Treason and patriotism; wait and hope; time and silence. Hell. The Count of Monte Cristo.

  The three solved riddles, in my abuela’s spindly handwriting, were next to the church, the cemetery, and the jail, respectively.

  “It looks like my abuela still had three riddles left to figure out. But there must be something else we’re missing. The treasure probably isn’t split up into six different locations. So how do all these places tie together?”

  “Do you think the heaven/earth/hell thing has something to do with it? Maybe it’s all a misdirect and the treasure is just, like, at the church or something,” Max suggested.

  “I’ve been thinking about it, and my guess is that it’s directional—telling you whether the clue is located up high, in the building’s main area, or buried,” I surmised. “And this town was founded in, like, 1850, so probably around when the riddles were written, it was a lot easier to figure out where something was hidden in a familiar building. Even if the clues are only up, middle, and down.”

  “Makes sense.” Wyn shrugged and then flinched. The movement must have pulled the cuts on her back.

  Max shot her a look of sympathy before looking back at the book in front of him. He scanned the open page again quickly and then pushed it closer to us, tapping at a paragraph with his finger.

  “So, the only thing I’ve found that seems like it could be relevant is that by the 1930s, a lot of the town had been reconstructed and the older buildings demoed and rebuilt. Only four original buildings remained after 1960: the mayor’s office, the bank, the post office, and the courthouse,” he said. “But in the ’80s, the mayor’s office was rebuilt and the bank was majorly refurbished. And then last year, the post office burned down and had to be completely rebuilt as well. Which means the only building left from the town’s creation is the courthouse.”

  “And I bet at least a few of those buildings changed physical locations between the original construction and the current one,” Wyn added.

  “I think I’m starting to understand how valuable an older map would be,” I said, scanning the pages of Max’s book. “You can hardly find the treasure if you’re going to a courthouse that used to be a tannery or whatever.”

  “I mean, yeah. Most people aren’t going to have a map this old lying around,” Wyn said, tugging on the corner of Mr. Wyatt’s map.

  “That also makes sense why The Hunt was slightly more chill in the early 1900s,” I said, thinking out loud. “The riddles are supposed to lead you to different locations. And at that time, some of those locations hadn’t changed since the town was founded. It was only once things started being rebuilt that The Hunt became more difficult and more dangerous.”

  As I explained, Max’s eyebrows got higher and higher.

  “But there’s still something we haven’t figured out. Otherwise, someone in the last hundred and seventy years would have solved these riddles and claimed the treasure.”

  “They’re all books, right?” Wyn pointed out. “The Scarlet Letter, Frankenstein, and The Count of Monte Cristo. If there’s anything we know best, it’s books. And we have the internet now, which is going to make this all a lot easier—shout-out to technology. Once we have that piece figured out, we can focus on the rest.”

  I nodded and pulled up the full list of riddles on my phone.

  I read out loud.

  “ ‘A dark night with bright stars.’ ”

  Wyn typed into her phone. “Ooh, that one’s almost a direct quote: Crime and Punishment,” she said. “Next?”

  “Crime and Punishment has got to be the police department, right?” Max interjected. “Or maybe the mayor’s office, but I feel like these riddles are pretty heavy-handed so far.”

  “Like eight people in town probably had more than a high school education back then. Cut them some slack,” Wyn joked.

  A smile cracked Max’s stony face at Wyn being well enough to try to make him laugh.

  “ ‘A great and terrible adventure of tradition and absurdity,’ ” I continued from the list.

  “That one has to be—Gulliver’s Travels. I freakin’ hate that book by the way,” Wyn said, looking down at her phone.

  But when we tried the last one, we came up with nothing.

  “ ‘The eternal probable improbability, both divine and worldly, blood and bone over soil,’ ” I repeated the last riddle.

  “The graveyard?” Wyn tried.

  Max shook his head. “That’s already the place for Frankenstein. We have to get the book first, and the rest of it will come easier.”

