The Last Treasure (27 page)

There was something else underneath her surprise too. Hurt. Crisp and cutting and hard.

“He didn't say a word,” she admitted quietly as they walked back outside.

“It's not the best timing, but we'll figure it out. I've already talked to Bo and Tony about coming on full-time.”

The deckhands they'd recently hired. Liv forced her mind to focus on the logistics of this news—the impact to the business and not the impact to her heart. But the truth was undeniable, as impossible to swallow as the remainder of her meal. Three years since he'd first forced his way into their conversation at that party, Liv couldn't imagine their work, their
life
, without Whit Crosby.

•   •   •

A
ll evening, she kept her phone close by her side, sure that Whit would call her himself to tell her his news, but he never did. When she arrived on the boat the next morning, she believed he'd confess his grand plan with mournful eyes and a heavy heart, but two hours into their tour—college roommates in town for their twentieth reunion—he'd barely said hello to her, let alone
I'm leaving
.

After bringing the customers a snack of granola bars and sodas, Liv found Whit alone on the upper deck, finishing his cigarette.

“Good dive, huh?” he said.

“Not bad.”

“Sam said your dad's all settled in his new place.”

Was that honestly what he wanted to talk about?

She nodded stiffly. “
Settled
is not exactly the right word. He's there. I'm not sure he'll ever be settled.” She glanced at him. “But then you probably know all about that.”

She hadn't meant her tone to be so sharp, so accusatory, but there it was.

Whit stared at her, his eyes flashing with confusion.

She threw out her hands. “Were you just going to leave in the night without a word? Was that your plan?”

“Of course not.”

“What, then?”

“I just figured Sam would tell you.”

“You didn't think I'd want to hear it from you?” She turned away from him before the tears could spill over. Dammit, she'd vowed not to cry.

“Red . . .” He reached for her arm, but she yanked it out of reach, wiping her eyes roughly on her sleeve.

“First my dad, now you—everything's changing too fast.” She turned back to face him, her eyes filling again. “You could have at least waited a few more days so I didn't have to say good-bye to both of you in the same week, you know. Selfish jerk.”

He smiled patiently. “It's just Australia, Red. Not Mars.”

But it might as well have been another planet, and they both knew it.

Whit rubbed out his cigarette on the edge of a soda can and dropped it in.

“You really need to quit those,” Liv said, sniffling.

“When the right woman comes along to quit smoking for, I will.”

“You could quit for
yourself
, you know.”

He grinned. “Then I'd have to quit today. If I wait for the right woman, I might never have to.”

She rolled her eyes, but when he reached out to grab her a
second time, she didn't fight his capture. The smoky, salty scent of his wet suit and his skin beneath it were familiar and comforting.

“You still have that key I dug out for you?” he asked.

She nodded against his chest.

“Good, then you'll have something to remember me by.”

“You're not exactly forgettable, you know,” she said, slipping free to wipe her cheeks again.

He smiled. “I hope not.”

“Can't you at least stay until the fall?” She looked up at him. “We're getting closer, I can feel it. I bet we find her in the next three months.”

“It's not just that, Red.”

“What, then?”

“I
have
to go.”

“Why?”

He touched her cheek. “Because I'm not a good loser, that's why.”

She watched him as he climbed down the ladder and disappeared under the bridge, her face hot where he'd brushed his fingers against her damp skin.

What did he mean, not a good loser? They hadn't lost anything yet.

•   •   •

T
heir last day on the water with Whit was sunny and cloudless. The three of them guided a newly married couple over a stretch of water with several sunken trawlers and put on a show of great admiration when the
husband surfaced with a broken bottle neck that looked thick enough to be over a hundred years old.

Returning to the marina seemed to happen too quickly. Liv wished they might have chartered to a place farther out, maybe even run out of gas or gotten lost. She'd barely had time to soak up the sight of Whit one last time at the bridge, his rumpled hair caught in the wind, his crooked smile and equally crooked dimples, his exploding laugh. With just a two-person tour, there wasn't much cleanup to do. At the last minute, Liv decided the galley needed a thorough cleaning, despite its shining surfaces, its spotless fridge shelves. Anything to stave off the night's inevitable good-bye.

Sam suggested a toast at the taproom to send Whit off properly, but Whit declined, claiming he had far too much packing left to do, which Liv knew was an excuse to avoid a drawn-out farewell—Whit Crosby prided himself on being the sort of man whose entire life could be contained in a paper bag—and neither she nor Sam pressed him. “Be good,” Whit whispered into Liv's ear just before he released her from an embrace and she nodded, unable to speak over the knot of tears in her throat.

