Page 37

Eve

A Bunch of Hope, Foolish or Otherwise

Minutes later and we were piling into Monty’s truck, gear tossed in the back. She tore down the road so quickly that she fishtailed, sending up a spray of dust.

“You two were on the right track, looking around where the train station used to be,” Monty said to us over her shoulder.

“We got here a day before you, so we were able to search in a larger area. Ruby had the smart idea to search away from the water source, thinking that they might have chosen a spot with less foot traffic.”

“We covered at least a ten-mile radius near the station,” Ruby added. “With almost nothing getting picked up by the detectors. But then we hit this spot, about a mile from where you were, and my detector just lit up like a Christmas tree.”

Goose bumps shivered across my skin. Harper and I shared another look of total surprise. “Holy shit,” I murmured. “This is really happening.”

“Our thoughts exactly,” Monty said, rolling down the windows. The wind sent Ruby’s curls flying as they laughed the sound of their combined delight stirring up an ache in my chest.

They were back together. And happy .

And had been out here without my knowledge, trying to find the diamonds. I was holding two legitimate and vastly different emotions at once: a prickly hurt from feeling abandoned by my aunt…and the total ecstasy of potentially solving a mystery that had fascinated us for years.

The emotions were so big and unwieldy, it was almost too much to take in. It must have been obvious, because Harper found my hand and interlaced our fingers. I pulled her wrist to my mouth and kissed it, felt her pulse leap beneath her skin.

My brain didn’t trust Harper fully yet. My body clearly did, though. Dangling from that tree branch earlier, fifty feet off the ground, some part of me knew I was safe with her. That she’d protect me, no matter what.

“If someone had told you a week ago that we’d be doing this together, would you have believed them?” she asked.

“Maybe under duress,” I said with a grin. “You’ve proven your tenacity, Hendrix. Really wouldn’t put kidnapping someone to get your way past you.”

“Hmmm.” She cocked her head. “I would be an organized and extremely efficient kidnapper. You, however, would be a very annoying captive.”

I dropped my jaw in shock. “In what fucking way?”

“Your constant flirting, obviously. You’d try and charm me into freeing you.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Would it work?”

“Not in the least.”

I leaned in close. “Don’t lie.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not lying. Some people can resist you. It’s not like it’s hard.”

“And how many days did you last? Like…three?”

“It was way longer than that,” she said, fighting a smile. “It was six days at least.”

I leaned all the way across so I could brush my lips across her cheek. The sultry hitch in her breathing whenever I was near was a sound I now lived for.

“Your bravery is admirable,” I whispered.

“There should be a national holiday dedicated to my courageous acts.”

Monty let out another whoop , taking a hard right turn onto the road that ran alongside where we’d just been—a mile past the single, swaying streetlight. Past the Red Roadrunner Motel. Just a bit farther, toward a copse of giant trees, and then the GPS alerted us that we’d arrived.

Outside, we snapped on headlamps, grabbed shovels, lanterns, and detectors, and began trekking out toward the spot they’d located.

It was impossible not to get our hopes up as our boots crunched over dry prairie grass.

The universe shimmered above us, starlight guiding our way.

Once at the spot, we set our gear down, and Monty handed Ruby one of the metal detectors.

“Whaddya say, Rue? Wanna give it one last go before we dig?”

Ruby gave a coy nod in response. Headphones in, she began methodically swiping around the designated area. Almost immediately, the machine spit out a series of staccato tones, growing louder with each pass.

“Now isn’t that my favorite sound in the world,” Ruby said.

My stomach hollowed out. Harper sucked in a noisy breath. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“We’ve struck gold,” I said. “So to speak.”

Harper crashed into me a second later, wrapping her arms around my waist. Laughing, I kissed the crown of her head. “Don’t celebrate too much, cowgirl.”

“Yeah, ’cause it could just be some camper’s leftover fork,” Monty said.

“Or old pennies,” Ruby added.

I squeezed the back of Harper’s neck. “Maybe a big, rusty pipe.”

She stepped away from me with a scowl, looking too adorable to be legitimately mad. “This is my first treasure hunt. I reserve the right to be naively optimistic for a few minutes before my spirit’s crushed.”