  “It’s an old book, too,” I reminded them. “So think of stuff that’s old and famous and probably on every high school reading list.”

  “Why famous?” Max asked. “It could be any of a hundred thousand books.”

  “Books were extremely expensive and very few got truly well known in the way we think of them today. The founder was writing this for people in the future, which means that they were written with the understanding that the books they chose would still be relevant and stand the test of time. The other books were The Scarlet Letter, Frankenstein, The Count of Monte Cristo. Absolute giants of their time,” I explained.

  Max had his phone out and was tapping away wildly. “Here!” he said primly, handing it to me. “A giant list of books from 1600 to 1900.”

  I grimaced scrolling through the options.

  “It could be religious, since it mentions divinity,” Max suggested.

  “Maybe, but it also says ‘worldly,’ so we’re probably looking for something that mixes the two concepts into one. At the time I believe people felt that way about law, and medicine,” I said.

  “It mentions blood and bones, so maybe it’s medical?” Wyn suggested.

  “A ‘probable improbability’ could refer to the likelihood of dying or not,” I said. “Maybe the hospital?”

  Wyn sighed theatrically. “The only time I’ve heard about bone and soil is when my parents force me to go to church,” she said. “Though that’s probably not bookish enough of an answer.”

  I stopped scrolling and thought harder. “Man was made from dirt and woman … from a rib. ‘Blood and bone over soil.’ The book is about women. Women’s ‘probable improbability’ … something women can do, but it’s unlikely for them to be able to do …”

  “Uh … back then? Basically everything,” Wyn chipped in with a snort. “Being a woman before, like, 1970 was probably terrible. They had no rights at all.”

  I word searched the term “women,” then “girls,” then “woman.” Nothing seemed right. Until …

  “I … I think I found it,” I said, zooming in on the screen. Wyn and Max leaned in close to read it.

  “A Vindication of the Rights of Women, by Mary Wollstonecraft,” Wyn breathed.

  “The Goth Mother herself.” I nodded. “Mary Shelley’s mom.”

  Max shrugged. “Eh, the rest of the riddle is easy now. It’s either the courthouse or the church. On the upper level somewhere since it said ‘heaven.’ ”

  “It’s the courthouse,” I said.

  Wyn looked puzzled.

  “The church was an answer to a previous riddle, and nothing else was used twice. Also, the courthouse is pretty much the only building in town that’s still standing in its original location, mostly untouched,” I explained.

  “Yeah … Yeah, wow. We … Well. We did it,” Wyn said, stunned. “Almost two hundred years of chaos, and we just … looked up the answers.”

  “Let’s give ourselves a little more credit,” Max said, tilting his head to the side. “That last one was a team effort.”

  I stood up and started packing up our stuff. “Back then, you probably had to have practically memorized all those books to recognize references like that when you saw them. That combined with the fact that most people probably couldn’t even afford books, the people who created these riddles probably had an idea in mind of the kind of person who would be able to solve them.

  “What we need to figure out now is more complicated than that. We have Mr. Wyatt’s old map, but we don’t know how the spyglass comes into play here. And which of these locations we need to start with. But most importantly, we need to find out who killed Mr. Wyatt, and whether they did it to find the treasure or”—I paused for effect—“to keep people like us from finding it first.”

  Wyn, Max, and I spent the rest of the weekend researching the town’s founding and old spyglasses and anything we thought might lead us to Mr. Wyatt’s killer. The one lead that would have really helped was talking to someone who knew him during The Hunt, but Abuela was still avoiding me.

  Whenever I passed Abuela in the hallway or tried to start up a conversation during mealtime, she was blank. There hadn’t been music playing when Abuela cooked or cleaned, and she began spending most of her free time alone in her room. The silence between us was a mutual thing, not the tenseness of when she was angry with me or I pushed her boundaries. But it was very clear that her grief came in the form of carefully withheld rage, not anguish or tears.