Instead of going out, she and Sam stopped off at the store on their way home, bought a bottle of red, and drank it on their balcony. The night seemed especially still. Even the usual flutter of insects and rustling palm leaves was silent.

Everything, everywhere, would be so much quieter now.

Sam lifted his face to the sky, his forehead silvery in the night. Polished like stone. A fair comparison, she thought. Nearly three years with him and she still couldn't read his thoughts when she needed to most.

He turned his head toward her. “You okay?”

She smiled thinly. “I guess.”

“You did the right thing moving him in there, Liv.”

She frowned, startled. “I'm not thinking about my father.”

“What, then?”

He had to ask?

“Whit,” she said.

“I know. It's definitely going to be hard without a third person.”

“That's not what I meant.” She reached over and feathered her fingertips across his hand, hoping to soften his knitted brow. “Can't you admit you'll miss him?”

“It is what it is, Liv. People leave, life goes on.” Sam took up their glasses and the bottle, not yet empty, and rose. “Coming in?”

“In a minute,” she said, not sure her legs would hold if she were to stand just then. His lack of emotion alarmed her. It was as if Whit had been gone from their life for years and not just hours. His eyes had been so cold—chilly enough to send a flicker of fear across her neck. For a terrible instant, he'd been a stranger.

“People aren't always who you think they are, sweetie.”

Her mother's words pierced the night—but Liv blinked them away, unwanted words that she was sure didn't apply. They couldn't possibly.

OUTER BANKS, NORTH CAROLINA

Thursday

W
hen Whit was in seventh grade, nearly a foot taller than all the other boys in his class, and barely shorter than their gym teacher, Mr. Collins, he met Jimmy Parsons.

Before Jimmy Parsons, it had never occurred to Whit to envy a boy for having a father. He'd envied Ronald Crispin, whose father had left town with another woman when Ronald was three. And Joey Rogers, because his father was serving time for selling drugs. But to envy someone because his father had stuck around was unfamiliar territory. That Jimmy's father came to the table for dinner seemed unimaginable to Whit—that he came sober and agreeable was nothing short of miraculous. When Jimmy reported a poor grade on a test, Mr. Parsons chewed on the news quietly, then moved briskly to a different
subject. When Whit joined Jimmy after school, Whit was stunned to see that it was possible for a boy to come inside and confess to a quiet day. That a boy could mount the front steps with visions of what he might do with the rest of his afternoon, not burdened with the panicked fabrication of adventures suited to gangsters, not twelve-year-old boys.

Most incredibly the Parsons told the truth. There was no shame in an unremarkable day. Honesty came with its own rewards.

Then there were Jimmy's four sisters. All older, they possessed an otherworldly beauty that Whit studied with an anthropologist's feverish devotion every chance he got. But it was Colleen—Collie—the middle daughter, who fascinated him most of all, with her quiet, confident beauty, her lack of interest in wild things. If the Parsonses preached the power of truth, he'd gladly join their flock. Pushed to the limit by his infatuation, he'd declared his love for Collie just minutes before Buddy Jones was due to pick her up for prom. She rewarded his honesty with a wet kiss, then flattened his heart when she climbed into Buddy's Mustang five minutes later. Two months afterward, Mr. Parsons took a new job in Birmingham and the family was gone in a week. Whit lost his virginity to a junior named Jennifer in her parents' game room a month later, three days after his fourteenth birthday. So much for honesty.

When Whit saw Liv Connelly twelve years later in the archives, the curtain of her red hair brushing the book in her lap, his heart had rumbled with interest. When he watched her stand up to take on Harold Warner with all the confidence and
pluck of a rabbit staring down a wolf, he was sure someone had reached in and squeezed the air out of his lungs. Soon he was envisioning how he could win her, the million perfect ways he could impress her. She was nothing like the women he was used to pursuing—women accustomed to being adored, who spent too much time on their bodies and not nearly enough on their opinions of the world around them. Women who were interested in him for his looks and wild reputation, and because they were hoping to piss off their fathers—but they didn't know his heart, and they didn't care to.

But not Liv. Any woman who could go toe-to-toe with someone as insufferable as Harold Warner and come out smiling would make the world a worthwhile place, a better place, Whit was sure of it.

Liv became his measure of what made sense even before he knew her, proof that maybe he wasn't entirely undeserving of good things, of love. The unconditional and unfailing kind. The kind of love that wasn't a sport, that didn't require lies to be won.

And now here he is, digging himself out of a hole of lies.

He only wanted to get them back on track, only wanted to reassure her. And now—

“I love you, but I don't know if it's enough anymore.”

