“Holy shit, it looks exactly like I remember,” she yelled above the hailstorm.
It really was more shack than cabin, with only one room, maybe ten feet by ten feet, with an old, rusted-out woodstove in one corner, a dusty trunk in another, and… that was it. There was no table, no chair, let alone anything to sleep on. It was, in design and location, only a place to provide shelter, not comfort. In the corner directly across from the door, the wood floor had rotted away, leaving a hole with dirt and rock visible beneath.
There was nothing even for them to explore, and so they turned and stared at each other, their smiles jubilant and wild. They’d found the cabin. Somehow they were one step closer, and with each step, this stupid, crazy, amazing, far-fetched plan seemed more and more possible.
Lily looked past him and her expression cleared, then she stepped to the wall, running her hand down the dates etched there. There were at least thirty of them scraped into the wood, ranging from dates too old to make out, to about ten years ago, and next to each were initials.
Most of them were WRW.
“William Robert Wilder,” she said, tracing with a finger. The hail had stopped, and now rain pattered gently down on the tin roof. “That’s Duke.”
He touched a crooked LFW. “Is that you?” Leo asked, remembering. “Liliana Faith?”
She nodded. “He started exploring when he was around eleven, I think.” She dropped her hand. “Closer to where he grew up, though. Near Laramie. His parents would tell him to get out at sunrise and be back for dinner.” She laughed. “He went on a backpacking trip in Moab when he was about fourteen, met up with a group of researchers from Princeton, and just started hanging around all summer until finally they let him help with their digs. He lost a finger when he was fifteen, and didn’t even call his parents. Just quietly left the dig and took himself to the ER.”
Leo let out a low whistle. “He told me he lost it chopping carrots at the ranch.”
“He was absolutely fucking with you.” She grinned. “Anyway, he and Mom met in school in Salt Lake. He was studying history and archaeology, and she was studying marine sciences. Marine sciences!” Lily exhaled a dry laugh. “Then he brought her to the desert.”
“Yikes.”
“Right?” she agreed. “They moved to Hester after they got married and helped my uncle work the ranch in Laramie half the year. What was she supposed to do in either of those places? Duke got to join all sorts of teams going out on expeditions. His life stayed interesting and full; hers just got tiny, and he was gone all the time. Not to mention they were broke.” She touched one of the dates—1987—carved there. “Sometimes I can’t really blame her for leaving.”
Lily’s mother: the one subject she’d never really opened up about. He wanted to tread carefully. “I think you can blame her for leaving you.”
Lily shrugged, dragging her fingers down the wall. “Yeah.”
“How old was Duke when he died?”
She thought for a beat. “Well, it was seven years ago, so… fifty-three.”
“So young.”
She looked at these carvings for a few seconds longer. “Yeah. Hard living.”
“Do you have any contact with your mom?”
Lily shook her head. “She visited a few times. But she never asked me to come with her. I think she just needed to start over.”
This last sentence felt like an old, dusty echo, and ignited a spark of anger in Leo’s chest. “That was my dad’s line, too,” he told her. “It’s bullshit. Once you have a kid, you don’t get a do-over.”
“Honestly,” she admitted, “I was closest to my uncle Dan. He loved horses the way I do. I lived for summers at the ranch with him. It was hardest when he died, but by then I was seventeen, and I could see the future where the ranch was mine and I could do what I wanted for the rest of my life.”
They fell quiet, staring at the carvings in the wood, until a tiny hitch in her breath made him look more closely, leaning forward to be able to catch a view of her face. Quickly, she wiped a tear away.
“Hey, hey,” Leo said, trying to turn her to him. “Talk to me.”
Her face was red and angry, and she stepped into his arms. “Do we really think Duke found the treasure?” she mumbled into his chest. “What kind of a monster does that? Do you know how that money could have changed our lives? To think that he managed to find it and turn it into some kind of game? It makes me feel crazy.”