moved either. They’re all waiting on my cue. They’re not pushing me to do this. It’s on my terms.
Guilt still churns in my stomach though. If it didn’t, I’d be worried about me. The number of times I’ve had it drilled into my head that these were Wilder secrets could probably amount to the gold we’ve been chasing.
Lucas squeezes my hand in the backseat. It’s not a nudge, it’s a motion to make sure I’m okay, but it does spur me into movement. I know what we need to do. It may not seem like it, but I’m doing this for my father. If he’s still somewhere up in those mountains, I’m going to bring him home. Alive or dead. If he got mixed up in the same thing the Jacobs have, then I’m going to find him and bring him home from that, too.
I throw the door open, and it releases the floodgates for everyone else’s movement too. They follow me out of the car and toward the garage. I use my key to open the rickety door and stick my hand just inside, searching for the shovel handle. My fingers pass through spiderwebs as I go, but I finally find the handle and pull it out, shutting and locking the garage once I have it.
Nodding, I take them around the back of the house, and we start walking. Our land is about as dry as the desert. Very few tufts of vegetation sprout out here and there, but it’s mostly a walk through hard-packed dirt, the ground cracked because of the arid climate. “My family has owned this land for centuries,” I say offhandedly. “My great great great great—honestly, I’ve forgotten how far back it goes—but he was around when they built Clary. When the gold rush happened, we were here. He bought this land.” The truth is, we own acres upon acres. I used to play outside for ages when I was a kid, exploring all kinds of things. My father never minded as long as I didn’t go off our property, which gave me a bunch of leeway. Once we’re a ways back from the road, I point out a decaying structure that’s skinned right down to the timbers. “That was the original house.”
The guys let me talk as we traverse the walk to the safe. Wyatt takes the shovel from me, though, and I miss having it to keep my hands busy.
“Who built the house you grew up in?” Lucas asks.
“My granddad. When they put the road through, it only made sense to have the house near the road, so they abandoned the family house which was falling down anyway and built that one. Can you believe the Wilders used to be well off?” I chuckle to myself. My family has sunk every penny we ever earned into finding the treasure.
“I’ve heard the story a million times, but you know I’ve never heard it from a Wilder,” Wyatt says. “You mind tellin’ it?”
I know the story inside and out. It was my bedtime story for many years. This story made me think anything was possible. The story that sounded like it jumped right out of a book, a fairy tale come to life. The thing about fairy tales is, they end happily. My family has been waiting around for our happy for a hundred years.
“The story is,” I say, unable to help the smile that tugs at my lips. It’s no wonder that I grew up loving to read. I wanted to immerse myself in stories wherever I was. Not just the one I was living, but others, too. “My great great great you know,” I tease. “He not only stumbled across the richest gold vein in the Superstitions, but one day while he was mining it, he decided to explore the caves nearby. He twisted this way and that through the tunnels of rock as he traversed the dark stone tunnels until he came across a set of dusty old sacks. People find a lot of shit up in the Superstitions, so he just nudged them aside with his foot, but when he did, he heard the tinkling of metal.”
I stop, remembering the way my father used to get overly animated as he told me the story. It always amazed me that these stories were told to generations and generations of Wilder’s. The same words passed down over the years. “Thinking it was a competitor’s mining tools on his claim, he ripped the drawstring