what now? | outerbanks

• one hundred twenty-eight •

Sarah

    Two days pass. It feels like a week. It feels like every other time we've had to research something, except this time I have a baby, and I'm a thousand times more anxious and also a little angry for some reason. Maybe it's deflection.
    I'm also tired.
    For the past week, Willa has actually been sleeping well at night. She wakes consistently for her feeding and only occasionally wakes at other times. For the first time in what feels like ten months, I'd started to feel a little less exhausted.
    Then we started staying up late, going through records and documents and the same damn folder for what feels like the hundredth time. Add early mornings at the shop and full gatherings in the living room where nobody is ever quite as quiet as they think they are, and whatever sleep schedule Willa and I had managed to establish is completely ruined.
    Every time I wake up, there's something else. A diaper, a feeding, a text from John B. about something else he thinks he might have found. He hasn't stayed in bed for longer than three hours since Marlene came to Tanneyhill.
    Those two days aren't useless, though. It comes as a shock to no one that Pope and John B. do actually make some breakthroughs. Give those two a folder full of old handwriting, three questionable leads, and the promise of something nobody else can figure out, and suddenly they're the world's most annoying little research team. JJ joins in on research too sometimes, but I think he's there more for comedic relief than anything.
    By the second afternoon, they have the original family name attached to the ledger, three possible locations where it could have been hidden, and enough information about the old shipping records to make me immediately regret asking what they found.
    The first things we know for sure come from Big John. He'd already figured out that the ledger belonged to a family called the Fletchers. The Fletchers were old enough that some of the earliest records Big John found barely bothered to explain who they were because, apparently, everybody at the time already knew. They owned land and built boats, running shipping routes along the Carolinas and farther south. They traded in everything from ordinary cargo to things that were apparently worth enough money to make people very interested in where they ended up.
    And, according to Big John's notes, they were probably involved in smuggling. A lot of smuggling. There are pages of names and dates in his handwriting, most of them underlined so aggressively that he nearly tore through the paper.
    The ledger itself wasn't just an accounting book. It recorded shipments and money and names. Apparently there were maps of ports, significant locations, and descriptions of cargo. A few times, Big John mentioned seeing symbols that he couldn't completely decipher, and certain entries that didn't read like normal business records. He'd written that some of the cargo was described in ways that made it sound less like merchandise and more like artifacts. Gold, silver, jewelry, religious objects, lots of old things that had probably changed hands more than anyone knows. It's no wonder how the Fletchers got so wealthy.
    I'm sitting at the kitchen table with Willa asleep against my chest when Pope spreads everything out in front of us. Maps, photocopies, Big John's notes. Enough paper to make me realize we don't have a printer, and then obviously wonder where exactly they printed all of this.
    I take a bite of a carrot. "What am I looking at?" I'm talking with my mouth full, which I normally don't do, but I'm too aggravated to care.
    Pope points to one of the pages. "So, Big John also found another family. The Bellamys."
    "Okay."
    "Another really wealthy Carolina family. Shipping, land, boats. Basically the same world as the Fletchers."
    "So... they were friends?"
    Pope shakes his head. "If friends were enemies, yes."
    John B. and I both look at him like he's crazy. "Just say no, nerd," John B. teases. He looks at me. "He thinks they were rivals."
    "Makes sense." I take another carrot. "Rich people hate rich people."
    Pope makes a face. "Weren't you, like, exclusively friends with rich people...?"
    I scoff, rocking Willa back and forth. "First off, screw you. Second off, most of us didn't actually like each other. Rich people lie about that stuff a lot."
    Both guys stare at me a little after I say that, obviously confused about why anyone would lie about something like that. They won't ever understand. It's a Kook thing.
    Pope continues. "The other thing Big John figured out is that the Fletcher records seem to point towards some kind of collection."
    I stop chewing. "A collection?"
    "Not one giant treasure chest," Pope says. "More like a group of valuable objects that might've originally belonged together."
    John B. flips through the papers. "There's gold, silver, something ceremonial, a few things he couldn't identify."
    I'd be lying if I said my ears don't perk up. As much as I hate being in this shit again, the Cameron in me pretty much magnetizes towards anything shiny and valuable.
    "There's also one object that keeps showing up next to the same symbol."
    Pope points to it.
    I squint. "That little scribble?"
    "Yeah."
    "Okay. What does it mean?"
    "We don't know. It just shows up over and over."
    Willa starts to wake up, so I only half-listen to what they're saying. I pat her back before she can start fussing, and once her eyes are open more and she seems to register at least partially where she is, I lift her and place her against my knees. The hard wood edge of the table sears into my shins, but I hardly feel it. I smile down at her, talking quietly and running my hands gently down her arms.
    John B. cuts through. "You're not listening."
    I lift my head slowly. "Oh. Oh, I'm...I'm not listening? Sorry, John B., that I'm paying attention to our baby instead of giving my full attention to the Fletcher family and their treasure."
    John B. looks terrified. Mission accomplished, I think.
    "I didn't mean that this was... more important."
    "Sounded like it."
