hidden away.”

She held up a square canvas. The light from the rose window to her side let me see the art. Recognition hit like a punch to the gut. Amanda spun about, showing me the portrait.

“It’s not signed.”

“It’s… it’s mine.”

Amanda’s jaw dropped. “Let me get this straight. You. Jon Olsen. Mr. I refuse to help my beautiful best friend work on her comic.” She shot me a death glare.

“Can do this?” Amanda drew comics, which were amazing but not something I did well.

“Next, you’re going to tell me you went to art school?

Are you one of those people creating forgeries of the Mona Lisa? ”

“Oh, no. My secret’s out? Jon Olsen, international scourge of the art world.”

Charcoal on canvas. I had sat across the room from Mimi so many times while she knitted slippers. As fast as the loose nail on the stair pulled at her creations, she’d replace them with another pair. She claimed it quieted her mind, and without it she’d never sleep.

I took the canvas, surprised by the warmth in my chest. “When I visited for the summer, she’d have a blank sketchbook waiting. She always encouraged me to draw the things I love.”

“You love love,” she whispered.

I promised myself I wouldn’t go through her things and walk out with a car full of items that sat in a closet in my apartment.

So far, I haven’t come across anything that I needed.

Okay, maybe the photo album of my parents, but the rest were her treasures, not mine.

If I could only take one item, it’d be a drawing of Mimi doing what she loved.

“Radical love.” I smiled at the thought. “Those secret moments where people engage in their heart’s passion.”

Amanda slapped me on the ass hard enough I yelped. “You want radical love? Call him.”

Yes, I loved love. My parents had set the bar high, and so far, nobody had come close.

I smiled at Mimi, looking over her glasses, catching me drawing her.

Her lips curled into a knowing smirk. There was a warmth in her gaze, a quiet pride that would eventually turn into her cracking a joke.

I could hear her pushing me forward. “Do the things that scare you.”

A shiver rippled along my skin. “I get the message,” I mumbled. Mimi wasn’t done teaching me a lesson or two.

“Tomorrow, I promise.”

“Hey, sexy,” she said in a mock-deep voice. “Since we’ve already violated each other, how about a date?”

I blushed at the thought. If it didn’t turn out to be love, maybe we could do some more violating? “Stop being a pain, and help me with this trunk.” Nice save, even if I was still thinking about the mystery man pinning me against the wall. Yes, I’d definitely text him tomorrow.