Page 39

Eve

Digging Up Hope

One week later

The afternoon sun beat down between my shoulder blades as I bent over a beat-up-looking table I’d just salvaged, sanding its edges with a fury it did not deserve. I’d opted for sandpaper over the shop’s electric sander, needing to feel every splintered edge smoothing beneath my hand.

It wasn’t helping, but at least I had something to do. Cleo had pushed me out here because I was “acting like a lovelorn romance novel hero” again, and it was annoying the hell out of her.

There was nothing I could say in my defense. I was annoying the hell out of myself , so I could only imagine what it was like for those around me.

Sitting back on my heels, I used my forearm to wipe the sweat dotting my forehead.

I was weary down to my bones. Eating and sleeping were an impossibility, so I was grumpy and irritable.

My chest ached. My head swam with constant memories of Harper.

I couldn’t see the rolling ladder near the bookshelves without yearning for her to be back there, smiling down at me from up high.

I’d said all the wrong things to her, shitty things that I didn’t even mean.

She’d accused me of avoiding honesty and vulnerability in my relationships, and she’d been right.

At the end, when it mattered the most, I spun out a bunch of lies and then promptly boarded up the shop around my heart.

Locks on the door, bars over the windows, a big sign that said closed until further notice .

She really was the heartbreaker all along. Because I was well and truly devastated.

I heard the telltale sound of Monty’s boots on the concrete and saw her shadow gliding up behind me. I picked up the sandpaper again and bent back over the table, working away at a stubborn part in the wood. I knew what this was probably about and wasn’t sure I was ready to talk about it yet.

My aunt dragged over a lawn chair and sat down. Then she notched up the brim of her cowboy hat. “ I’m out here trying to dig up hope and coming up empty ,” she said, quoting the text I’d sent her. “You’re like a living replica of that text right now, kid.”

Sighing, I sat back on my haunches again and yanked down the bandana covering my nose and mouth.

“Monty…look, I’m kinda pissed at you and not in the mood.”

“Pissed? At me ? I haven’t seen you in almost a week, not since the bust. Kinda thought we’d be spending more time together.”

“Are you being serious right now?”

She spread her arms out wide. “As a fuckin’ heart attack. What’s got you so mad?”

“Monty…you lied to me. About Ruby, about searching for the diamonds. I know you have your reasons for keeping things from me, and I would have understood that if you hadn’t gone completely radio silent these past months.

” I shook my head, throat tightening. “I was genuinely worried about your safety, about your well-being. Not to mention that all it did was make me feel abandoned all over again.”

Monty blew out a long breath. She tore off her cowboy hat and tapped it against her knees. “Jesus, Evie, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking, and that’s one hundred percent my fault.”

I reached for her hand and held it. “I don’t want you to change who you are or change the things that make you feel safe.

You like your privacy. You like being a bit of a mystery.

I get it. But I’m your niece, and I love you.

” I squeezed her hand. “We always said we’d look out for each other, didn’t we? ”

She cleared her throat. “We sure did.”

“Then you have to let me look out for you. You have to let me love you,” I said firmly.

Monty huffed out a laugh. “Well, don’t you sound a lot like my therapist right now? Both of them, couples and individual.”

I grinned, and it felt good. “Is it because I’m right and you know I am?”

“It could be.” She tossed me a wink. “I know we didn’t find those diamonds yet, but seeing that picture of Priscilla and Adeline in New York, seeing Eugene sitting there with them…

all I keep thinking is they must have been so terrified.

And here I’ve been scared of my own shadow, because of something that happened to me twenty-five years ago. ”

“To be clear, it was a very, very bad something,” I said. “Everyone in town wants to protect you for a reason. They wouldn’t do it if they hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen how bad it was for you and Ruby. No one should have to live in fear like that.”

“But that’s the thing, isn’t it? We can’t ever be truly protected from anything, not if we wanna live any kind of life with meaning.

I could have said fuck it and lived my life anyway, homophobes be damned.

Could have even done something to make it easier for other queer women in this world.

