slightly. She didn't seem worried about when and if Quentin. would pop the question. He could do no wrong.
They began to eat the gravlax Faith had made with the salmon from Sonny Prescott and dill from the Millers' garden. There was dark-brown bread to go with it, and Faith had heated up some tiny chevre tarts, in case anyone was still hungry.
“Delicious! And we certainly wouldn't need dinner after all this.' Hope leaned back against Quentin, sitting on the stair above.
“Speak for yourself. I always need Faith's dinners,' he protested.
“Me too,' Faith said. 'Besides, we'll eat later, after Ben is in bed. Anyway, it's a simple meal, a bourride, some salad—”
Hope sat up. 'And now, sister dear,' she said, fixing Faith with that gimlet eye usually employed in sizing up a building, or individual, in her capacity as a real estate appraiser for Citibank, 'tell all, and I do mean all—not the edited-for-Mother-and-Father version.”
Faith had sandwiched a brief mention of finding Roger's body between glorious descriptions of the flora and fauna of the Maine coast in a letter to her parents. After finding Bird's body, she had decided not to say anything more and confined herself to postcards of lighthouses and sunsets with brief messages about the weather.
“I know you found some poor drowned man's body on the beach, Fay, but knowing you I figured there had to be a whole lot more going on.”
Her sister was smart. But where to begin and where to stop? She gave an only slightly edited version of the last few weeks, and had just gotten to Bill Fox's suicide when the phone rang.
“I hope that's Pix,' Faith cried, and ran inside. It was.
“Faith, I had just about given up. They weren't home again. Then on my way back, I passed them on Route 17 and waved them over to the side. They'd been at Nan's sister's house helping her pack. She's moving to her daughter's in Granville or maybe it's South Beach.'
“Pix! Tell me about it later! Did they know where the road was?'
“Of course, and what's more we all drove over there and I know where it is now too. Is your sister there yet?'
“Yes, and there's just enough daylight to go and have a look. I haven't had a chance to tell them about it, but I'll fill them in on the way. Can you meet me there in ten minutes?'
“Of course. See you then.”
Faith ran back to the porch and hastily told Quentin and Hope about the quilt.
“Are you making this all up to entertain us?' Quentin asked reasonably. 'If so, it's very kind of you and a lot of fun—especially after the tale of horrors you've been relating.'
“I swear it's true,' Faith protested.
They were still claiming disbelief as they got into the Jeep while Faith threw some shovels, trowels, a pick, and a crowbar—all easily to hand in the Thorpe cottage's well-equipped barn—into the back. Soon they were headed off to Prescott Point. Ben chortled with joy at riding in the Jeep and made little
Pix was waiting by the side of the road.
“We have to walk in. A car can't get through anymore, but the Hamiltons said to follow the remnants of this stone wall and we'd end up where the house used to be. Maybe Jacob's Ladder was meant to look like a stone wall.”
Quentin swung Benjamin up on his shoulders and they set off. It was easy going at first; then they had to pick their way through a dense mass of alders. They emerged into what had obviously once been a clearing and looked across to a heap of fallen boards in an old cellar hole. The stairs were almost intact and looked odd leading to the pile of dereliction behind them.
“That's it! Those are the stairs! Come on, let's look for ferns.”
Quentin and Hope clearly believed Faith had gone mad and taken her neighbor and friend with her, but they decided to humor her. After all, there
A few minutes later Quentin, with Ben, his adoring disciple, in tow, strolled over to Faith. 'This is a fern, isn't it?' he asked, waving a giant frond at her.
“Yes! Where did you find it?'
“Over there'—he waved his hand—'by that fence.”
“Faith!' Pix screamed. 'Rail Fence!' This was no lighthearted scavenger hunt now.
They all raced over to the fence.
“Then,' said Faith slowly, 'the treasure must be buried under this pine.' She looked up at the towering tree, starting to merge with the sky in the dusky twilight. She was developing quite an affection for the pines of the Pinetree State. 'It's the only one standing'alone.' Matilda's clues had been perfect.
They circled the base of the tree. Quentin handed Ben over to Faith and began to dig in a few places. The earth was packed solid.
“I think we ought to come back with a metal detector,”
he suggested. 'There's no telling how deep this thing is buried, if it's here at all.'
“It's here,' Faith and Pix chorused.
Hope had been looking at a piece of ground between two exposed roots. 'Why don't you try this spot, darling? This would be where I would have hidden something; then I'd have these roots to guide me if I ever wanted to dig it up again.”
Sensible, very sensible.
Quentin started to dig, and at two feet the tip of the shovel hit something. He removed some more dirt, and Faith took the hand trowel and carefully scraped away the rest. After a long five minutes, she lifted a small tin box out of the hole.
They stood in silence and gazed at it before Pix said, 'Workbox,' and Faith nodded. Perhaps none of them, not even Faith and Pix, had ever been sure that there would be something there. And here it was—a small box, the black paint worn away in spots with some gold-painted trim still visible around the edge. It had a padlock that was intact.
“Prosperity,' whispered Faith. It was all too much.
“Well, well,' commented Quentin, 'I guess we don't need the crowbar for this baby. I can probably pry it open with my hands. That lock must be pretty rusty.'
“No,' cried Faith. 'We want to save it.' She had the feeling that breaking open the box was somehow a desecration. 'There are thousands of keys in a drawer at the cottage, and if those don't work, there's always the bobby-pin method. Come on, let's go.'
“Oh my God.' Pix put her hand to her mouth. 'I forgot all about Samantha. She's waiting at the bridge. Arlene's mother took them to the Bangor Mall today and was going to drop her this side of the bridge to wait for me, since she had to pick up the other kids at six. I've got to go! Faith, would it be too much to ask if you could wait until I got there to open it? Yes, of course it is. Just open it, don't wait.'
“Of course we'll wait. It's yours just as much as it's mine.”
Hope and Quentin looked a bit disappointed. Quentin, ever gallant, reassured Pix, 'Of course we can wait. We didn't even know about it until an hour ago, so we can certainlywait another few minutes. How long did you say it would take you to get your daughter?'
“I'll be back in a flash,' promised Pix, and she was off.
Faith was feeling slightly dazed. They walked slowly back to the road and she gave the box a shake or two. No coins rattled, but it was heavy.
“That's an old cash box,' Hope told her knowledgeably. 'You wouldn't use it to keep your buttons in.'
“You don't know New Englanders. It could just as well be string too short to be saved or something like that,' Faith rejoined, but Hope's positive identification increased her already wildly spiralling expectations.
They got back to the cottage and Faith looked around for a place to put the box. She set it on the table in the living room, but immediately picked it up and put it in one of the desk drawers instead. Who knew how long Pix might be? It was more temptation than anyone should have to bear to have it in plain sight.
“I'm going to feed Benjamin, and why don't you two go through the keys from the junk drawer in the kitchen and sort out all the small ones? That's not opening the box. If we don't do something, we'll go crazy.' She walked
