He sighs again. “I work for my dad now. Well, technically my grandpa, the aforementioned Gene Canfield. He owns a lumber yard. One of the biggest in Washington, actually.”

  “Neat,” I say politely.

  James laughs at my reaction. “It sounds boring, I know.”

  We fall silent for a while, staring into the black mass of trees, until I remember the other topic I was curious about. “What about Luke Gabelman?”

  The effect is immediate, his cheeks coloring. “What about Luke Gabelman?”

  “You don’t like him. I noticed when you were talking about him earlier. Why?”

  James shrugs. “He’s someone who is . . . full of himself.”

  “That’s it?”

  He smiles crookedly. “That’s it.”

  I change the subject since it’s obvious that he doesn’t want to talk about Luke Gabelman, and so we cover a litany of other things—our jobs, Pittsburgh, Spokane, Siskinoa ice cream—and everything flows as easily as it did before. The evening ends with us smiling at each other, the same thoughts in both of our heads.

  “There’s a bar in town, The Heron’s Hideaway, which I frequent sometimes.”

  “Frequently or sometimes?”

  He laughs. “Both. But if you’re—”

  “Yeah, I’ll find the time to stop by,” I say coolly.

  As he leaves, I catch my mom’s pleased eyes. She had been spying on us the whole time.

  August 1, 1952

  Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead. Donna is dead.

  LH

  Chapter 8

  A week later, I still can’t find the diary. I begin to question whether there is one. At times, Grandma Ginny embraced a peculiar sense of humor.

  Most of the family has left, and it’s nearing time for Mom and Dad to leave, too.

  “I know it’s a weird time for us to go on vacation, but it’s not a vacation,” my mom says as she tries to push a stubborn suitcase in front of her toward the front door. “Your father and I are looking at future homes.”

  My parents always dreamed of retiring in Puerto Rico, and current circumstances made them consider pushing up the date. “Whatever makes you happy. You deserve it,” I say.

  She cups my face into her hands and kisses my cheek.

  “Well, if you need anything, Sydney, we’re going to be very far away,” my dad adds.

  “That’s comforting. Have fun.”

  They leave. Maybe too suddenly.

  Once the door closes, I turn to face the vast, quiet house now bearing my name.

  Distant creaks. Trees swaying above the roof. Another rain shower patters against the windows. Various other small noises fill up the cabin, and I feel unprepared.

  I’m not always alone, thankfully. There are various visits from curious Siskinoans, some with more genuine condolences than others. Mrs. Frankfort is among the repeat visitors. I don’t shoo them away like my mom did, since I appreciate these few minutes of company and the food they bring with them. And some of them were close with Grandma Ginny.

  It’s also obvious that they’re curious to see the granddaughter. Is there some semblance to Virginia Hunt? Their eyes glaze to my face the moment I open the door, but I try to ignore it. However, once they start bringing up topics I don’t like—my current occupation, if I’m planning to sell the cabin, etc—I find an excuse to end the visit.

  Days slip by, and without the diary, I feel stunted. I begin to question why I wanted the cabin so much in the first place. There’s not much going on in Siskinoa, and constant rain prevents long hikes. Additionally, most people here are 65 or older, or so it feels.

  I visit the grocery store to keep the fridge stocked, even though there are heaps of leftovers and edible gifts. I also dust the cabin repeatedly and sweep the porch; I doubt even Grandma Ginny kept it this clean. There’s not much else to do, but it’s also an excuse to see if the diary shows up anywhere.

  It’s barely a week after my parents leave that I realize I need to visit the camp. A feeling, perhaps, more than anything, pulls me in that direction. That was always the focal point of my visits to Grandma, and most of her childhood stories centered on the camp and her escapades with fellow campers. If Grandma had, say, hidden her diary, she would’ve chosen the camp.

  And I wouldn’t put it past her.

  I lace up my sturdiest running shoes and hike the way down. The cabin is almost immediately obscured by trees as I look back, and looking forward, it feels as though I’ve entered an entirely different world. The ponderosa pines soar nearly a hundred feet above me, and their enormous, scaly trunks dominate my view. Some trees look familiar. Some I might’ve once given names: Tom, Billy, Rosie. I feel a profound sense of nostalgia as I walk through them.

  After a few minutes of trekking downhill, I finally see the Gabelman home, which once doubled as the camp’s headquarters. It’s a much simpler building than Grandma’s, a roomy, single-floor log cabin that overlooks the camp itself. I haven’t been this close to it in years, and I haven’t waded in the lake waters for several years before that.