I did neither. I just hid from all of it. And that never used to be me.”

She squinted up at the sun. “Eve…it was never fair of me to erect those barriers around myself and then ask you to guard them. Especially when all I ever do is bail on you. I’ve been a mess. Really, I have. Isolated myself, pushed people away. I almost lost my soul mate because of it.”

When she turned to face me, she wore the smile I loved the most. “I don’t wanna lose my niece because of it, either.”

My shoulders sagged forward. “You won’t. You could never.”

“It doesn’t mean I should take that for granted, either.” She dropped her hat back onto her head. “It’s a long, long time coming, but…I’m happy now and a lot less scared. So why am I letting just the potential of something going wrong have this much power over me?”

“Does Ruby make you want to get back out there again?” I asked, the tentative hope obvious in my voice.

She laughed again. “Ruby makes me want to do a lot of things again. Live a full life, most of all.”

I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat.

“I’ve been reading some of your journal entries from around the time you found La Venganza . I never knew you felt that way about Dad and our family. When I was a kid, you always seemed so confident, so self-assured. I never knew that you cared that much.”

She gave me a sad smile. “Oh, I cared, Evie. A whole hell of a lot. For a good portion of my life, I spent a lot of time living in response to their judgments. Always trying to prove my worth, even prove that I was better than them. But it was just a fantasy. It’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you now, what I’ve learned after all this time. You gotta live for yourself.”

A swell of emotion caught in my throat. Monty had been there, the day I left my program, left my family, and gotten on a plane with her instead.

And it still seemed impossible to talk about.

“I know that’s all true, but…Monty, they abandoned me. They didn’t fight for me. They don’t even fight for me now. It’s like…it’s like I don’t matter. I even had this completely naive idea that if you and I solved the mystery of the Blackburn Diamonds that it would change their minds about us.”

She nodded. “You matter, kid. More than you’ll ever know. I promise you that. And you shouldn’t have to do anything to earn their love or their respect.”

My parents and I never got along before. Wouldn’t get along now. Yet some childish part of me still needed to feel wanted by them.

Needed to feel like I wasn’t so easy to carelessly dismiss.

Monty covered my hand with hers, drawing my attention back to her face.

“I’ll never forget the day you came back here with me.

One of the happiest days of my life, really.

But it was also the day your parents showed their true colors, and I despised what I saw.

After that, it was never the same with them. ”

“So you just… You just let it all go?” I asked.

She chuckled. “It wasn’t easy. I had to yank it out by the roots, too.

It’s a process is what I’m saying. A journey, not a destination.

But you can make the choice at any time to choose yourself.

You already did, when you came out here.

It’s like I said to you all those years ago, the day we found that old soda bottle.

No one gets to dictate the truth of who you really are. ”

I nodded, scrubbing my hands down my face.

“I’ve spent all this time framing moving out here, leaving my parents, as this great, dramatic escape.

A one-and-done. I’d cracked the code, didn’t need any more help because I’d already hit my rock bottom and dragged myself out.

But you’re right, Monty. I was still hanging on, hoping for an approval that’ll never come.

Which makes me just as stuck as everyone else in this world. ”

Monty came to my side. “All of us are at least a little bit stuck on something. You’d have to be perfect not to be.” She pulled me against her for a hug. “And speaking of stuck…are you ever gonna tell me what happened between you and that pretty reporter of yours?”

“No,” I said petulantly, blowing out a heavy breath. “Because there’s nothing to tell. She went back to New York. That was always the plan.”

“Sure, sure. And Cleo telling me that you’ve been stomping around the shop like a grumpy pain in the ass ever since Harper left is just a coincidence?”

I scowled at her. “For the record, I only date casually for this exact fucking reason . I actually…actually let myself feel something for Harper, and it was amazing and incredible and really kind of life changing, and I can’t stop thinking about her or dreaming about her or wondering what she’s doing or if she misses me… ”

Monty was trying hard not to laugh.

I threw my arm out. “This is what I’m talking about! I’ve never been so miserable!”

