33. Aurora
33
AURORA
“X” MARKS THE SPOT
“T hanks so much,” I said as I lingered in the doorway with a grocery bag hooked around my arm. “ It was so nice to meet you.”
“Of course, of course. You let us know if you need anything else, darling. Juniper was one of ours. So is Jack . That makes you one of ours too.” The lady turned and gave the burned wreckage a forlorn look. “ Such a shame. We’re glad you’re all right. Now . If you’re looking for work and need a reference, you put my name down first. And if you run out of anything, just holler.”
I didn’t even remember the lady’s name. Frankly , I wasn’t entirely sure she had told me. She was one in a long line of pop-in visitors I had gotten at Jack’s house today. They started as soon as the sun rose, bringing clothes, toiletries, gift cards, and casseroles.
I wasn’t sure why we needed casseroles. Jack’s house was fine. But the thought was kind, nonetheless.
I carted the haul the lady had left into the house and added it to the growing pile in the living room. At first, I had left the bags in the corner. But the pile kept growing, so I had started sorting it all.
The door opened and closed as I added the shampoo and conditioner to the hair products pile.
I had been given enough shampoo, deodorant, and soap to get me through the year. The instant community action brought tears to my eyes. This was the stuff of books.
Well, not my books. Maybe Willow’s .
The door opened and closed as Jack let himself in. I heard the drop of his station bag at the door. It was a familiar sound I had become accustomed to over the last week.
“Honey, I’m home,” he teased.
“In the living room,” I called back.
Jack popped his head in and went slack-jawed. “ So we don’t need to do that trip to the store, do we?”
I rested my hands on my hips and looked at the spread. “ Honestly , if you’re okay with rose-scented deodorant and soap, I’d say we’re both set for the next year or so.”
He chuckled as he leaned in for a kiss. “ I’ll stick with mine.” The peck was soft and quick, but warmed me immediately. It was a familiar hello I would never get tired of. “ But I like the sound of you being here in a year or so.”
I chewed on my lip. “ This is way more stuff than I need.”
“People just want to love on you. It’s what we do around here, so get used to it.”
“And I appreciate that. Also , we don’t have to cook for a long, long time.” I looked at the pile of brand-new toiletries, clothes that were too big or small for me, the hair supplies that I couldn’t possibly go through in a decade, and makeup that I rarely wore. “ Is there a women’s shelter around that I can donate some of this stuff to? Don’t get me wrong, I’ll keep what I need, but it seems wasteful for me to keep it all.”
“Bring it by the station when you’re done sorting it all. We send donations down to the one in Morehead City every month.”
“How was work?”
“Not that bad, actually,” Jack said as he headed into the bedroom and changed out of his station clothes. “ Got a few calls before midnight, but I got to sleep from one to six.” He cracked a smile when he came back out, pulling on a fresh t-shirt. “ That means Drew’s about to have a bad day today.”
“You and your superstitions . . .”
He handed his phone over. “ Your mom texted and said the insurance adjuster will be out to inspect the house the day after tomorrow.”
I glanced at the message, then pawed through the stack of papers on the kitchen table. “ I’m almost done with the inventory list of everything that was in the house. It was a good thing Whitney took pictures during the party. It made it easier to remember what was inside.”
Jack towered behind me, bracing his hands on either side of the table to cage me in. “ How long will it take for insurance to pay your mom?”
“A week or two for the adjuster to do the investigation, a month for the paperwork, and the payout will happen a week or two after that.” I dug my hands into my hair. “ Most of it has to go to clearing the site so we can sell the land, then paying back the renovation costs so my mom isn't on the hook for it.”
His hand gently rubbing my back was soothing. “ Will you get anything from the sale of the land?”
“Maybe eventually. But it’ll be a lot longer than we were anticipating, and it won’t be nearly as much.”
He kissed the back of my head. “ I’ve got you.”
I hung my head. “ You shouldn’t have to. You didn’t sign up for this.”
“You didn’t sign up for it either. Don’t , for one second, pretend that you knew what you were getting into with this house.”
I let out a sharp breath. “ Understatement of the year.”
Jack pushed the insurance inventory list aside and thumbed through the Aurora Archer letters I had been reading over. The tiny vial of moonshine, the engraved pen, and the key sat beside them. “ Have you figured out what they mean yet?”
“Why do you think they mean something?”