  I circle the Gabelman cabin cautiously, as I used to as a kid, trying to remain unseen behind a thinning layer of trees until I come nearer to the lake shore where seven small cabins once stood. This is where the campers bunked. There were three cabins left when I was a kid. Now, there are only two. Before I can assess its current state of deterioration, I’m arrested by the grandeur of Lake Rockatchee.

  It’s much larger and clearer than I remember. There’s turquoise rippling about the larger shades of deep blue, and the submerged rocks near the shore are clearly visible. I have the sudden urge to take a dip, brought about by the stronger sensation of dehydration.

  It’s beautiful, and I take several minutes to admire it until I sense something targeting the back of my neck. A gaze.

  A pair of eyes.

  I cautiously turn until my body faces the bunks and the Gabelman cabin.

  A man stares back at me. My joints lock out of fear, and I’m unable to muster a word, but my wariness is soon washed away by other feelings—intrigue, interest.

  The man is tall, shirtless, and has his long blonde hair tied up haphazardly at the back. He has a trimmed beard that’s a shade darker, the same dark underneath the blond streaks of his golden head. He’s very tan, and I assume he spends most of his time outdoors, time I might’ve interrupted just now. But all of this is to say nothing of his eyes—dark and penetrating, like daggers, because . . . because they’re accusatory.

  “Who are you?” he demands.

  I feel my mouth opening wider but nothing comes out. I notice that he’s carrying a splitting maul; I immediately assume there’s a pile of tree trunks nearby because there’s no way this Viking god is an ax murderer. Or if he is, that’d be a huge bummer.

  He takes a couple of steps closer, and my voice immediately rings out like a defensive shield. “Uh, Sydney. Sydney Wilkerson. My grandmother’s—uh—my house is just up the hill.”

  He stops at the information, and although his expression softens a bit, he still has a cold edge about him. He drops the ax by his side and takes several steps forward. He scans my face, which is growing more scarlet by the second. He’s so tall that my eyes land at his neck.

  “What are you doing here? There’s no public access to the lake from here.”

  “Right . . . um,” I say, struggling to begin. How do I explain that I came here based on an intuitive feeling, hoping that it’ll somehow lead to the discovery of my grandmother’s diary? I don’t, obviously. “My grandmother just passed away, and we used to come here all the time as a kid. I don’t know, I was just . . . feeling sentimental.”

  The edge to his expression now disappears completely. “Did you know my dad, Ed Gableman?”

  “Yeah, actually, I did. I met him a few times.”

  “Your grandmother was really close to my family. Mrs. Hunt was welcome on Gabelman land, and I guess . . . you are as well. Luke Gabelman,” he adds with an outstretched hand.

  There’s a reluctance with his gesture, and everything James tells me the other night comes to mind. “Nice to meet you,” I say anyway.

  Luke gives his condolences, and we fall into a short silence. He slowly picks back up his ax. “Well, I’ll leave you to your sentimentality.”

  He turns toward his home so that I can only see his back. I hesitate to reclaim his attention, feeling like a nuisance, but as he nearly disappears behind one of the bunks, I take my chance. “Hey, Luke! Can I ask you something?”

  He turns around slowly, clearly not expecting this.

  “You said my grandma was always welcome here. I know she and your father were close. Is there any chance that she might’ve gifted you guys anything before she passed away?”

  It’s a complete shot in the dark, but to my surprise, he doesn’t immediately dispel the thought.

  Chapter 9

  I follow Luke into his home, which is more rustic and down-to-earth than Grandma Ginny’s. There aren’t as many windows here so the place feels much darker than the woods outside.

  “She gave this to my dad five years ago,” he says behind me, wiping sweat off his neck with a tattered shirt and pointing to a chest on the floor in the middle of his living room. It takes a bit for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light, and I suddenly wonder if it was a good idea to have entered this stranger’s home. Of course, it was done at my prodding.

  Luke notices we need more light and violently rips off a bed sheet covering the front windows. The sudden glare from the sun outside reveals a bare interior in desperate need of homely accents. Besides the chest, a worn sofa and TV are the only pieces of furniture in the room.

  And the chest looks distinctly out of place. It’s a charming wooden feat of craftsmanship, its entire surface area carved with drawings of trees and birds. The Woodland.

  “I mean, she let him have it. They designed it together, and my dad made it,” Luke says monotonously. “Do you want water or something?”

  “No, it’s alright,” I reply, crawling on all fours to examine it better. Luke sighs, unsure of what to do with himself.

  I examine the chest all around, looking for the place where it opens. I can make out the lid, but not the clasp. “Do you mind if I open it?” I ask, hoping that Luke knows how.

  “Uh, about that, I’ve never figured out how to do that,” he says, reclining on the chaise end of the sofa.

