It’s A Plunderful Life Page 6

  “What?”

  “Agnes. She’s a her, not an it.”

  “Got it.” Pajamas in hand, I headed for the bathroom to change. Once, long ago, we were close enough that we would change in the same room, but I wasn’t about to undress in front of her now.

  I didn’t want to give her any extra ammunition.

  Later, when the sun had set, I knelt on my pillow and rested my elbows on the windowsill, settling my chin on my arms. Outside, the castle glowed with retained sunlight, the edges of its wonky towers softened in the shadows. I sighed. It was perfect.

  “Shh,” Toni griped from the next bed. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  Okay, fine. Not quite perfect.

  I slipped under the covers, pulling the coverlet up to my chin.

  Still, it was pretty close.

  7

  “Well, well. Look who’s up.” Toni made a show of checking her watch. “And it’s not even eleven yet.”

  “Don’t tease your sister.” Mom carried a platter of pancakes to the table. She placed three of them onto Kurt’s plate, then poured a generous amount of syrup over them. “There you go, sweetheart.”

  He beamed up at her. “I love pancakes.”

  “I’m so glad.” She turned to me. “How’d you sleep?”

  “Great.” I wasn’t sure why being back in my own room made such a difference, but it really did. “Despite Toni’s snoring.”

  “I don’t snore.”

  “Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t. Not something you could ever know, though, is it?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I would think a woman of fifty-three would have a little more maturity.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Girls, that’s enough.” But there was a sparkle in my mother’s eyes that told me she loved this. “Now, eat. I’ll get more pancakes going.”

  “Need more coffee, Dad?” Toni asked.

  “I love coffee.” He squinted at me. “You’re very pretty.”

  “That’s Cass, Dad,” Toni said, refilling her father’s coffee mug. “You know Cass.” She looked at me then, her face hard. “He’s more there than you think.”

  “Sure.” I piled four pancakes onto my plate, then, after a moment’s consideration, added a fifth. My mom always cooked enough to feed the entire park, even when she was just cooking for us, and there was no sense letting good pancakes go to waste.

  “He’s still there,” Toni insisted. “Watch—Dad, Cass was just saying she wished we had some flavored coffee.”

  Kurt whipped around to face me. “Coffee is a flavor,” he said, and a little tiny piece of my heart relaxed. He’d been ranting about that since the very first time he saw hazelnut coffee sold at the grocery store.

  I smiled at Toni, and for the first time there was something almost genuine to her return smile.

  “Cass, I’ve got a busy day ahead of me,” my mother called from the kitchen. “I was wondering if you might be feeling up to a trip to town. I have a box of things from the attic that I wanted to drop off at a store called Yesterday’s Treasures.”

  “I don’t know, Evelyn. That might cut into her Maury Povich time.” Toni took a long sip of coffee.

  “Baby girl, we have a DVR,” Mom said as she bustled back into the dining room with another steaming plate of pancakes. “You can record Murray Kovack.”

  Toni said, “It’s Maury Povich, Evelyn,” at the same time that I snapped, “I wasn’t going to watch Maury Povich.”

  She blinked at us. “You need more candy, Cass. You’re very edgy this morning.”

  “I love candy,” Kurt said around a mouthful of pancakes.

  “Who doesn’t?” Mom said, rubbing his back. “Anyway, Cass, I think you’ll find a very pleasant surprise at Yesterday’s Treasures.”

  Oh, no. After the other day, I wasn’t sure I could handle any more surprises. “Is this going to almost kill me, too?”

  Mom chuckled as she slipped into her chair and spread a crisp cloth napkin over her seafoam skirt. “Nope. This one I think you’ll like.”

  Try as I might, I couldn’t get her to elaborate on it.

  Tourists come to Gallows Bay for two reasons. First, there’s the Enchanted Forest. Second, there are the pirates.

