Page 34 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“It’s not here, whatever it is. We’ve combed every inch.”

“Did you search for the bench? It might be around here somewhere.”

“Right. I knew I kept you around for a reason.”

They let themselves out the back door. Clouds moved over the moon, so that all they saw was a hunched shadow near the southwestern edge of the property, just before it fell into a sloped dell that cradled rocks and rainwater. They raced toward it, footsteps tamping the overgrown weeds in rhythm.

A herd of sisters, Vivi thought to herself.

Layers of grime and weather had rendered the carving on the bench illegible, but Calla dug a stick into the grooves and scraped away what she could.

“‘Après tout ce temps,’” she read aloud. She touched the carving of the sun. “This is it.”

Perhaps over the years, lovers had stolen to this bench to offer their tremulous confessions and proposals, then gone away thinking about the quaint hiding spot that no one knew about but them. ButLýhad known, Vivi was sure of it.

They examined the bench all over, sagging in disappointment over what they couldn’t find. No messages, no trap doors. Of course there wouldn’t be anything. Eighty years had passed. Whatever the artist had hidden would have undoubtedly been unrooted or destroyed before then.

They sat in silence. Calla bit at a corner of her thumb. A storm was brewing in her expression; irate winds crossing her delicate features.

“Now what?” she demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“You always know.”

“But Idon’t, not this time.”

“We came all this way. What if there’s nothing here? We just give up?” Panic squeezed around Calla’s words, pitching her voice an octave higher than usual.

“Hold on, I’m thinking.”

And she was, but not just about the offering. Vivi was thinking about the ghostly presence she’d felt in the cottage. The way this place seemed to call for her. Her inner knowing was buzzing at her. Telling her to pay attention. But to what?

Calla was kicking at the dirt with her gladiator sandal, silly bits of leather tied around her foot. She kept nudging at the ground with the toe of her shoe, swirling it like a drill, boring a quarter-sized hole. With a painful clutch, Vivi recalled Samuel writing about Phoebe burying gems around their Hyde Park brownstone, like a one-person treasure hunt. To the email, he’d attached Phoebe’s drawing of two figural blobs, Vivi and Dr. Dirt respectively, both clutching shovels. Bright gems, rendered in saturated markers, fell around them like technicolor rain.

Dirt. Hidden treasure.Buried under the endless sun.

Suddenly, Vivi shot up.

“What is it?” Calla asked.

“Stay here. I know what to do.”

She went into the cottage and retrieved the rusted spade. Back at the bench, she pressed the metal tip into the ground and began to dig.

“You think it’s here?” Calla asked. She knelt next to Vivi, shining the flashlight into the hole. Her pout was giving way to a nascent fascination.

“Probably not. But we should check.”

Her digging yielded nothing but more dirt. Vivi’s shoulders began to hurt. She thought of how it would only take a few minutes to find her way back to her soft bed, to allow the fingers of sleep to draw her close. It was a stupid idea, this rambling excavation.

Miffed at herself, she began to stand, but as she did, the cloud cover shifted, and she saw a glint of something in the hole. Just a small flick of silver, but enough to revive her curiosity. Calla knelt closer with the flashlight.

“You see it?” she asked, grasping Vivi’s forearm so hard she left half-moon prints.

“I see it. We should keep going.”

“Let me take a turn.”