“Are you in a rush?” Chris inquires. “You gotta be somewhere by midnight again?” He shoots me a sly look that calls bullshit on my timelines.
“Just wondering.”
“We can get out if you want.” He nods at a dock about two hundred yards north-west. “It’s only a ten minute walk to the ice cream parlor.”
I shiver, but it’s not at the mention of ice cream. It’s doubt. It’s doubt that he could accidentally be suggesting that dock. That part of the park.
“Let’s go,” I make myself say.
We pedal over and Chris ties up the boat and climbs out, crouching down to steady me when wobbly knees threaten to send me spilling into the icy water.
“You all right?” he asks, straightening and rubbing my arms. He peers into my face and I’m grateful for the sunglasses. I don’t want him to see my eyes right now. To see them darting around, past his shoulder, to the grassy space behind him. The large wooden signboard reading Nichols Lawn in peeling gold script.
“Just fine.”
He graciously accepts the lie and leads me up the pathway to the edge of the grass, yellow and wilted at this time of year. “Now, this place is interesting.”
“The field?”
“The history. Well, recent history.”
My heart beats so hard against my ribs I swear something’s going to break. “Wh—what do you mean?”
He misinterprets my stammer as cold. “Do you want my hat? Maybe we should—”
“No,” I interrupt. “What do you mean about the history?” I know the history, of course. I haven’t set foot here since I was a teenager sneaking out to that stupid island to do stupid things, but I read the news. It’s hard to miss the front page when your name’s on it.
“Well,” Chris begins, thinking he’s telling me a story in which I don’t prominently feature. “A few years ago, there was this banker who got arrested for stealing lots of money. Like, hundreds of millions. They found a bunch in offshore banks and secret accounts, but there was twenty million they couldn’t locate.”
Right so far. “That sounds like a lot.”
“So people got it in their heads that he’d hidden it somewhere. Of course, the FBI had that same idea, so they searched his homes—I think he had, like, three—”
We had five.
“—but they never found it. So then people started thinking, where could it be? Maybe he buried it.” He points at the wooden sign, then leads me across the grass toward a small pavilion. “Nichols was his wife’s family. She was a singer, and when she was alive she used to do summer concerts in the park. Right here.” He stops in front of the pavilion, cold and abandoned in February. The eloquently carved trim of the peaked roof is rimmed with green mold, the concrete floor playing host to a dozen discarded cigarettes. My dad took me to see her sing when I was little, but she died when Alex was born and I was too young to remember more than the vague idea of her face.
“People decided he’d buried the money somewhere in the park,” Chris continues, his cheeks pink with cold. “This place, in particular. And the really determined ones snuck in at night and started digging.”
I’d seen the pictures. Nichols Lawn, an entire acre, destroyed. A thousand holes dug by a thousand desperate treasure-seekers, all of whom left empty-handed. My father might be a thief, but he isn’t stupid. If he hid twenty million dollars, he wouldn’t hide it in a place with a fucking sign on it.
“I remember that,” I say. “But it was three years ago. How do you know so much?”
He takes my elbow, urging me back to the path toward the ice cream parlor. The bare tree branches crack in the wind, waving goodbye. “I told you,” he says. “I didn’t know what to do with myself when I first got to the city. I used to come here and walk around and eat ice cream, and in the parlor they’ve got a bunch of old news clippings about the treasure hunt.”
“Huh.” I know the story, but I didn’t know the ice cream parlor had the salient details framed and hung on their walls. We enter the small, warm shop and I ignore the ice cream and go straight to the display. The paneled wall of photos feels familiar. I have something just like it at home.
There are front page stories in full color; the destroyed lawn, the yellow caution tape strung up between