Page 49 of Finders Keepers

“You…what?”

Quentin tries to take my hand again, but I shake him off. “Can we please get in the car and talk there? Mr. Aaron’s neighbors—”

“Are you serious? What do I care about Mr. Aaron’s neighbors?

Fuck Mr. Aaron’s neighbors!” I shout. An older woman pruning a bush two houses down gives me a look of betrayal and shock.

My cheeks go extremely hot. “Not you, sorry,” I tell her.

“You’re lovely.” Quentin opens the passenger-side door, and I sink into the seat as if my blush weighs fifty pounds.

An even heavier silence settles as soon as we’re both inside the car. Quentin grabs the steering wheel and leans forward until his head is resting on it.

“Please start explaining yourself,” I say. “Because my mind is jumping to conclusions here.”

Quentin lets out a long sigh before looking back up and staring out the windshield.

“I found it that summer. In 2008.” When he finally turns to me, his eyelids are heavy, as if talking is beyond exhausting and all he wants to do is take a nice long nap.

Except, no, it’s not tiredness. It’s…weariness.

“And I have been keeping it from you ever since.”

“Jesus Christ, Quentin.”

“I know. Please…just let me finish explaining, okay? And then you can be as mad as you want.”

I stare him down for a good five seconds before glancing away, which he accepts as my agreement.

“Early that summer, sometime in June, I went to Sprangbur without you.”

“Why?”

I can see him deciding whether or not he has room to snap at me for interrupting already, before wisely letting it go.

“I told you, I felt like I needed to do whatever it took to make you want to be my friend. And I had this ridiculous idea that if I could find the treasure, I could steer us away from it until the last second.”

“But why would you want to do that?” I demand.

Then I remember everything he confessed the other night at Sprangbur and answer the question myself.

“Because you convinced me to treasure hunt with you so we could spend the summer together, and you were worried we’d find it too quickly and I wouldn’t want to hang out anymore. ”

“Yes. I’m not going to lie to you, Nina.

” I flash him a look and he winces. “I’m not going to lie to you anymore ,” he amends.

“I didn’t actually expect to find it. I had no ideas of my own, nothing new to investigate.

But you were so brilliant. You always have been.

I figured it was only a matter of time until you cracked the riddle and we’d be done searching, and then I wouldn’t have an excuse to spend time with you. ”

“That is so stupid, Quentin,” I say, burying my fingers in my hair.

“I’m very aware, thank you,” he says. “I spent a very hot, sweaty hour combing Sprangbur for anything we missed. I was just about to give up when I noticed a stone right at the top of the cenotaph, along the roof, that seemed oddly loose. There was a log at the edge of the woods, so I dragged it over and climbed up to get a better look. There was a circle engraved in the stone, which was weird because the rest of the design on that part of the wall was stars. I pulled on it and…There was a small compartment behind, lined with some sort of nonmagnetic metal. Inside was a canister, and inside that, wrapped up inside several pieces of waxed canvas, was a wooden puzzle box.”

“And?” I ask. “What was in it?”

“I don’t know. I never opened it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t want to do it without you,” he says, sounding distressed.

“I meant it when I said I wanted the treasure to be something we did as a team. Sure, I was excited when I found it, because it meant I could keep us hunting all summer. But I was also so disappointed. Both in the fact that we hadn’t gotten to experience the moment together, and in myself for taking that away from us. ”

He runs his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end.

He looks absolutely as frazzled as I’m starting to feel.

“I planned to re-hide it that last night, to try to re-create the moment with you. Then I would get to see your face light up…the way it started lighting up a minute ago before I made it go all…shuttered.” He buries his head in his hands.

“God, my plans really have always sucked. And I’ve gone and fucked this all up. Again.”

There’s simply nothing I can say. All this time. All this time he’s been hiding the treasure. And the truth. All in some totally unnecessary attempt to get and keep my attention.

“I can’t believe you,” I say. “You’ve known where it was all along, and yet you let me spend weeks in Catoctin—weeks that I could have spent focused on rebuilding my life instead of wasting it.”

His head snaps back up now. “You have to be fucking kidding me,” he says with much more bitterness than I’m expecting.

“ This is why, Nina. This is why I did it! Because even now, even after everything we’ve said and done, everything we’ve shared, you’re so obsessed with this bizarre notion that you’re falling behind every moment you haven’t reached some nebulous ideal version of yourself, that the only way I get to spend time with you —the person you truly are—is to trick you into it.

Which sucks, because I happen to really fucking love the person you are, Nina.

I always have and I always will, even if you don’t. ”

“Don’t say that to me. Don’t say that you love me right now.”

“It’s only the truth.”

“All this time,” I whisper. “All this time you made me feel so horrible for going behind your back, but what do you call what you did, Quentin? You actually found the treasure and kept it a secret from me. How is that not infinitely worse?”

“It is worse. And I never said I didn’t forgive you.

You just assumed. It’s true what I said before, that the reason I went silent was that you broke my heart and I was embarrassed.