  The town couldn’t lay claim to many pirates, although there were plenty of stories about how some of the more famous of them probably spent some time in the area. After all, the Carolina coast was a popular place for sailors back in the Golden Age of Pirates, and it was only logical to assume that Blackbeard or Black Sam Bellamy or Calico Jack and Anne Bonny enjoyed a night or two at one of the local taverns that still served visitors to the harbor area.

  But Gallows Bay had definitely played a major role in the story of Christopher Durus, the Butcher of Carolina. After all, it was here that Durus was executed three hundred years ago. The ship that captured him, the Wild Rose, was now moored in the harbor and served as a floating museum dedicated to preserving the romance and brutality of that era.

  At least, that’s what the sign outside the visitor’s center said. I’d visited the Wild Rose several times as a kid, usually as part of school field trips, and let me tell you, that museum sure could make the capture and execution of a vicious pirate boring.

  So. Many. Nautical Terms.

  I found a parking space near the docks, enjoying the tang of salt air as I hefted the box out of my trunk. I wasn’t sure what Yesterday’s Treasures might want with any of this stuff—it seemed to be mostly old papers from previous generations of my family—but I was glad for the excuse to get out of the house.

  I walked past the harbor toward Main Street, where the row of little shops had remained virtually unchanged since I left. There was the barber shop, with two skeletons sitting on a bench outside wearing cheap pirate hats. Jack and Jill, I remembered. No, I have no idea why our barber shop had skeletons on display, but I was pleased to see them still there, albeit a bit more weathered. And there were the dueling pianos, two pianos painted each year by a select group of art students at the local high school and available for tourists and visitors to play. A guy was seated at one even at that hour in the morning, butchering a Katy Perry song.

  I passed a new tattoo parlor (well, new for me—it could have been there for fifteen years for all I knew) and a yarn shop with gorgeously dyed skeins of yarn in the window that made me want to take up some kind of…what were the types of yarning? Crochet? Knitting? Macrame?

  And, near the end of the street, I found Yesterday’s Treasures.

  It was a small shop, tucked between the yarn shop and a candy store that I was almost glad wasn’t open as those treats in the window proved very tempting. A bell over the door jingled merrily as I opened it, although the inside of the store had that silence that is only possible in rooms full of soft things.

  “Hello?” a voice called from a back room. “I’ll be right out.”

  “Take your time.” I set the box down on the counter and looked around, impressed with the well-arranged displays that managed to make the most of the small space. A collection of old nautical maps was spread across a rolltop desk, and I wandered over to check them out.

  “Can I help you find anything in particular?” a woman said behind me.

  “No, I’m actually dropping off—” I turned and broke off. “Viv?”

  The woman’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Cass? I don’t believe it! It’s been ages.”

  It had been ages, although time had been kind to Vivian Waters. She had glossy chestnut hair that fell perfectly over her shoulders, just brushing the strand of Tahitian pearls around her neck, and those slim trousers she wore with a cashmere sweater set had been tailored to fit her like a glove. It was hard to see the lanky kid she’d once been, the one who’d shown up at my house one day with her ankles covered in band aids after she’d tried to shave her legs with her dad’s straight razor.

  But then she smiled, and it was that old lopsided grin, and I saw a flash of that kid again.

&nbs
p; So this was the surprise my mother had been talking about.

  You know those moments where everything suddenly seems like it will all be okay? Seeing Vivian again was one of those moments for me. This was my childhood best friend, the person I’d shared what, at the time, were my deepest, darkest secrets with. We’d meant to keep in touch, but she’d left town before there were things like Facebook and iPhones, and the world hadn’t been made for casual long-distance contact like it is now.

  But I was back, and Vivian had returned, and maybe we could start over again. “I can’t believe you’re here,” I said. “I always imagined you would head out to LA like you talked about and become a movie star.” Which was a stupid thing to say. Obviously if she’d become a movie star, I would have heard about it, and who wanted to be reminded of dreams that went unrealized?

  She ran her hand over a plush purple sofa beside her. “Yes, well.” She shook her head. “I fell in love. Isn’t that what always happens?”