Laughing a little, Monty stabbed the ground with the point of her shovel. Leaned her boot at the edge and officially broke ground. “You’re right, Harper. This is my favorite part, too. Before we really know. When all we are is a bunch of hope, foolish or otherwise.”

Harper swallowed hard, watching me.

“ And it wouldn’t be a real dig if we didn’t say a few words for good luck,” Ruby said.

My aunt looked at me with a mischievous smile, yanking me back to that day in the hospital. The way she’d held my hand like she’d never let go. How choked up she’d been when she said, “This has been such a scary time for you, kid. Such a scary, god-awful time.”

No one in my family had ever acknowledged how scared I’d been. No one had ever acknowledged how my anxiety symptoms made me feel : panicked, out of breath, terrified, overwhelmed. The chronic insomnia, the chest pain, the bouts of sobbing.

Monty knew, though. She always did.

“How about it, Evie?” she said. “Wanna do the honors?”

I grinned in response, rubbing the back of my head as I thought about what to say. Then I looked at Harper. “You know what they say. A bust is a bust ’til it ain’t.”

“Well, hot damn,” Monty hollered. She tossed Ruby a shovel. Harper and I grabbed ours.

And then we started digging together: dirt flying free, our coordinated, repetitive movements. Strike, lift, toss.

We shifted when the metal detector told us to, pausing only to catch our breath or drink some water.

We made decent headway with all of us working together. Piles of dirt were scattered around, and we were about four feet down into the ground already. The last couple days had not been kind to my body, but pure adrenaline was powering me through.

Monty let out a low whistle and raised a dirt-covered rock into the sphere of her headlamp. “Look at that. A little bit of turquoise for good luck.”

Harper brightened, and Monty placed it in her palm with pride.

“I’ve never seen it like this,” Harper admitted. “Just a splash of blue in the middle of this ditch, huh?”

“Yep. Just a splash of blue, a secret just for us.” Monty removed her hat to scratch the top of her head.

“The Earth likes to keep her secrets. On the floor of the ocean, buried in some canyon, hidden high on a mountain somewhere. And I’m not talking about just buried treasure.

I’m talkin’ about every blade of grass and petal on a flower being as much a mystery as that old ship we found trapped in the reef. ”

She dropped her hat back on her head and continued shoveling.

“People like to say that everything’s been discovered now.

The world’s too connected, there’s not enough mystery anymore.

But why would you ever stop searching for beauty when there’s so much to see, right in front of our eyes?

Not letting yourself celebrate that seems like a real silly way to live if you ask me. ”

Ruby gazed fondly at my aunt. “Now you see how she charmed me into our reckless life of adventure.”

“I’m real convincing when I want to be.”

A few minutes passed as we switched out, with Harper and I taking over digging while Monty and Ruby rested. I nudged her hip against mine with a sly grin and caught her biting her lip in response, trying not to smile.

“I always did want to ask you, Eve,” she said, lifting a shovel full of dirt. “What was the first thing you and Monty ever found together?”

Delighted, I glanced up at Monty, who was already smiling. “A soda bottle. Very old and very sea-green colored. I still have it, use it for bouquets of flowers.”

“Where was this?”

“Somewhere out in Jersey,” I said. “A quarry, I think. Monty and Ruby were in town for a quick visit the summer before tenth grade, and I’d never been happier to see them. My parents always enrolled me in these hellish, pre-college camps that made my anxiety skyrocket.”

Ruby’s eyes softened at the memory. “Eve’s parents had difficulty noticing how exhausted she was.

Well, that, or they just ignored it. Though it seemed impossible to ignore to us.

Your nails were chewed down to the quick.

The bags under your eyes were so dark they were like bruises.

You were just… listless . It was devastating. ”

I stopped shoveling and cocked my head affectionately toward Ruby, let her scratch through my curls for a moment the way she used to. “Monty and Ruby, they never ignored it, never ignored me or minimized it. It’s why we were out in the quarry that day.”

“Fresh air always made you happier,” Monty said with a grin. “And that quarry really wasn’t that pretty to look at, but anything’s pretty if you spend all day with it. We had a good time together. You found that bottle all on your own, too.”

