didn’t have a big temper. Eddie was a laid-back guy. He looked to Luis. “What’s wrong with him? What do I not know?”
“He’s been stressed about something,” Luis replied. “I don’t know. He doesn’t talk to me. I’m nothing more than your assistant to him. He orders me around like the rest of his staff. But I do know he’s been having trouble with people sneaking onto the island. He believes you’re the one who can crack the code. He’s certain there’s some kind of code because no one’s found it yet. He doesn’t think taking the poem literally works, and no one has decoded the metaphors.”
“That’s because I think they’re not understanding that the metaphors have to do with Montez’s private life. I’m not entirely certain this wasn’t meant as one last great quest for his son. I think the poem is full of references to their life together as well as Montez’s own. I certainly don’t think that poem was meant for public consumption, and that means neither was the treasure.” He’d been over that poem a couple thousand times, but it was only through being here that he’d started to make the connections.
“Then why wouldn’t the poem say ‘This is for you, son’?” Luis challenged. “He says the treasure is for the one who finds it.”
“Have you looked at how he wrote the clues for the hunts he gave Eddie as a kid? They were written the same way, but there’s no question those were only meant for Eddie, and therefore their personal history has to be taken into account,” David countered. He sat back with a sigh. This was something between father and son, and while he could help Eddie, he rather thought Eddie should be the one to find it. “It’s a four-page document. It could take me weeks to decipher it. I would rather spend the time I have on the background. Looking through those notebooks has been a revelation. I think they really give me insight into what Montez was thinking. This is exactly what I need to get started on the book.”
Luis’s brows rose. “But the hook for the book is finding the treasure.”
“What makes you think that?” Tessa asked. “He’s not writing some thriller. He doesn’t need a hook. This is a scholarly work, not pop culture.”
He loved that part of her that tried to protect him, that was comfortable defending him. “She’s right. I’m not trying to make millions. I want to write a good biography. I want to write about the man I admire. The treasure is a minor blip in his personal history. This was a man who brought the Dalai Lama and the leader of the communist party together for a secret meeting. It didn’t fix anything, but they had a conversation. You know almost no one knows that happened right here on this island. I only know about it because Eddie was there. Montez never spoke about it publicly. That is a little gem of history. I have the notes Montez took from the meeting. I wish there were photographs, but I’ve got plenty of eyewitnesses. I was thinking of that meeting as the centerpiece of the biography. I frame everything around that small miracle.”
“I think that sounds interesting.” Tessa gave him an encouraging smile.
Mostly he wanted to take Tessa to the beach. He could get copies of those notebooks and go over them later when he wasn’t so distracted. She was a distraction in the best meaning of the word. She’d made him realize he needed to relax, to focus on something that wasn’t work or helping the kids in his family get through Spanish. Tessa was just for him, and she was young and healthy. She was careful. Tessa was starting to show him that everything he’d been worried about before didn’t matter.
He sat back, the truth hitting him squarely in the chest. His father’s death had haunted him his whole adult life, and he hadn’t truly understood the cost.
Oh, shit. Had he honestly held back in other relationships because he’d watched his mother mourn? Because his father had died and his family had felt incomplete? Because he’d been a boy who didn’t want to feel that pain again?
It was a revelation that was so simple it made him feel dumb. He’d held back from this new family of his because there was still a kid inside him who lost his dad and was afraid he wouldn’t fit in with his mom’s new family.
But