  “Well, congratulations,” I said.

  “Yes. Twenty-four years of marriage, and he threw it away for the woman who drives the drink cart at the golf course.” Her smile shifted to something brittle. “I hear they’re very happy together. I assume she doesn’t allow him to golf alone.”

  I moved forward and grabbed her hands. “I feel you. My husband just asked me for a divorce.”

  There was genuine pain in her eyes. For me, for herself, for the both of us. Two forty-somethings who’d bet on the wrong horses and been proven wrong so late there didn’t seem to be much point in ever betting again. “I’m so sorry, Cass. Another woman?”

  “He said he just wanted to be alone.”

  She shook her head. “Oh, that’s what they say, but there’s always another woman. Trust me. They can’t keep it in their pants.” And she gave an unladylike sniffle.

  Taking a deep breath, she shot me a watery smile. “I’m sorry about what happened, but I’m so glad you’re home again. Your mother has missed you.”

  That reminded me of the box. “She sent some things in for you. Thought you could use them.”

  The business owner in her perked up at that. “That’s sweet of her. Let me take a look. Your house is so old, she always seems to find the most interesting things for me.”

  She rifled through the box quickly, pulling out sheets of paper seemingly at random and smiling broadly over them. “Very nice,” she muttered to herself. “And is this…? My goodness, what a find.”

  I couldn’t see any rhyme or reason to what delighted her, but it was always fun to watch another woman work, especially at something she so clearly loved. And then her head cocked to one side. “What is this?” she asked, pulling out a wooden board, roughly the size of a computer laptop, etched with letters and numbers. A hole was punched on one side, and a thick wooden ring on a strip of tattered black fabric was secured to the board through the hole.

  Vivian tilted the board this way and that, as if that might make it give up its secrets. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said.

  I peered over her shoulder. The thing looked like a rudimentary Ouija board. She offered it to me, and as I took it, I was overwhelmed by anxiety. The closest feeling I could use to describe it was that I was looking at an inbox with thousands of messages, all of which had the same subject line: Urgent.

  Messages I hadn’t known until now I’d been expecting.

  I handed it back to her hastily, wiping my hand against my pants as if that could rid me of the feeling. “I don’t know anything about it,” I said.

  “What a strange object,” she said. “Maybe some kind of education device? Like a way to teach a child their letters and numbers?”

  I nodded, but inside my stomach still felt too tight, and my skin prickled with sweat. Because I never wanted to touch that board again.

  But at the same time, I wanted to take it home and keep it under my bed, safe from the rest of the world. It was an uncomfortable feeling.

  “I have a friend over at the university who knows quite a bit about the history of the area. I might have him take a look at it,” Vivian said.

  I nodded, although the thought of other people handling that board made my head ache. Vivian clicked her tongue, studying the board one last time, and then she set it aside to sift through the box some more.

  “This is amazing,” she said finally, having reached the bottom of the box. She sighed with contentment, like she’d just polished off an amazing piece of raspberry cheesecake instead of having sorted a bunch of papers and one very weird board into various piles. “Please thank your mother for me.”

  “I will.” I hesitated. As an adult, my female friendships had always evolved organically, usually as a result of some activity Margot was involved in. Another mother and I would both volunteer to bring snacks to tee-ball practice, and then I would have to call her to ask what she was thinking about bringing, and eventually, somehow, we would end up friendly enough for coffee dates while the kids were in school.

  I’d never had to just ask a friend out before. The whole thing felt awkward, but this was Vivian. We hadn’t seen each other in thirty years, but she was divorced, and I was going through a divorce, and if you can’t be awkward with your once-best friend, then who can you be awkward with?

  “Would you maybe like to grab coffee sometime?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Of course. We absolutely have to catch up. Your mom has told me all about your face creams—it sounds fascinating.”

