been days away from taking a job in California that would have kept him away from Pleasant Hill for most of the year. Charlotte pulled him out of the dark place in which he’d buried himself and taught him how to live and love again. Now they split their time between Colorado and Maryland, and Zev’s parents couldn’t be happier to have their son back.
His father motioned toward the lake and said, “Walk with me. It’s been a while since we’ve had any time alone.”
Usually when his father wanted to talk, it was about getting Zev to visit more often. A couple one- or two-day visits a year weren’t enough for his family, but it was about all Zev could handle before guilt swamped him.
As they walked across the lawn, his father made small talk about the wedding and how happy his mother was to have another daughter-in-law. They talked about half a dozen other things as they made their way along the water’s edge. Eventually his father brought up Zev’s work, which was probably where the conversation was headed the whole time.
“When will you hear back from the attorney?” his father asked.
“Hopefully by the end of the week.”
“I hope that goes smoothly for you.” His father slid a hand into the pocket of his slacks and said, “I always thought it was odd that the courts treated shipwrecks like criminals. Arresting the vessel is such an odd way of looking at things. I mean, you can’t really put a sunken ship under arrest, and you haven’t even found the ship, so there’s nothing to arrest.”
“There’s no doubt that admiralty law is an oddity, but it’s a necessity. I’ve got enough historical and scientific documentation showing the changing shoreline and pinpointing where the ship was believed to go down to prove that what remains of the ship is probably buried within a four- or five-mile radius of the vicinity of where I found the concretions. The concretions and the X-rays also support that data.”
“I guess they have to start somewhere.”
“Absolutely. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if word got out that a shipwreck worth millions was found and there were no laws of ownership in place? That kind of money brings all sorts of crazies out of the woodwork. Without the laws, anyone could dive for the treasure, and I’d imagine, people would kill for it.”
“You’re probably right,” his father said. “This must be hard for you, being here for so long after the discovery you’ve made.”
“Yeah. A week feels like a month.”
“It always has with you. You live more life in a day than many people live in a week. I’ve always admired that about you. What’s your plan while you’re here? And is this another five-year project like the one with Luis?”
Shortly after Zev’s hookup with Carly in Mexico, he’d joined an expedition with another treasure hunter, Luis Rojas. They’d hit it off, and then they’d hit it big when they’d discovered the wreckage of the Black Widow, a sunken pirate ship, in international waters between the United States, the Bahamas, and Cuba. They’d spent five and a half years there unearthing millions of dollars in jewels, coins, and other treasures. Once they’d found the bulk of the known artifacts, Zev had taken his millions and gone out on his own to look for the only treasure that really mattered to him, the Pride.
“While I’m here, I’ll be working at Noah’s lab to extract the artifacts from the smaller concretions I shipped. But as far as timing goes for the expedition, that’ll depend on what we find when we get back in the water and how fast we find it. It could take eight to ten years, or much longer, to find the bulk of the treasure, assuming it’s there. Luis’s team will be searching the Black Widow site for another two decades, until it’s bled dry. And you know how New England winters are. We’ll take advantage of all the weather windows, but it’s hard to estimate timing for a month, much less a decade.”
His father stopped walking and gazed out at the moonlight shimmering off the inky water with a troubled expression. “Ten years? You’ll be almost forty.”
“Your point?” Zev had never been someone who worried about getting older. He welcomed it. It was far better than the alternative.
“I’m not sure I have one,” he said lightly. “I was just thinking that when I was forty, I had six kids and a chaotic, fulfilling