“It was just a Coke bottle,” I said, almost bashful.

“Well, it could have ended up in a landfill, but now it’s holding wildflowers.” Monty took a swig of water and set the bottle down. “Seems like it all turned out okay in the end.”

I caught Harper’s eye. “I remember feeling extremely chic and grown up that day, using all of their cool tools. And then later that night, I was just…” I paused, my throat going tight with emotion even all these years later.

“I was just despondent . Monty pulled me aside before their flight and gave me this long hug and told me to remember that no one else got to dictate the truth of who I really was.”

Behind me, Monty huffed out a surprised breath. I spun on my heel, quirked an eyebrow. “Do you remember saying that?”

“Sure I do, but I never thought you did.”

“And do you remember what you said after that?” I asked.

My aunt shared a quick look with Ruby, looking almost shy.

She cleared her throat. “I said…I said that people throughout your life would try to get you to do or say or believe all manner of things because it made them happy. But only you got to decide if it made you happy. Only you got to decide if it was your truth.”

“Only I got to decide if it was the truth of who I really was,” I repeated. “Those words carried me through quite a bit, you know.”

Monty cleared her throat. “Glad to hear it, Evie.”

And when I turned back around, it didn’t escape my notice that tears were silently tracking down Harper’s cheeks. But she swiped them away immediately and was avoiding looking at me. I hooked my pinkie finger around hers and squeezed.

She squeezed back.

...

The first hour after that passed pleasantly enough, with Monty and Ruby trading stories back and forth, making Harper laugh as each one grew zanier than the last. After relaying our close call with the cougar, we launched into similar close calls and mishaps on the trail. It kept our spirits and energy up.

Especially as we slid into the second hour of digging.

Concerned, Monty re-did the scans, shifted our positions around, then had our shovels striking out farther and deeper. The exhaustion of the last few days finally slammed into me full force.

At the start of hour three, a creeping dread began seeping through my body. We grew quieter, began avoiding eye contact as we rested in between shifts. Ruby kept holding Monty’s hand with a pained expression.

Harper, meanwhile, grew increasingly pale beneath her head lamp. But then Monty’s detector sent up a chorus of chirps just as Harper’s shovel struck something metallic.

With a low curse, Monty jumped into the pit and rummaged through the dirt, sending it flying up against Harper’s legs. She sent me a look that was half hope, half agony.

Monty held up a handful of rusted, metal cutlery.

“God dammit ,” she swore.

I swayed on my feet, almost too tired to realize the crushing weight of my own disappointment.

“No,” Harper whispered frantically. “No, no, that can’t be right. Where are the diamonds?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “It was a false read.”

Just like the floor we’d fallen through at the Kept King mine, nothing but a trick to send you tumbling into darkness.

“So what…it really was just some camper’s old fork?” Harper was shaking her head. “I refuse to accept this. Monty, you said you had a different feeling about this one. You were so sure. This just…can’t be. ”

My aunt removed her hat and set it on the ground above her with a weary sigh. Ruby jumped down into the pit next to her, pulling her in for a hug. Harper was blinking rapidly, eyes shining, and every time her gaze found mine, it felt like my chest was being cracked wide open.

“Harper,” I started, but Monty interrupted.

“I don’t know what to tell ya,” Monty said. “Our gut feelings can still be wrong. Very wrong. And frankly, being sure doesn’t mean jack shit. At least when I say it.”

Ruby reared back to chide her before I could.

“How could you have possibly known differently? We know what this business is. It’s digging a hundred empty holes just to get here .

But we have a strong lead on this new location, a location no one else knows about yet.

There’s always tomorrow. You understand that better than most.”

I could hear the echoes of Monty’s journal entry in the conversation in front of me and guessed it’d been had in various iterations throughout their marriage. To her credit, Monty seemed to accept Ruby’s wisdom with less stubbornness than usual.

Maybe the past six months, learning alongside Ruby in therapy, were having a positive impact on my aunt.

But now that I was standing here—shivering, starving, zombie-like with exhaustion—all I wanted to say was, You still had me worried sick, you still lied to me, you still decided to do this on your own without asking how I felt about it.

And, to make things worse, we still hadn’t found the fucking diamonds.