    Pope clears his throat. "Not the time to be arguing with your wife," he tells John B.
    "We weren't arguing."
    "You were."
    I smile at Pope. "Thank you, Popey."
    He grins back.
    "The symbol," John B. says, rolling his eyes.
    Pope nods. "Big John never figured out exactly what it was," he says. "But he did figure out that the same few objects keep showing up in different records."
    "Which means they were being moved," John B. adds.
    "By the Fletchers?"
    "Probably. But it gets messy when you look at the Bellamys. The Bellamy name shows up around some of the same dates, but we don't know if they were buying things, selling things, looking for the same things, or just involved in the same shipping network."
    "So basically..." I glance between them. "You don't know."
    John B. points at me. "We know more than we did yesterday."
    "Congratulations."
    Pope pulls another page from the pile. "We also figured out the three locations."
    I shift Willa higher against my legs. "Okay."
    "Two were Fletcher properties. Big John thought both were gone."
    "Let me guess. They're not?"
    "One of them isn't." John B. turns the map towards me. "The building is gone. The name changed. But the land is still there."
    Pope taps another point. "And this old landing was nearby. Much closer than we thought."
    "There used to be an inlet connecting them," John B. says. "It doesn't exist anymore."
    "So they could've moved stuff from the boats straight onto the property."
    "That's what we're thinking."
    I nod slowly. "Okay. Not bad."
    John B. looks pleased. "Thank you."
    Pope reaches for another sheet. "And there's the boat."
    "The mysterious ghost boat."
    They sound like stupid kids reading a pirate story. I don't say that out loud, but I do think it. Instead I ask simply, "Ghost boat?"
    Pope sighs, "He just means that it disappeared from the records."
    John B. nods, unfazed. "Ghost boat."
    "The important part is that the last recorded voyage lines up with one of the shipments Big John was already interested in."
    "And...?"
    "Nothing after that. No wrecks, no new owner; it's all empty."
    I shake my head, sighing sarcastically. "That's a shame. We've gotten pretty good at wrecks."
    John B. rubs a hand down his face. "Sar..." he chuckles. "Not the point."
    I look down at Willa again, as if I don't look at her enough. I mean, I don't, really. No matter how long I look at her, I don't think it will ever be enough. I want to look at her for the rest of my life. She has one fist wrapped around my finger now, completely unconcerned with the fact that her mother is begrudgingly participating in a century-old treasure hunt. I lean down and place a few dramatic kisses to her face. She squints when I get closer to her, anticipating the impact.
    "Oh, Mama's girl," I squeal.
    The guys are so used to this by now that they continue without stalling.
    "Put simply," Pope starts, "the Fletchers had a collection of valuable objects. They moved them around Kildare. The Bellamys were somehow connected to the same world. One Fletcher property may still exist under a different name. The old landing was connected to it by an inlet that's gone now. And a Fletcher boat disappeared after a voyage connected to one of the shipments."
    "That sounds like a lot." I have another thought. "So, Marlene probably wanted it for the same reasons as your dad, I guess. If the Fletchers were so well known, maybe it's possible that a lot of brokers or collectors or people like that knew about the ledger too."
    Pope nods. "That's probably it. Doesn't really matter how she found out about it, I guess, how it got so close to where she was. We know why she wanted it and we know that she still wants it to this day. We just need to figure out where it is.
    "And get it," John B. adds.
    "And figure out how to give it to Marlene without getting ourselves killed." Pope chuckles after he says this, which is a tell-tale sign that he's nervous.
    I hate what pops into my head after.
    Looking down at the papers, thinking about where this started and where it is now, something feels like it's shifted.
    This is something that Cleo had been sent to find when she was thirteen, and just when she thought she had escaped it all, it came back for her. This is also something that my husband's dad had been dedicating his life to when he wasn't searching for the merchant gold. It isn't like this is some twice removed mission—get a book for Marlene and run. We have ties to the ledger, apparently, in more than one way. We can't just give it all away.
    I can't believe I'm about to say this. I take a deep breath in to prepare myself. Both boys look my way. "And we're really supposed to give all of that to her?"
    Neither of them seems to immediately catch what I'm trying to say.
    There's still time to backtrack, I tell myself.
    I don't.
    "I mean, you guys found all of this stuff, and what? You're just going to let her have it? If the ledger really leads to all of these... artifacts, or whatever, is she the one who should be in control of it? That doesn't feel like a very us thing to do."
    Pope's expression changes. "Oh," he says. "I hadn't thought about that."
    John B. stays quiet, which I instantly think is strange. I look at him. He's staring at the folder, thumb running slowly along the edge of one of the pages.
    Then he looks up. "We don't know what it leads to yet." His voice is casual. Too casual, maybe.
    "Exactly," I say. "Which is why I don't love the idea of handing it over the second we find it."
    Pope nods slowly. "Yeah." He looks back at the maps. "We'd at least want to know what we're giving her. We need to know the risk-reward ratio."
    John B. glances at me. Something passes over his face. It's gone before I can place it.
    "Right," he says simply.
    I know that tone. It's the tone he uses when he doesn't want to talk about something yet. I don't push. Not with Pope sitting across from us and Willa half-asleep against my chest.
    Pope reaches for another map. "Okay. So let's go back to the property." His phone buzzes against the table. He glances down. "It's Kie."
    I watch his face change as he reads. He turns the phone towards me.