  “Well, it’s not that inter—” I broke off, my eye caught by something in the glass case that made up the front counter. It was a dull gold coin, irregularly shaped, the rough profile of a man on the side facing me. There was a hole punched through the coin at the top, a chain nearly black with age dangling from the hole.

  I knew the other side of the coin showed two columns.

  I knew because I had found that coin, years and years ago.

  “Is that…?” I tapped the glass over the coin, unable to say anything else.

  I thought I’d lost it. I thought it was gone forever.

  Viv leaned over, peering through the glass. “The coin? Yes, it’s the one we found during that storm. Remember?”

  I certainly did. We’d been down at Pirate’s Cove in the park when a sudden storm rolled in, sending us running for cover in the immense pirate’s cave. The storm surge chased us farther into the cave than we’d ever explored before. That’s when we found the strange chest, full of the oddest little treasures. It wasn’t the only treasure chest down at Pirate’s Cove, which had several large chests hidden about for guests to stumble upon. But because guests occasionally helped themselves to unauthorized souvenirs, the rest of the treasure was cheap, gaudy fake gems and plastic coins.

  This little chest contained a colorful bird feather, a handful of old silver coins, a weird compass-type thing that we took turns hiding around Pirate’s Cove for the other to find.

  And it also contained the gold coin on a chain.

  “How did…?”

  Vivian smiled at me. “How did it get here?” she guessed. “It was in one of the boxes your mother brought in.” Her brow furrowed. “Did you not know she’d given it away?”

  “No.” I’d taken the coin from the little chest, slipped it into the pocket of my shorts so I could brush the worn gold with my fingertips every so often. Even at the time it had felt like it belonged to me, that I was supposed to find it. I’d carried it around like that for months, but I’d been an active kid, and eventually one day I reached into my pocket and the coin was gone. I’d retraced my steps, but I never found it.

  Until now.

  “Oh.” Vivian shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry. I had no idea. If you want—”

  “I’d like to buy it,” I said before she could offer to give it to me for free, which I was fairly certain she was about to do. It wasn’t Viv’s fault that I had lost the coin, or that my mother had apparently found it and given it away, and she didn’t deserve to lose
a sale.

  As a fellow small business owner—former owner, anyway—I wasn’t about to cheat her out of well-deserved money.

  “Are you sure?” Vivian asked, pushing a lock of hair away from her face. “If I’d known…”

  “I’m sure.” I pulled my wallet from my purse and slipped out my credit card. No, I didn’t ask how much it was. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know because no matter how much, I was buying that coin back.

  “Well, if you’re sure…” Vivian moved behind the counter, unlocking the glass case with a tiny key and sliding it open to pull out the coin. “It’s a wonderful piece, Cass. A real Spanish doubloon. The history behind these coins is so interesting…”

  She handed me the coin as she outlined the means by which the Spanish transferred gold and silver from their colonies in the Americas back to Europe. I held it in one hand, the metal cool to the touch and surprisingly heavy.

  Just as it had before, it felt exactly right in my hand.

  I was no longer a kid running all over the park, but I also wasn’t going to risk losing it again. I moved to the mirror at one end of the counter, slipping the chain over my head and settling the coin against my body. It lay between my breasts, and without thinking, I tucked it inside my shirt. Now the coin was hidden, like my own little secret.

  “Here you go,” Vivian said, pinning the receipt on the top of the glass case with her fingers, waiting for my signature.

  Ouch. No, I really hadn’t wanted to know how much that coin cost. And, I noted, that was with a generous discount.

  Oh, well. It was worth it to have this tiny piece of my childhood back.

  “I’m serious about that coffee,” Vivian said as she handed me my copy of the receipt. “We should get together soon.”

  “Absolutely. Very soon.”

  The bell jingled happily again as I left the shop, joining the growing number of tourists meandering down Main Street now that more shops were open. Someone competent was at one of the pianos, treating us all to “What a Wonderful World.” Tantalizing aromas wafted all the way down from In the Rushes, the seafood restaurant at the far end of the street.