He leans back in the driver's seat and rubs his forehead hard, Liv's voice mail on a constant loop. He must have listened to the message a dozen times.

Squinting through the windshield at the reddish brown town house that looks almost pink in the electric light of dawn, Whit double-checks the number on the door against the number
he's found online, then takes another glance at the street sign to his left. The GPS says this is Beth Henson's place—so what is he waiting for? There's one car in the driveway—what if it belongs to a husband, a boyfriend? Someone who will threaten to call the police if he doesn't leave? A chance he has to take. The first threads of sunrise creep up the horizon. Soon the blue fog of dark will disperse, exposing him in this quiet development.

He catches himself in the rearview and winces at the deep crease gouged between his eyes. Jesus, when did he get so old?

Out of the van, he looks around as he crosses the visitors' parking lot, unnerved by the lack of movement around. The row of condominiums is so quiet he can hear the whir of an air-conditioning unit click to life, the crackle of night birds in the manicured bay trees that fence the path.

When he knocks on Beth Henson's door, the sound is like a gunshot. He hunches his shoulders and tries to step out of the light. The door opens a crack—a sleep-swollen eye and a sliver of creamy cheek peer back at him.

He leans in. “Beth, I don't know if you remember me. We went to school together at ECU. I'm Whit Cr—”

“I know who you are.” The door opens a crack more, enough that he can see her sour expression. “You do realize what time it is, don't you?”

“I know—and I'm sorry.”

“They're not here,” she says flatly.

“But they were.”

“I'm not getting involved, Whit.” She considers him more harshly now, looks him up and down. “Are you drunk?”

“I wish.” He can feel his smile waning. He leans against the jamb, too tired to support himself. “Can I talk to you?”

“I told you they're not here. I'll be at my office at the museum at nine. You can come by then.”

She moves to close the door, but Whit puts his hand out. “Just five minutes—” He catches her eyes and holds them. “
Please
.”

After another long moment, she sighs and steps back to let him in. “Five minutes.”

He scans the small foyer, his mind spinning away from him again. Everything he sees—the stairs, the white table with the basket of catalogues, the watercolor of a reclining woman—he wonders if Liv has seen too. He's just crazy and tired enough to imagine he could sniff hard, like a wild animal, and pick up her scent if he wanted to. And God, he wants to.

He's sure Beth will point them to the living room that he can see through the archway, but she shows no signs of moving them from this spot. He wonders why she even bothered letting him in.

“I don't suppose you have any coffee?” he asks.

She clutches her robe closed with folded arms. “I don't drink coffee.”

“Beer's fine too.” He waits for her steely expression to soften the tiniest bit, but it won't. “That was a joke,” he says.

“What is it you want, Whit?”

How long does she have? He wants to fix everything he's ever screwed up in his whole damn life. He wants to find a time machine. He wants the do-over of all do-overs.

He wants his wife back. “I just really need to know where they went.”

Beth looks at him coolly. He'll have to work on her. Like a shoe that has to be worn in to avoid getting blisters. “Maybe you should try calling her, then,” she says.

“I have. She won't answer.”

Beth glances at the clock on the entry table. Whit's sure his time is up, but he's not leaving yet. He drags a hand across the back of his neck, feeling the grit of sand and sweat. What he wouldn't give for a shower.

“Livy said she came here because you had a lead—a lead for what?” he says.

“She didn't tell you?”

Of course. He's an idiot. “It was about Theodosia, wasn't it?”

“We found a diary,” Beth says. “An old logbook Theodosia used to write in while she was being held for ransom.”

Ransom? “Jesus,” Whit whispers. “Holy shit.” He swallows hard, taking it all in. “Can I see it?”

“It's not here,” Beth says. “It's at the museum.”

“But I really need to read it.”

“I'm afraid that's not possible. We're having a press conference in the morning to announce its acquisition.”

“Then can you at least tell me what it said?”

Does she honestly think he drove three hours, on the heels of the four he already clocked today, to leave here without answers?

He moves toward her, abruptly enough to force her back a step.

“It was supposed to be me and her, Beth. It was our mystery, do you understand? Ours.”

But she doesn't understand. And now Liv knows the truth, and he wasn't here.

Sam was.

Whit drops down to her stairs, laces his hands over his knees. “How did they seem?”

She squints at him, and for a moment Whit isn't sure she will indulge a question like this. And why should she? She's already told him she doesn't want to get involved. And yet, damp and hot and unholy smelling as he is, Whit can remember that she had liked Sam, maybe even still did. And maybe she's pissed at him, Whit, because if he hadn't blown it with Liv, then Sam might have come here alone. And maybe he'd even be up in her bed right now. And she'd be up there with him, instead of talking to a crazy old classmate at the foot of her stairs.

