Harriet Prescott slowly shrugged. She seemed sad when she answered. “There was a time when I believed. There was a time when it all made sense.”
“Why did it make sense?” Denny cleared his throat and glanced at the others before he added, “People don’t just lose treasure.”
Harriet lifted a brow as sassily as any of their friends and Kate choked on a giggle.
“There was a bit of a family ruckus. Imagine the grandfather of the family appalled by the outrageous behavior of his progeny.”
“I feel like I know all about times like those,” Victor said.
“I think I had one just today,” Rita added sourly.
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Harriet said. “Choosing what to take from our elders and what to leave behind. What have they given us that we should discard? And what are values that will see their descendants through the ages? In our family,” Harriet continued, sounding as though she were no longer seeing them but looking back in time, “my ancestor who supposedly hid the fortune didn’t appreciate the idea that he was wrong. He punished the family by taking away the fortune. We were supposedly quite wealthy then. After his death…it was the beginning our decline. The family never recovered.”
“Is there any possibility that the fortune of your family didn’t just get hidden away by this ancestor of yours?”
Harriet shrugged and leaned back. “Well, that is the question, isn’t it? My cousin always believed that this ancestor of ours was too parsimonious, too proud of that fortune and being the lord over it to not leave it intact.”
Denny glanced around the table and muttered, “That’s what everyone wants but so few have succeeded.”
“It mattered when I was a girl, you know. Now—” Harriet shook her head. “My family is gone. So few of us have survived to today, and the family name doesn’t mean what it did before. The estate is gone. All of it. We’re wisps of memory now, and in another century, no one will care who we were, who we loved, and what we believed.”
“Then,” Victor told her gallantly, “today is the day you help us find the treasure.”
“And,” Rita added, “if you’d like, today is the day you return to the house of your kin.”
“But it’s your house now.”
“Perhaps you’ve noticed that it is ridiculous.”
Harriet laughed. “Thank you.” Her eyes filled with tears and then she leaned in to admit, “It’s drafty and it’s yours, my dear. I should very much rather stay in my pretty little cottage. I shall, however, help you find that treasure if only to give my cousin rest.”
“Is it possible your cousin is our housebreaker?” Rita asked.
Harriet paused long enough that she answered without answering.
“Is there anyone else that you could imagine also housebreaking?”
Harriet pressed her lips together.
Vi glanced at Rita and asked, “What if we promise not to make things difficult for them as long as we can get them to stop what they’re doing? What if you can save them?”
“I’ll come,” Harriet sighed. “Oscar always was more of a dreamer than someone who bothered with the little things like laws and door locks.”
“We can identify with that,” Denny told Harriet with pride while the others tried to hide their twitching lips. “We’ve played with the edges of the law ourselves. Why don’t we see if we can find the treasure? Find it and work together?”
Harriet nodded, and Vi took the goblet from Rita, running her fingers over the edges. “It is an interesting set of scratches. It feels deliberate.” She looked around the table, and then Vi stood and raised the goblet as she announced, “To Rita’s!”
Rita’s house was sprawling with hallways and wings. It was old and there were ruins of an even older house on the grounds.
“What do we think? Do we think that the ruins are the focus of the treasure or the house?”
Harriet looked up at the house where her mother had been born before walking up the steps. She trailed her fingers over the doorway, seeing something the others could not. With a deep breath, Harriet turned and responded. “It’s an interesting conundrum and one we explored both ways. The ruins weren’t ruined when the house was built. It was more that they were untenable.” She laughed darkly. “So much focus on property, on family lines. My grandfather disowned my mother when she married my father, did you know?”
Rita shook her head.
Harriet continued as if she could see the ghosts of her dead. “Grandfather lived long enough to watch my father die and then my mother die, and he was too cold to do more than see I didn’t starve and leave me enough to get by. Nothing more. Economy is always necessary; I have to know my place.” She said it like a quote but she didn’t sound bitter. In fact, she sounded amused. “The poor man. What a way to live.”
“It doesn’t make you sad?”
“Sad for what could have been?” Harriet looked up at the house and then away. “I’m too old for that. Though it did make me sad once.”
She stared at the property. “Oscar thought that the treasure was in the ruins. He thought that a crumbling mansion and the shadows of the former days would have been the perfect place to hide it.”
Victor followed the woman’s gaze. “But you have a different thought.”
“In those days, I was an audience for Oscar.”
“Today you’re the star,” Victor told her. “We can’t do this without you. But, we need to find the treasure, end the hunt, and secure our homes again. We have babies to protect.”
“Do you?” Harriet smiled distantly and with real regret. “I always wanted a baby.”
“They change everything,” Victor told her. He glanced at Kate and took her hand, tucking her into his side. “Family does that.”
“Good family,” Harriet agreed. “Good friends. I didn’t have a child, but I had a good life.” She smiled again, this time with pleasure. “I’m old now, and I find myself utterly sure that the twilight