He fingered the key. “ This has to go to something, right? You said it didn’t go to any furniture or locks in the house. Why else would it be hidden in a brick at the top of the fireplace?” He picked up the pen and inspected it, then clicked the end and scribbled a series of circles on the corner of a junk mail envelope. The ink came out in a barely-there pale yellow.
“That’s weird . . .”
“Probably just old,” he said. “ What’s weird is the engraving. There’s no bank around here named that.”
“There’s that island named Shackleford Banks . I see advertisements for the ferry everywhere.”
“Yeah, but your Aunt Juniper added ‘and trust.’ You know. Bank and trust .”
“Maybe there was a bank by that name a long time ago?”
Jack shook his head. “ I’ve lived here my whole life. There’s never been a bank called Shackleford Banks and Trust .”
Something about the weird, clear, yellowish ink pricked at the “what if” questions I always asked myself when I was plotting a book.
“What if it’s invisible ink?”
“What do you mean?” Jack said.
I pointed to where he had scribbled on the envelope with a spam credit card offer. The circles had almost disappeared.
My gaze darted to the letters we had found in the floor, chimney, and mirror. “ What if the manuscript pages aren’t the point? They never made any sense together, anyway.”
Jack chuckled. “ You think there’s a hidden message?”
I peered over my shoulder at him. “ It’s my aunt we’re talking about. The woman was one fry short of a combo meal, but she was clever.”
“You have a point.” He rested his chin on top of my head. “ All right, Sherlock . How do we find the treasure map?”
I worked it over in my mind. “ There’s always a chance we didn’t find all of them, but I’d be surprised if there were any left. We touched every inch of that house.” I looked from the pen to the moonshine to the papers. “ What if they all go together?” I pointed to the papers. “ This is the map.” I pushed the pen and moonshine together. “ This is the key.” I picked up the actual key. “ And this opens the treasure.”
“How do the pen and the booze work together?”
A slow smile worked across my face. “ Alcohol -soluble inks change color when a high-proof solvent reacts with it.”
Jack picked up the small liquor bottle. “ High proof . . . like moonshine.”
“Looks like Aunt Juniper wasn’t a bootlegger after all.”
He looked at me curiously. “ How do you know about invisible ink?”
I grinned. “ I researched it for the book I just wrote.”
We divided and conquered. Jack cleared off the table and spread out the manuscript pages while I grabbed some cotton makeup pads and rubbing alcohol from the donation pile, just in case we ran out of moonshine.
I soaked one of the cotton pads in moonshine, and studied the pages. “ If I wipe it on the actual ink, it might smear it.”
Jack grabbed his phone and snapped photos of the pages, front and back, for posterity.
I nodded and let out a sharp breath. “ If this works, it’s totally going in another book.”
Jack grinned. “ I like the sound of that.”
I started with the paper we had found in the floorboard, dabbing along the edge.
Nothing happened.
My stomach twisted as I started on the beautiful calligraphy. I had almost made it to the end of the passage, when Jack grabbed my wrist.
“Look.”
He pointed to the line, where the letter X in the word “execution” had a distinct green number one blooming on the page.
“Holy shit,” I whispered. “ I didn’t think it would actually work.”
Jack let out a loud crack of laughter as he grabbed a cotton pad from the stack and went to work on the next letter. “ You’re a fucking genius, Roar .”
By the time we made it through all three manuscript pages, we had a running tally of five numbers and one letter: three from the witch story, two from the long-lost fisherman story, and one letter L from the love letter we found in the mirror.
“This is where my expertise ends,” I said as I looked at the sets of numbers Jack had meticulously written down. “ I’m not good at math.”
“Yeah, me neither,” he muttered as he hunched over the table. His gaze flicked from the pages to the key.
“And what if we don’t have the numbers in order? There would be like . . . millions of combinations.”
Jack scratched at the scruff beginning to fill in on his jaw. “ What if it’s a safety deposit box?”
“What do you mean?”
“The key isn’t the right size to go to a door lock or a car. It’s too small for that. It’s the size for a lock on a filing cabinet, but there wasn’t one in the house.” He picked up the invisible ink pen and showed me the engraving. “ Shackleford Banks and Trust . It’s not a bank name. It’s a bank near Shackleford Banks .”
“Seems like a stretch.”