Beth sweeps her hair behind her ears. “He still has feelings for her, if that's what you're asking. It's painfully obvious.”

Dread tumbles behind his ribs. “I know.”

“You know, and yet you left them alone together?”

Whit glances up at her. “Sam told me he was leaving.”

“I see.”

Her assessment is without judgment, as if she too wishes she could turn back time for a while. Whit considers her as she looks at the clock. Daylight is coming faster now, slipping through the sidelights that flank the door and frosting everything in its path with silver, including Beth.

She's prettier than he remembered. Not so harsh and aloof.

She moves to the door and turns the knob. “You really have to go.”

“You were hoping he was coming to see you, weren't you?” Whit says. “Not the diary—but you.”

Beth turns to him.

“I know what it's like to want a second chance with someone,” he says. “To tell them what you couldn't say the first time around.”

“I don't see how my personal life is any of your business.”

“It isn't,” Whit says.

Her features slowly soften with surrender, and maybe even sympathy.

She sighs and closes the door. “I have digital files of the pages on my computer. I'll bring them up on the screen and you can read them that way, but only if you promise not to let anyone know what they say. We aren't sharing the entries with the press yet. We'll unveil them at an upcoming exhibit.” She locks a hard look on him. “Can you give me your word?”

Whit considers her offer, and he imagines they are both thinking the same thing: that her request is a foolish one, that once, not so long ago, his word meant nothing.

But today he needs it to mean everything. “I promise,” he says.

•   •   •

W
hat Sam first imagined of his parents' marriage was probably no different than what any kid might. Their brief exchanges, short but consistent demonstrations of affection, division of labor and household responsibilities, all mirrored the structure of the other unions he observed around him. His neighbor Felix Cranston was the first person he knew
to have his parents divorce, which seemed perplexing, considering that the Cranstons behaved just like Sam's parents, serving up the perfect cocktail of tolerance and indifference. “My dad said my mom got bored and stayed that way,” was Felix's explanation when Sam raised the subject in the lunchroom. After that, Sam watched his own parents with fresh scrutiny, deciding that the comfort he'd observed previously between them was actually disdain. At parties, he began to notice his mother's fondness for wine, how she emptied glasses one after another while his father nursed a single splash of liquor for hours. Even the shoe salesman who fitted Sam and Michael for sneakers earned admiring glances. What did his mother have to be bored about? Sam would wonder. Didn't his father provide all she could need? Maybe if she ate more and drank less. Maybe if she didn't care so much about making the college boys at the supermarket laugh at her jokes when they bagged her groceries.

After watching an eager waiter whisper in his mother's ear while Sam's father was in the men's room, Sam considered blowing the whistle on the ride home. Michael pleaded with him not to. “You don't know what a tyrant he is to her. You think it's so easy to please him?” It was, Sam knew, having pleased his father from the time he was old enough to cast a fly rod expertly into a pond. Sam wasn't going to apologize for appreciating order and dependability, and he sure as hell wasn't going to excuse Michael or his mother's fervent need to ignore it. Rules may have been tedious and even boring, but they kept life certain and intact. Pretending otherwise was inviting a chaos wholly deserved.

Lying in the darkness now, Sam can't stop thinking about Liv. A few times tonight he's considered getting out of bed and walking to her door. He knows if he knocks, she'd invite him in. When he kissed her—something he'd been planning for some time—and felt her mouth melt under his, he knew. So why hasn't he thrown off this damp sheet and marched over there already?

Because he's patient. Something Whit never was.

Unlike Whit, Sam knows the value in control and endurance. Thanks to endurance, Sam has delivered Liv the answer she has waited most of her life for. Thanks to control, he kept his cool while all the rest of the crew flew off in a rage, while Whit himself tore off on the taxi boat, hell-bent to save his own skin. Just as he had done the night at Zephyr's when Whit promised them all a feast to celebrate and failed to deliver. It was Sam who'd calmly rerouted their evening, Sam who'd given Greta a way to sort out her hurt when he ran into her at the corner market after dropping off Liv. Leaning against the cooler, Greta told him she was tired of Whit's shit and Sam bought them a six-pack. They drained four cans in his truck before he walked her into her apartment. In the entryway, she swung around and looked at him, as if she worried there was still a chance he wasn't staying, as if he hadn't already made up his mind to take her to bed when he saw her in the store, tapping her lips as she considered the spread of liter bottles. “It just sucks that the good guys are always taken,” she said; then he'd freed the last can from her hand, still dangling in its plastic necklace, and kissed her hard.