by what’s unfolding before me, unable to voice my shock. I haven’t found anything. What’s he talking about? I haven’t a bloody clue where the missing part of the map is.
I hear Mrs Potts catch a breath. ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ she whispers.
Becker approaches his grandfather, who looks older and frailer than I’ve seen him before. ‘Your walking stick.’
Mr H refuses to look at Becker, and my gaze shifts quickly, back and forth between the men, mesmerised by what I’m hearing. The stick? My mind is in a tangle, struggling to keep up. I reach for Mrs Potts, who takes my arm to steady me, moving in quickly when I wobble from the rush of blood to my head. Becker catches my stagger and rushes over to relieve Mrs Potts. ‘I don’t know where it is,’ I blabber mindlessly. This is absurd.
‘No,’ Mr H grunts. ‘You don’t know, not technically, but you’ve unwittingly found it.’
I blink back the fog from my glazed eyes and find Becker staring at his granddad, shocked, confused . . . excited. ‘You’ve had it all this time? How could you?’
‘Why would I encourage you, Becker boy? After everything? Your mother, gone. Your father, gone.’ He’s getting distressed again, and I fold on the inside, especially now I know how Gramps and Becker lost their family. ‘I live with that guilt every damn day. I should have destroyed that blasted map when I had the chance. All of it.’
I hold my breath. I’ll always worry that Becker won’t be able to let it go of his need to find that sculpture. That he won’t be able to resist the temptation. He can say he’s capable of walking away until he’s blue in the face, but I don’t know if I can believe him. Especially if he knows where the sculpture can be found. The ultimate vengeance would be finding it, something his grandfather and father failed to do. This is personal. Becker wants peace. He can rip Brent Wilson off day after day for the rest of his life, but that’s a consolation prize. His only true peace will come from fulfilling his life’s ambition. What he sees as his calling. Which is finding the sculpture and avenging his parents’ deaths. Finding what he’s been searching for.
Frighteningly, in this moment of madness, I realise that now. And I positively hate myself for being curious and intrigued by the story. I hate that I’ve wondered if and where the sculpture can be found. I hate that I’ve got a thrill each time I’ve thought about it. And I hate that I’ve slowly and silently come to understand Becker’s obsession. But now, the potential of really losing him to that myth is all too real. Because the map can be completed.
‘When your father posted the map back to you,’ the old man says, ‘I intercepted it.’ He gives Becker cautious eyes. ‘I knew he’d found the missing piece, and I didn’t want you to have it.’
‘So you took it?’ Becker asks on a choke of air.
‘So I took it,’ his grandfather confirms.
‘All this time you know I’ve been searching for it, and you had it?’
‘You weren’t supposed to be searching for it,’ Gramps bellows, his back lifting off the bed with the effort. ‘You promised me you wouldn’t.’
‘Where’s your stick?’ Becker starts scanning the room, as do I, searching for the old man’s walking aid. It’s been here at The Haven the whole time. The missing piece of the map has been right under Becker’s nose, hidden in his grandfather’s walking stick. But it isn’t under his nose now. Now, old Mr H’s trusty walking stick is nowhere to be seen.
‘Don’t tell him.’ My demand comes out of nowhere, and Becker shoots a shocked look my way.
‘What?’ Becker asks, his eyes widening by the second.
My mind instantly straightening out, the gravity of my situation hitting me hard, I say what I mean. ‘I don’t want you to know where it is.’
‘Eleanor—’
‘No,’ I warn, feeling my jaw tightening. ‘No, Becker.’
‘I need to know,’ he grates, realisation replacing his shock – realisation that I’ll fight him on this. I’ll fight him with everything I have. I’ve accepted so much, but not this. No way. There’s a reason his grandfather has kept the missing piece of the map from Becker, and I’m with him. All the thrill, all the excitement, it’s gone. I will not stand back and watch him follow in his father’s footsteps.