  That’s why I was so surprised to find Abuela waiting for me the next morning, dressed and ready for Mr. Wyatt’s funeral.

  But while she was no longer pretending she wasn’t involved in what was going on, the ride to the church was still as silent as the last few days had been.

  We didn’t really go to church regularly, so it already felt weird being there for the funeral—cause of death notwithstanding. When we pulled up outside, it looked like the whole town had decided to show up. Cars of people attending the funeral were lined around the block. I had almost forgotten the street could look like that. It was rare that there was anyone parked on the street in Hollow Falls. There simply weren’t enough residents.

  I breathed in the scent of Abuela’s perfume and sighed. She sat stiffly next to me, expressionless and cold, as she looked for parking. For the funeral, Abuela had dressed in gray, not black. It was strange to see the color on her. It might have been the only gray dress she had. She had also combed her curly hair into a severe bun on the top of her head, leaving a few tendrils down around her face. It made her look like a younger version of herself. I thought about saying so, but every time I gathered the courage to start a conversation, the look on her face always made me reconsider.

  We finally found a place to park and made our way up the block to the church.

  “Are you all right?” I asked Abuela gently as we got close enough to be among other people heading inside.

  She shook her head. “No. I will be soon, though.”

  Abuela climbed the front stairs and strode confidently into the church. I followed her inside, peering around on my tiptoes to see if I could find Max and Wyn. I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text in the group chat.

  I put my arm out to guide Abuela forward, and we stepped into the main space of the church. Wyn had been right: it was packed. As we headed down the aisle, I noticed that we were getting some looks. Most people who were here for Mr. Wyatt’s funeral were minding their business, but every so often, an older person would spot Abuela and either raise their eyebrows in shock or a sneer. Abuela kept her eyes forward and didn’t acknowledge any of these glances.

  There were chairs in front of the closest pews to the casket, arranged in tight rows to fit more people, and just as Wyn had said, there were names on a few of them. I spotted Wyn and her parents in the corner, clearly not included in the select honored guests who’d received a seat up front.

  Max was in line to see the casket. He’d never gotten to meet Mr. Wyatt when he was alive.

  As we made our way past the aisle leading up to the line, a tall man nearly as old as Mr. Wyatt looked down at Abuela furiously.

  “What are you doing here?” he spat, his eyes narrowing in distaste. “It’s a bit late for recompensation.”

  “Mind your business,” Abuela replied sternly.

  Then, after a second of contemplation, she tugged her arm out of mine.

  “I’m sorry, mija, but I have something I must do,” she said before striding off, purposefully. I watched her head toward the casket, weaving her way through the crowd.

  “Tig!” Wyn called, waving me over. Max got out of line to come join us, and he was also almost back to Wyn’s side.

  “How are things at home?” Wyn asked after pulling me into a quick hug.

  “Hard to tell,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at Abuela still pushing her way to the front of the space. “Abuela is acting really out of character. Today is the first she’s acknowledged what happened on Friday. But she still won’t let me ask her about any of it.”

  “Her hair looks really good, though!” Max said quietly. “I know this is supposed to be a sad event, but that bun slaps.”

  “Yeah,” I said dubiously, “the bun seems more like a symptom of being reminded of her past or something rather than a bold new fashion choice.”

  Wyn’s mom, standing behind her, beautiful and tall, closed her eyes and shook her head. “Cut her some slack. Grief makes strangers of us all.”

  “Are you going to go look at the body?” Max asked me once Wyn’s mom had looked away. “He looks really weird and bad. His skin is all …”

  “All dead people look gross. And the poor guy fell out of a window,” Wyn pointed out.

  “No, I mean he looks … He’s got a lot of makeup on, but it’s kind of sliding off and underneath his skin is all bluish.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “That doesn’t really line up with death by fall, does it?” Could someone have killed Mr. Wyatt before throwing him to his death? “I’ll definitely take a closer look later. It looks like the service is starting.”

  Mr. Green, who was at the front of the church, cleared his throat.

