Chapter 25 #2
I shine the light out on the branches—no marks. Nothing. Angel Oak is a big tree with a lot of history but no sign of what I need.
My heart sinks.
Two places and not a single sign of the gold existing.
If I waste weeks on this only for it to be nothing, we’ll lose everything. Jonathan already thinks I can’t do this; maybe I can’t. Maybe it really isn’t here. Maybe it’s nowhere. Maybe we’ll lose everything.
“Rue,” Nash calls. “We have to go.”
“Coming.” I shove the flashlight into my pocket and make quick work of my descent on the same branch that led me up.
“Nothing,” I tell him when I’m on the ground, wiping bark bits from my hands and legs. I scan the perimeter for anything I could have missed. Anywhere else Anson would have left a clue.
I don’t have a single other idea.
Nash tilts his head toward the gate, the same disappointment filling his face that I feel on mine.
Hammer to nail, it strikes me right there that he’s not upset because we didn’t find anything: His disappointment is for me.
Jonathan, as wonderful as he is, would never do something like this.
He isn’t. Cap was right. He’s carrying on like he always does, while Nash just broke into a historic site, and I have no clue why other than his ceaseless quest for fun.
Yet here he is. Underneath the oldest tree east of the Mississippi, this realization splits me in half.
“Hey.” Halfway to the gate, I stop Nash with a hand on his arm. It’s not the right time, but it’s like this tree amplifies the urgency of every thought I have. “Do you think the gold is here? In Charleston, I mean?”
“No,” he says without hesitating. “Not really.”
My stomach drops like a broken elevator.
“So why do this?” Leroy shouts five minutes. “Why-why take off work and help me? Why blow off your—” I cannot. “Why don’t you seem shocked that I’m here? Why aren’t you mad about me snooping and putting someone else’s ring on my finger? I didn’t tell you I had a kid. I just—just, why?”
His eyes bounce between mine as the loud saw of cicadas fills the air along with Sunny’s shouted hurry the hell up!
Nash glances at the gate then back to me, expression best described as amused disbelief. “Do I really need to spell everything out to you, Rue Conway?”
My heart pounds, because yes. He must.
Because I have no idea what’s happening.
Why I still feel like I’m in love with him even though there’s no possible way that’s true. Because Jonathan is everything I’ve ever wanted, and Nash and I have been apart for eight years.
In the distance, Cap chuckles then coughs, and Nash grabs my hand—interlacing every finger with mine. “We have to get out of here.”
“Damn cat running around in here,” Leroy’s saying on his phone when we get through the gate. “Yep . . . yep. 10-4.” He raises his eyebrows at me while Nash drops my hand to put the chain through the links of the fence and locks it. “I’ll get him out and check for anything else.”
“Well?” Sunny demands when the call ends. “The happy couple have bes’ found somethin’ to be draggin’ feet like that.”
“Nothing,” Nash says.
“Leaves and twigs,” I add. “No marks. No sign a human has ever been up there.” To Cap: “You think we missed something?”
“Eh. Maybe nothing here to find.” He grips the top of his cane with both hands and leans into it. “Maybe just a place to see for fun.”
“Fun?” That is the worst news of my day. “Why on earth would he do that?”
“Anson and his wife had been away from each other for a whole war,” Nash says. “Four years. Fun probably sounded fun.”
I jam my palms into my eyes, wondering if for the first time we’re following some dead guy’s vacation itinerary instead. It’s only been three days, but I only have $17.32 left.
Leroy says, “Hate to bust up the shindig, but I have a city to protect.” He gives Sunny a hug. “Keep out of trouble, will ya, cuz?”
“These fools don’t listen to me,” she says to him before turning her gaze to me. Illuminated by a streetlight, the smile on her face goes frigid. “But I got my eye on them.”
Yikes.
Leroy chuckles, and we all thank him before he gets in his car and drives away.
“Where do we go tomorrow?” I ask with a defeated sigh. “Folly? The beach, right?”
“Deal was we have to move at Anson’s pace.” Nash folds his arms over his chest. “This was already too rushed. We have to take tomorrow off.” He gives Cap a sideways look. “Right, Cap?”
“Yep,” Cap says, tapping his cane in the dirt. “The Order of Historical Slow Reenacting says that.”
That absolutely was not what they called it yesterday.
“No way.” I blow my bangs out of my eyes, the ticking time bomb of my bank account making me dizzy. “We have to keep going. We can take the days after we find the money off. After we’ve exhausted all the leads and explored every possible option of where this might be.”
“Sorry, Rue,” Nash says. “Not happening.” I start to argue, but he holds up a silencing finger, which, in fact, silences me.
“Tomorrow we do something else, then we do something from the letter. There are only five places to visit and a fortnight to do it in.” He grins.
Bastard. “I’m sure your clients will agree there’s plenty of time for both. ”
“I like that plan,” Cap says with a puff of Penny. “Say, maybe one night we can go giggin’.”
Any swoony feelings I was having earlier completely dissolve. As does my adoration for the ring on my finger. At once, I am livid, jerking at the ring only for it not to budge. Again.
“I don’t want to go giggin’,” I say through gritted teeth. “And I said I have two weeks at most.” My nostrils flare. “You two act like I don’t have a whole life to get back to. A kid. A job. A fiancé.” I give Nash a pointed look. “What else do we have to do that takes a whole day?”
“Ooooohh-weeee,” Sunny sings, providing a grim reminder that she’s still here.