But then it was because I was absolutely, completely consumed by guilt.

When I—in the police cruiser, when I said it was all a mistake, I was talking about what I had done.

But you took it as…as about you, and the way your eyes filled with tears.

My god, Nina. I’d seen my parents hurt each other with words countless times in my life, but I’d never once seen them make amends for it.

I had no idea what to do. I figured I’d blown my chance to even be your friend, much less anything more.

” His eyes close as if remembering the moment.

“The only thing I could think of to make it right was to double down. When I came back to my dad’s house to visit for Christmas, I would get you to go to Sprangbur with me, and I could just…

try the whole thing again. I had no clue what to say to you in the interim, and I figured I could apologize for the silence once I saw you.

It was only supposed to be a few months.

But then my dad wound up getting a new job and moving away really soon after, and I never did get to come back to Catoctin.

The plan fell apart again. I thought I had no way to make things better without being able to give you the treasure as a consolation prize.

And a large part of me still figured you didn’t care that much about me anyway, so it probably wasn’t even bothering you that I was gone. ”

“Of course I cared about you, you fucking dumbass.”

He throws up his hands. “Well, fifteen-year-old Quentin wasn’t particularly convinced of that, and honestly, thirty-two-year-old Quentin has some major fucking doubts too. I know you didn’t turn down the job offer from Malbyrne yet, Nina.”

“Only because I’m still waiting to hear back from the library! I’m not about to dismiss an opportunity that might be the only one I have if this Mrs. MacDonald thing falls through.”

“Sure. Tell yourself that,” he says.

I scrub my hands over my face. I need to focus on the treasure instead of my emotions before I implode. “What did you do with the treasure after you found it?”

“Well, I wasn’t able to go back for it the night we got caught since I was in a whole lot of trouble with my dad, so I left it at Sprangbur and figured either it would still be there when I returned or it wouldn’t be.

When I came back to town at the end of May and found out from your mom you were coming home, I immediately went to check.

And it was right where I left it. So I grabbed it, figuring I’d tell you everything as soon as possible and give it to you to do with as you saw fit.

To try to make amends for what happened between us.

But then…the moment I saw you again, Nina, it was just like before.

I was overcome by this absolute, all-encompassing desire to be near you, whatever it took.

I was an awkward, gangly little boy again, wanting your attention and not knowing any other way to get it. ” He pauses. “The money…”

“You can’t think that’s my primary concern right now.”

“It’s just that…I lied about that too. Charlie’s Law isn’t real. I made it up when it seemed like you weren’t going to agree to start looking again.”

Of course. I knew it sounded too absurd.

I should have followed my instincts. But I think part of me didn’t want to examine it too closely.

I wanted the excuse to say yes. “That explains why you had no problem going up to seventy percent, I guess. Because I was never meant to get anything at all, so it didn’t really matter. ”

“I was going to give you the money when I sold Charlene’s ring.”

My head falls back against the seat. “God, Quentin. This is all kinds of fucked-up.” My fingers curl, as if they wish they were claws.

“I know,” he says.

There’s a long silence as we both stew in various intense, uncomfortable emotions. And then something suddenly makes sense. “July Fourth,” I say. “When you took me to Sprangbur and said you had a surprise…”

“Yes. I was going to tell you then. That was my intention at least, to take you there and tell you everything I felt so you would understand why I did it, and then, if that went well, I would show you the stone in the cenotaph. Beg for your forgiveness. But I hadn’t expected you to return my feelings, then or now, and it was so overwhelming.

To feel like you wanted to choose me, Nina, when that’s all I’d ever wanted. And we…we got sidetracked.”

“So you just decided to keep lying to me?” I ask.

“It wasn’t a conscious decision. I really was trying to do better by you. I want to do better, to be better. But when I’m with you, sometimes ‘better’ gets fuzzy. Sometimes the stupid little boy part of my brain takes control instead of the man trying to be worthy of you and—”

“What you mean is that you thought you could get away with it.” He opens his mouth to counter the accusation, but I cut in.

“Stop. Just, stop.” My fingernails dig into my palms as I squeeze my fists in my lap, the barrage of feelings overwhelming.

“Where’s the box now?” I ask. “You said it isn’t at Sprangbur now. You moved it again?”

“It’s at my house, in the kitchen. I went back for it while you were with your parents yesterday. Because I was going to tell you this morning.”

“What’s your excuse for not doing it that time?” I ask.

Quentin sighs heavily. “You seemed so excited about meeting Emily and Eugene. I didn’t want to ruin it for you.”

“Right, because this isn’t ruining anything at all.”

“I know that I messed this up,” he says. “That I’ve been selfish, that I’ve hurt you. You have every right in the world to hate me.”

I’m furious, hurt, confused, but no part of me hates Quentin Bell.

Admitting that aloud feels a lot like forgiving him, though, which I am in no way willing to do yet.

So instead of telling him that, despite everything, I can’t help but not hate him, I say, “You are going to drive us back to Catoctin, and we are going to open that damn box. I want to be done with this, Quentin.”