  “Thank you all for joining us today. Before we begin, we would like to hear from a few people who knew Alan Wyatt,” he said, his voice wavering. “Please form a line to the right of the first pew.” He then reached down to help the first speaker step up to the riser—Abuela.

  Wyn, Max, and I exchanged looks. Maybe this funeral would be more informative than expected.

  “Good afternoon, all,” Abuela’s voice rang out crisp and strong.

  “How dare you come here!” someone in the congregation hissed.

  With an authoritative scowl, Mr. Green crossed his arms, clearly championing her presence. But the heckler in the audience was far from the only one unsupportive of Abuela being allowed to speak. The man who had burst into Mr. Wyatt’s office, Franklin Baker, was also at the front of the room. He seemed nearly apoplectic that Abuela was here, his face red with anger. Some of the members that I remembered sneering at us in the foyer were beginning to speak in angry, hushed tones among themselves.

  “Good afternoon,” Abuela repeated. “I know many of you are surprised that I am here.” She paused as if waiting for more interruptions. “But you shouldn’t be surprised. I walked beside Alan Wyatt long before many of you were even born. We battled together and laughed together. He was there for me in some of the darkest moments of my life.”

  Abuela’s eyes flicked to find Noel, perched on the edge of her seat, about halfway back in the church. But before I could point it out to Max and Wyn, Abuela was facing the crowd again.

  “Alan was a giant among men,” Abuela continued. “He was fierce, cunning, relentless, and kind. His impact in this community will echo beyond the indignity of his death.”

  Abuela stopped and looked out at the crowd.

  “Some of you are here to pay respects to a great man. Maybe you knew him, maybe you only knew of him. Regardless, I am glad that you are here. He deserved many faces to see him to his rest.

  “Some of you, on the other hand, have been jackals in his midst, wolves in his woods, and have come to gloat at the feast of his bones. You, who cast eyes at me for my silence and distance, while the sin of greed tears your own souls to shreds.

  “No matter what you’ve heard to the contrary, this was an unnatural death. And as much as it pains to discuss the violence of his passing, denying it spits in the face of justice. Alan deserved more.”

  She paused again, then said very slowly and clearly, “And lastly, to his killer—because there is no doubt in my heart that they are among us—I know what you are looking for. What you took Alan from this world to get. And I will make sure you never, ever find it.”

  At the mention of a killer in the room, the mourners all began looking around fearfully and murmuring among themselves.

  “Thank you for your time, and my sincerest condolences,” Abuela finished.

  Mr. Green helped her down from the riser, his hand gentle and familiar on her arm. He walked with her through the crowd, sharply eyeing anyone who tried to approach her so that Abuela could move freely.

  “Holy shit,” I said, looking back at Wyn and Max. “What the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know, but she’s coming this way,” Max said anxiously.

  Abuela was indeed making her way toward us, Mr. Green still in tow.

  “It’s nice to see you, Mr. and Mrs. Abbott,” she said to Wyn’s parents, then turned to me. “I’m going to go sit in the pews on the second floor, as it’s clear that I’m unwelcome down here and I do not want to interrupt the others from their mourning. When you are ready to leave, come upstairs and find me.”

  Then she turned on her heel and walked briskly toward the staircase. Mr. Green nodded at us kindly, then went off back toward the front of the room.

  “You’re right. She is … acting different,” Wyn said, grimacing.

  “When your grandmother passed, I watched It’s a Wonderful Life on repeat for three full days,” Wyn’s father, a stout and gentle-faced man, said. “Give her some time, and it will get better.”

  He squeezed my shoulder reassuringly, and all of a sudden, I had an uncharacteristic pang of longing for my own dad. He probably wouldn’t have said or done anything like Wyn’s father but … it suddenly hit me how hard it was to be alone with someone else’s grief.

  “I’m going to go to the bathroom,” I said, needing a moment to decompress. “Then do you want to go to the reception area? People are still kind of staring in our direction.”

 

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