She raises her arms over her head and snaps a rhythm with her fingers that makes her hips move.
“Cappy, baby.” She bumps a hip into Cap, who—dances?
What the hell does the muggy air in this place do to people?
“We got our work cut out for us with this honey child, don’t we? ”
Cap uses his cane to steady himself while he moves to the Sunny-induced beat. “Don’t I know it.”
“I’m forty-two,” I tell her, pulling my shoulders back. “I am not a honey child.”
She stops dancing and purses her lips. I do not step away. On the contrary, rage from lack of money and these idiots playing with my emotions wills me to jut my chin out and take a step forward. Whatever this woman is trying to do—absolutely not. Not today. Not anymore.
She laughs—loud—and claps her hands together—louder.
“She does have some spunk in her after all, huh, Cappy?”
Cappy chuckles. “That’s my girl.”
Nash shakes his head with a slight laugh and drops into the passenger seat of the car.
I hate every single one of them.
At Nash’s house, Sunny offers to drive Cap back to the marina.
“See you soon, bossman,” she says to Nash. “Be warned, it’s going to be a wild night.”
Wild night?
“Looking forward to it,” he says.
What?
Sunny flashes a challenging smile my way, then drives away.
“I have to run out for a bit,” Nash says to me. “You sure I can’t convince you to stay?”
“Run out?” I don’t like how possessive I sound.
“Run out,” he repeats with raised brows. “I do that sometimes.” In my silence: “You want to know where I’m going?”
Yes.
“I couldn’t care less where you spend your time. Or nights.”
“Kinda sounds like you do.” He twirls his keys around his middle finger, eyes not leaving mine. “Just like it kinda sounded earlier that you like that ring stuck to your finger.”
The way this man can make my moods and feelings flip like a switch could sell tickets at a circus sideshow. “I’ll get it off.”
He hums, glancing up and down the street before settling his gaze back on me. In the streetlight, in the silence, he looks so damn good.
Good enough I don’t want him to go do whatever he’s about to go do with a woman I wish didn’t exist.
Good enough it makes me homesick for a life I only ever had a taste of.
Those thoughts alone are enough to let me know I need to get out of here and dump a bucket of ice on my head.
“Night, Nash.”
He wordlessly watches me fumble to get my key in the ignition, not budging from his position on the street as he shrinks in my rearview mirror.
I circle his neighborhood for fifteen minutes just to be sure he’s gone, then park at the same vacant lot as last night and wheel my suitcase the two blocks back to his house. I barely glance at the empty driveway.
Jonathan hasn’t called—he has his kids tonight—but even if he had, I don’t want to talk to him. I’m frustrated.
That he’s not here.
That he convinced me to drink black coffee.
That he proposed.
To Reese, I send a short update and a goodnight along with a picture of Angel Oak for Bennie. Gold finding took us to this tree, and I climbed it!
Reese responds instantly. Bennie is impressed and said she’s proud of you.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her she’s the only one.
Mom almost bought a chamber pot chair for $300 today but I nipped that in the bud real quick.
I don’t need to know antiques to know that’s a shitty deal (funny, right?) She’s fine, just a pain in the ass.
Is it weird I’m getting nervous about her having surgery?
I know how she feels. I want Mom to have the surgery, but I want the surgery to be on her finger and not her brain.
All I write is, Best-case scenario is they take out too much and she forgets about you forever.
She doesn’t respond—she doesn’t have to.
Sleep eludes me.
When my phone rings at nearly eleven and Nash’s name fills the screen, I don’t even pretend I’m not going to answer it.
“Yes, Nash?”
“You like the ring.” It’s not a question.
“Pretty sure I told you I hated it.” Even in the dark, the small diamonds sparkle. “That why you called? Because your ugly ring is stuck on my fat finger? I’ll get it off.”
“Noted.” He chuckles softly. “I need to ask you something.” There’s a TV on wherever he is. “And it’s really important.”
I sit up, my heart tap dancing around my chest. “Okay . . .”
“I don’t know how to ask this . . . but . . .” The pause that follows is long enough my body physically refuses to let me breathe. “Will you have breakfast with me tomorrow?”
Out goes my breath with a laugh and I flop back onto the accidental futon.
“You’re an ass.” I roll my eyes like he can see me. “Will you even be back from wherever you are in the morning?”
“Who says I’m not home?” I hear his smile.
Right.
“Are you?”
“If you’d stay at my house, you’d know.”
I swallow, unsure why he’s calling me from another woman’s house while inviting me to stay at his. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Hm.” More TV sounds fill the air. “I know you say you can’t do that.”
What sounds like a child’s voice calls Nash’s name and he responds with a muffled, give me just a minute, dude.
A child?
“Sorry about that,” he says to me.
Does he have a child? No, he can’t; he called him Nash. Maybe it’s Emma’s? But Sunny said it’s going to be a wild night. I don’t know what any of this means.
I clear my throat. “Thank you for breaking into a tree with me tonight.”
“You have fun?”
The question temporarily stops me from wondering about the mystery kid. Because as stupid as tonight was—as reckless and pointless—it was also thrilling. And fun. Fun to break into an old tree with a man I’m supposed to be divorcing while looking for gold that might not exist.
His Thought so blurs with the TV noise and the child’s voice. “I have to go. See you in the morning.”
“Night, Nash.”
Once again, his headlights shining through the window don’t let me sleep until after midnight.