Abandon

ceiling. “We need to go up one more,” Lawrence said.

They climbed, wood creaking, bowing where they stepped.

Abigail was the third to emerge into the cupola. She shone her light on walls lined with empty shelves, the books having long since disappeared, taken by vandals or reduced by time and moisture to wads of leather, paper, glue. Two chairs and a sofa had disintegrated on the floor. Half the stones had fallen out of the two hearths. Abigail edged toward an opening in the middle of the floor, peered down, her light beam shining to the ground level.

“All right, Lar. Where is it?”

Lawrence carefully moved over to one of the bookshelves and knelt down, the floor cracking. When he stood again, he held an eight-foot brass pole, severely tarnished, with a hooked end. He looked up. They all looked up, lights converging on a square door in the ceiling. Lawrence reached up, unlatched the rusted lock, pushed open the hatch. Snow fell through the hole into the library.

“You been up there before, Lar?”

“No. I always thought it was too dangerous. If the floor were to give way, it’s a fifty-foot fall. But all things considered, I think it’s worth the risk.”

“How the hell we gonna climb up through that hatch?”

Lawrence pointed back to the bookshelf. “With that ladder.”

Jerrod and Stu pulled the ladder out from under the long bookshelf, hoisted it up, and braced it against the opening.

“Doesn’t exactly look like a Craftsman product,” Isaiah said, grazing his gloved hand across a cracked wooden rung.

“I’ll go up first. Test it.”

“No, she will.” He waved Abigail over. “What’s up there, Lar?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing.”

“That wouldn’t bode well for you, for any of you.” He looked at Abigail. “Up you go.”

She grasped the sides of the old ladder and began to climb, carefully easing her weight onto each rung. The fourth one snapped, but she caught herself. The tenth rung was missing. As she neared the top, snow collected in her hair. Then she scrambled out of the hatch, stepping onto the roof of Emerald House.

“Stay in one spot!” Lawrence shouted up at her. “I have no idea how stable it is up there!” She backed away from the opening, leaned against the wrought-iron railing that surrounded this small open veranda, snow blowing so hard into her face that she choked on it, had to cover her mouth with her hands.

Lawrence came up, then Isaiah, Emmett, June, and finally Stu and Jerrod.

Abigail rubbed her arms, and as she stood watching her father, it hit her: There was nothing on this veranda but an inch and a half of snow, and he looked nervous in the beam of her headlamp, like he was trying to pass off Monopoly money for true currency.

“Well,” Lawrence said, kneeling down, inspecting a corner of the veranda, brushing the snow off the stone. “I’m just at a total loss, Isaiah.”

Abigail gripped the iron railing. June and Emmett stood beside her, Isaiah with his back to her, near a skylight that had long since been liberated of its glass.

“You’re at a loss,” Isaiah said. The hood of his parka had fallen back, snow collecting in his black hair. “What exactly does that mean, Larry?”

“It means . . . it means I don’t know where the gold is. I thought I did, but I don’t. I’m horribly disappointed, believe me.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“But it just isn’t here. I don’t know where else to look, and that’s the truth. So here’s what I’m thinking. We don’t know a thing about you, so what if you three just leave us here, disappear into the night. We never see you again. You never see us. And we never say a word. Not even about Scott. We’ll pretend this never happened.”

“He’s right,” June said, staving off tears. “Emmett and I would just be so grateful to be home again. To put all this behind us. I’m sorry you didn’t find the gold you were looking for, but can’t this be over now? You men came wearing masks, which tells me that you didn’t come into these mountains intending violence.”

“We could just leave, Isaiah,” Jerrod said. “Scott and Lawrence know more about me than any of us, but I’d be willing to walk.”

Lawrence said, “Look, we could spend tonight in Packer’s mansion, give you guys a chance to head out. I’m telling you, it’d be like this never happened.”

Isaiah stared at the snow-dusted stone beneath his feet. “Stu,” he said, “you got an opinion about this you’d care to toss into the hat?”

“I’m with you, man. Whatever you wanna do, I’m with you.”

Isaiah nodded. He turned around, looked at Abigail and the Tozers, who were standing together on the east side of the veranda. He approached them, faced Emmett.

“I don’t think I caught your name.”

“Emmett Tozer.”

“Cool if I call you Em?”

“Sure. June calls me that all the time.”

“Well, Em.” He pointed at Lawrence. “For this, you can thank that motherfucker.”