“Babe, don’t take this the wrong way, but we just uncovered a coded message in pages we found hidden in your aunt’s house. I think we’re beyond the pale of ‘normal’ by now.”
“You have a point.”
Jack pinched the bridge of his nose as he racked his brain. “ There’s a bank in Beaufort that’s right across the street from the ferry that takes tourists out to Shackleford Banks .” He used the pen to point at the set of three numbers from the witch story. “ Hear me out. What if that’s the bank branch number.” He moved the tip to the set of two numbers from the fisherman story. “ That’s the safety deposit box number.”
“Then what’s the letter L for?”
Jack ran his hand over his hair. “ Some banks use letters to differentiate between small, medium, and large boxes. My folks used to have a box where they kept our birth certificates and passports and shit. Theirs had a S in the number for small.”
“So.” I picked up the key. “ We go to this bank that my aunt hasn’t visited in what—twenty-something years? Show them this key and tell them that we got the box number from invisible ink hidden on manuscript pages in her house. Oh yeah. And the house just burned to the ground. Best case scenario—they think we’re crazy and tell us to leave. Worst case scenario—we get arrested and run out of town by an angry mob.”
Jack laughed. “ It can’t hurt to try. But maybe we should keep the invisible ink and treasure hunt stuff to ourselves. We can just say you’re here on behalf of your great-aunt's estate and have the key to the box.”
* * *
I was going to throw up. The bank smelled too clean. It was too quiet. I looked too unkempt, even after showering and making myself look presentable. Certainly , the teller was going to think I was crazy.
Jack’s hand on my back was reassuring. I had convinced him to change into a Cedar Island Fire Department t-shirt in hopes that his career as a do-good boy scout would earn us some brownie points.
It probably wouldn’t.
The key in my hand was covered in sweat as I approached the counter.
“Good morning, ma’am,” the jovial old man said as he adjusted the glasses perched on the tip of his nose. “ What can I do for you today?”
“I, um, I’m here on behalf of my great-aunt’s estate,” I stammered. “ We were cleaning out her house and found her safety deposit box key and wanted to make sure we . . . closed it out with the rest of her affairs.”
The half-truth flowed like mud, but the teller didn’t seem fazed. “ What’s the box number, honey?”
“36L,” I said as confidently as I could. It was a shot in the dark. If he said I was an idiot, I’d just claim to be a summertimer and that I had gone to the wrong bank location or something.
But Jack had double-checked the branch number for the bank that was across from the ferry landing, and he was right. It matched the set of numbers from the letter.
The teller’s fingers flew over his computer keys with surprising speed. He froze, looked at me, then back at his computer screen.
“Um. Okay . Right this way, ma’am. You said that you have the key with you?”
I looked at Jack in shock. No way was it that easy.
“You don't need to see my ID or anything?” I asked, not that I had it.
The teller dabbed his face with a handkerchief. “ I’ve worked at this bank for nearly fifty years. The tale of box 36L has been around for a long time. I always thought it was a joke.”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked as he put a protective arm around my waist.
“The owner of that box—your aunt—prepaid for it for a hundred years. There’s a note on the account that says, in the event of her passing, whoever shows up with the key can have the contents. It’s . . . unconventional to say the least. But I met her a few times. She wasn’t the kind of woman who took no for an answer.”
We followed him through a keycode-protected door. I was entirely certain that, at any moment, we were about to be arrested.
The teller led us through rows of safety deposit boxes as he pulled out a bank master key. “ Right here. Might take your tall fella to reach it,” he said.
I handed Jack the key. The two of them inserted the master and the box keys at the same time. The click that echoed as they turned could have been heard from space.
Jack used both hands to carefully pull the box out of the wall. The teller removed the master key and showed us to a private room where we could look through the contents.
Jack set the box on the small table inside as the teller closed the door behind us. “ What do you think is in here?”
“At this point, my ability to guess what that batty old lady was up to has disappeared. Who prepays to use a safety deposit box for a hundred years?”
He shrugged. “ Your aunt. You can do the honors.”
“Please be bricks of gold. Please be bricks of gold,” I whispered under my breath as I opened the box.
But it definitely wasn’t bricks of gold. No diamonds. No fat stacks of cash. No map to a beach location where pirates had left a priceless treasure.
Ipulled out the heavy stack of loosely bound papers.
“What is it?” Jack asked.
I blinked in disbelief as it registered. “ It’s a book.”