“Oh.” I am feeling extremely stupid for getting so excited over the jewelry. The rings and bracelet are pretty, but they’re costume jewelry. Probably worth about fifty or sixty bucks, if they’re from a legitimate collector’s edition. “I thought it was real treasure.”

“I should have told you. It’s just that you might have wanted to turn around and stop looking, if you knew this wasn’t real.”

And he wanted to keep going?

I want to ask why. I’m afraid he’ll give me an answer.

Wesley tips up my chin with a fingertip, willing me to meet his eyes. They’re flooded with guilt, and if I weren’t already kneeling on the ground, that touch would have tripped me. But then he second-guesses it, letting go. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s all right. It’s . . . sad that Violet never found this.” After her husband died, she started filling up the house with junk to replace him. I think it’s likely that she didn’t put up a Christmas tree or ornaments ever again, so Victor’s surprise went undiscovered. I am horribly disappointed on his behalf, and devastated on hers. If she had known he’d left her something like this, maybe it would have changed her grieving process. Maybe she wouldn’t have built the hoard monster that bricked up the door to Victor’s bedroom, keeping his secret dormant until after her own death.

I gather up the rings and bracelet, the cassette tape, the photographs. “They are real, though,” I tell him after a while. “They’re not diamonds, but to Violet, this would have been better than treasure. And this was one of her dying wishes.” I stand up, slipping each piece carefully back into my bag. “We might as well see it through.”

Chapter 14

WESLEY AND I START talking about where we hope we’ll be a year from now (the lady will be presiding over party games in the billiard room with a full house of guests; the gentleman will be avoiding aforementioned party games and guests, exercising a horse he rescued from negligent owners), getting so lost in the discussion that we get physically lost, too. It takes us longer than anticipated to find the fourth treasure: a dollar-store gramophone music box whose horn is camouflaged by the surrounding moonflowers, which plays the first few notes of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” before sputtering out.

A bridge we were supposed to cross to reach the fifth and final X is too crumbled to trust, so we lose an hour figuring out an alternate course. Dinner is a feast for champions: premade Mediterranean salads in mason jars, tomato and cheese sandwiches, and blueberry bars that have gotten so gooey that we have to wash our hands in a stream afterward.

“Nearly there,” Wesley reports, adjusting his pack. It’s cooling off, sky deepening to ocean blue with a dusting of red over the tree line. I spot the first star, which turns out to be an airplane. By the time I tear my eyes away from Wesley’s grin, three real stars have appeared.

“Shoot.” The metal detector, which I’ve wedged into the center of my rolled-up sleeping bag, falls out. We’re up to our knees in a wide-open field of Indian grass, and the metal detector vanishes the moment it tumbles out. “Hang on.”

Golden stalks ripple as Wesley twists at the waist to look me over. “What’s wrong?”

“Dropped the metal detector.”

He gets out his phone, tapping it a couple times to wake up the white-blue light. I do the same, but before I can drop down to select the flashlight my screen changes and my finger lands on a different button instead. “What the . . .”

Gemma Peterson is waving at me.

I’ve accepted a video call.

“Oh my god, you answered!” she exclaims. “Where are you? Are you outside?”

Wesley swings a confused glance toward my phone. “What’s that?”

“Maybell,” Gemma gasps. “I have a TON of stuff to catch you up on, oh my god oh my god oh my god. Where’ve you been? How are you? It’s been forever!” She doesn’t leave room for me to answer. “You won’t believe it when you hear about—” Her eyes grow enormous, jaw hitting the floor. “Holy shit. You actually went and found him?”

“What—I—”

Wesley’s behind me, he and Gemma staring at each other over my shoulder. Gemma bounces up and down, squealing at a sonic pitch. “Holy shit! Holy shiiiiiiit! Did I actually connect you two? Did I make this happen?”

Wesley’s face wrinkles in confusion. “What’s she talking about?” he asks me.

My throat closes up. I can’t breathe, can’t think. My face is a furnace, so I know it’s turned red and I know it’s obvious. Adrenaline surges while my limbs weaken. Have to get out of here.

“You’re the picture!” she cries. “You’re the picture I used for Jack! This is just too much.”

He moves closer, eyes sharpening. “My picture?”

I need to say something, but I dropped my voice in the grass and can’t find it. It’s gone. This is it. My worst fear realizing itself out of nowhere, no warning.

“The picture I showed Maybell! When I was sending emails from the boyfriend I made up for her, which I was actually talking about with this guy I’m seeing earlier today, because good lord, wasn’t that a missed opportunity if you think about it? If I’d called Nev and Max from the Catfish show, we could have gotten on TV. And they probably would’ve paid us. But it looks like you went investigating on your own.”

My pulse accelerates to a dangerous speed, face hot, ears on fire. I try to regulate my breathing but I’m broken, a vast panic of white, wordless alarm, and I’m paralyzed. Even with my mouth open, I draw in too little oxygen and the world begins to fuzz and fray at the edges.

Something wrong is happening to my body.

“Wait,” Wesley says.

She steamrolls right over him. “I still feel terrible about that, but if you—like, are you dating now? ’Cause if you are, it was kinda worth it I guess.” Her nose is an inch from her screen, trying to see. “It’s getting hard to see you. Can you turn a light on or something?”