She wiped tears from her eyes. “I knew that reporter for all of twenty-four hours, and every time she looked at you it was as if she knew that you personally hung the moon just for her.”

My breath caught in my throat.

“And you looked at her the same exact way. I thought me and Ruby were over, too, because I was also a stubborn, hard-headed idiot who let fear talk me out of love.”

I covered my face with my hands again, feeling raw and overly exposed, as if Monty was plucking out every scary thought in my brain.

“The risk is what makes it worth it,” she said, serious this time. “The fear is what makes it worth it. Do you think Priscilla and Adeline had a crystal ball? Any number of horrible things could have happened to them on that journey, and they still went for it.”

I thought of Harper perched on top of that fence at the Kept King mine—the wind in her hair, that gorgeous smile, how she peered out at the landscape like some jaunty, swashbuckling explorer.

“What’s your truth, Evie?” Monty repeated.

I gathered up every last scrap of fear in my heart telling me I didn’t deserve love, telling me I’d spend my life getting left and abandoned. Yanked it out and let it float away, like dandelion seeds on the breeze.

“I want to be with Harper,” I said, voice cracking. “But I don’t know if I can get her back.”

Monty’s answering smile was sly. “Well…you know what they say about that. A bust is a bust ’til it ain’t.”

I felt the first stirrings of hope in my chest—tender and effervescent—and then Monty reached into her bag and revealed a box I knew well.

“The dig last week sucked,” she said simply. “And I know you felt it, too. But I want us to get back out there, want us to try again. For them.”

Then she placed Priscilla’s locket onto a piece of tissue paper before laying it in the palm of my hand. Inside was Priscilla’s picture on the left, Adeline’s on the right.

A tiny revolution, barely the width of my palm.

I smiled down at it, warmth flooding my chest. “If I’ve seen this once, I’ve seen it a million times. And still, something about it just makes my heart spin.”

Monty cleared her throat, catching my attention. “And I should tell you…Jensen and his crew were spotted in Forks this morning, setting up a camp.”

“Goddammit,” I swore. “How’d he figure it out? We’ve been careful.”

She shrugged. “Maybe he followed us. Maybe he paid for a bunch of historical research. Doesn’t matter now, he’s on to us either way. Which means, if there is something in the town of Forks, we don’t have a lot of time to figure it out.”

“We need another clue,” I said with a sigh. “And fast.”

I flipped over the locket, reacquainting myself with the jewelry—the tarnish on the gold, the nicks and scratches. It had me thinking about what I’d told Harper that day in Diablo’s Canyon.

Salvage is about loving the mistakes. Imperfections are treasured, studied as ways to learn more about the people who’d last owned them. I’ve never been interested in antiques in pristine condition. Objects in pristine condition are boring. They have no stories. They give up no secrets.

And that was when my eyes snagged on an imperfection in the center. Minuscule, at best, but in a certain light it looked almost…round.

“Monty, can you go inside and ask Cleo to grab a sewing needle and a magnifier from our supplies?”

“What is it?” she asked.

“Probably nothing,” I murmured, bringing the locket close. “Just…following an instinct.”

I could feel her staring at me before she quickly jogged inside. But I stayed focused on that small dot, so small and faint it had to be nothing.

Was almost certainly nothing.

But there was one rule of architectural salvage we always swore by, the one thing I’d never done with the locket: always check for secret compartments.

I’d never thought to look before, always too distracted by Priscilla and Adeline’s pictures and the mystery of what happened to them.

Too distracted by what it all meant to consider the possibility that Priscilla had hidden not just one… but two secrets inside.

Monty returned with the needle and glass. With my heart jammed in my throat, I pushed the end of the needle directly into the small circle.

It was a perfect fit.

There was some slow, grinding tension.

Then a release.

And a separate panel opened behind the photos.

Monty gasped while I’d stopped breathing all together.

“There’s something in there,” Monty whispered. She rummaged around in her bag and came up with tweezers, which she used to dislodge a slip of extremely old paper.

In dark ink, faded but still clear, was a long string of numbers.

Coordinates.