EXCERPT ONE
“Look for ground that looks like it’s been dug up sometime in the past year,” Hildy offered. “By Grandpa.”
We laughed, but the half-hearted chuckles quickly died. The six of us had been rooting around in our grandparents’ small backyard for the past twenty minutes in the drizzle and mud, looking for gold. Now Tony had stains on the knees of his sweatpants from when he had crawled through the shrubbery, Nikki had dirt encrusted under her short fingernails because she had dug through the bags of topsoil in the all but abandoned shed, and my converses were soaking wet after an unfortunate slosh through a puddle.
“Can we go back inside now?” Gail asked, looking up at the gray sky that was dribbling rain on us like it had nothing better to do. “Or at least look somewhere that has a roof?”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Ashley demanded in mock-giddiness.
“It drowned, probably,” Nikki delivered, deadpan, shaking water from her ponytail. She wiggled her foot in her shoe. “I think the staple is coming out of my sock.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You have a staple in your sock?”
“There was a hole in it,” Nikki said defensively.
“Girls, we promised Grandma that we’d do our best to find that gold,” Hildy reminded. She lifted a rock with her shoe. “Gold? Gold!”
***
The reason for the excursion into the mud that not-so-fine afternoon was rather complicated. Our grandfather had died the year previously. Several weeks before his death, he had received in the mail a tube of golden coins. He had never divulged to anyone the reason for the purchasing of gold, although it was generally assumed by the older members of the family that he had put it away in case the economy fell through. He had hidden it in a secure place which was now proving too secure: no one could find it. Even our grandmother had not been told where it was, and everyone was beginning to come to terms with the fact that they were not going to find it. But as for me and my cousins, we did not give up quite as easily. As was proven by the fact that we were searching in the mud in the rain, peering under rocks and shrubs, chancing pneumonia and the staples escaping from our socks.
How extraordinary to have gold hidden in what might have been a childhood haunt. It could be anywhere: behind the couch I remembered huddling on watching Beauty and the Beast at the age of six; inside the rather freaky three-foot-high nutcracker soldier that I recalled squatting next to in a game of hide and seek; under the ledge that ran around the game room I had sat on with Hope as we admired her new frilly pink bathrobe. Anywhere – that was the charm of it.
But “anywhere” was also a very big place, and we – my cousins and I – had resigned ourselves to committing our whole day to the investigation of this shimmery, golden mystery.