  If Grandma Ginny helped design this thing, she would not have made it easy. I turn on the flashlight from my phone and hover it closely over the chest’s surface. There is so much attention to detail here: recesses and texture on both the leaves and in the bark of the trees. “Your father was quite the woodworker, Luke.”

  Luke grunts, nearly falling asleep. From my angle, I notice the sharp angle of his jawline and the thick lashes throwing shadows above his cheeks. I have to remind myself to return my attention back to the chest.

  It almost feels like no use; if Grandma deliberately tried to hide the opening of the chest, she did too good of a job.

  But then—right at the center of the chest, the side facing the window, is the tiny, carved word: “Begins.”

  There’s no need to think: my hand reflexively moves to my chest and pulls out the woolen string from which the wooden key hangs. It’s the key engraved with the word “It.”

  The timeline doesn’t match up. “Do you know when they made the chest? Was that also five years ago?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Luke clarifies. “I think she had it at her place for some time before that.”

  That would make sense. Obviously “some time” had to overlap with my years in middle school and the Tiffany key trend.

  With a quivering hand, I slide the key into a discrete lock, carved into the shape of a bird. It’s one of many birds on the chest and difficult to distinguish from the others. The two words then combine seamlessly. What do you have planned, Grandma Ginny?

  I turn the key and the lock clicks open with a deep, cavernous-sounding chime. Luke’s eyes fly open.

  I open the large lid carefully, and an old, wooden smell, like the innards of an ancient tree, wafts out. I can now see how the carvings masterfully disguised the ridge of the lid's opening as some of the chiseled vines from the top half ripple down into the bottom half like lace.

  Luke scrambles over and kneels beside me, and for the first time today, he appears genuinely interested. The corners of his lips even begin to lift upwards. “How in the world—”

  I lean closer over the chest. Inside, there’s only one object: a small, battered notebook with the words “DIARY” emblazoned across its cover.

  July 2, 1951

  Have you ever seen anyone so gorgeous? Gene Canfield is everything I’ve ever wanted in a man. He’s tall, blonde, tan, athletic. And he has the most beautiful blue eyes.

  Susie says I’m being nutty. There’s no way someone as cool as Gene could ever give a fourteen-year-old more than two seconds of attention. But he’s seventeen! He’s not that much older.

  Besides, I can never find the chance to talk to him since he’s in charge of the nine and ten-year-olds. My counselor is someone named Rick, and his breath always smells.

  Anyway, Diary, I’m going to phone Donna and ask her if she knows anything about the Canfields. Maybe she can butter him up to Daddy for whenever I become his wife. There’s no harm in dreaming.

  Love,

  Ginny

  Chapter 10

  “Your grandma’s diary? That’s what she kept hidden in here?” Luke asks incredulously.

  “She was a strange woman,” I mutter, flipping through the book’s delicate pages. It was covered in a girly, pearl-like penmanship, an old forerunner to Grandma’s sophisticated cursive that I’m well acquainted with.

  “I can see that.”

  I scowl at him. Only I can say that about my grandma.

  “Well, I’m not going to lie; it’s a bit anticlimactic after all the time I spent trying to hack the thing open without destroying it.” Luke is back to lying on his sofa, covering his eyes with his shirt. There’s not much else for me to do here, so I close the chest, thank Luke for his trouble, and make my way to the door with the diary in hand.

  “What’s that?” I hear Luke say from behind me as I turn the knob on the front door.

  I turn around. “Huh?”

  Luke is pointing to the floor at the base of the chest. A square piece of paper is lying there, something that must’ve slipped out of the diary. Once I pick it up, I realize it’s a much larger paper that’s been folded in.

  Luke rises again from the sofa and looks over my shoulder as I delicately unfold the paper, each edge cracking. It’s a large rectangular sheet, and the paper’s borders are tinted brown with age. Although the hand-drawn illustration is faint, Luke and I immediately recognize what it is and simultaneously exclaim: “A map!”

  “Better lead to gold,” Luke mutters before either of us has time to process what the map depicts.

  I wave him away and move closer to the window. There are contour lines that depict an elevated land, small icons that depict trees, and a large lake to the left of a hill or mountain. It doesn’t take long to understand what I’m looking at: it’s Grandma’s cabin, the Gabelman estate, and the surrounding forest. “She drew a map of this area. That’s all it is,” I tell Luke. “There’s no ‘x marks the spot’ or anything.”

  “And what’s that?” Luke asks, pointing to a faint writing that appears from behind the translucent paper.

  Slowly turning over the sheet, I realize that Grandma’s cursive is written on the back. It isn’t the pearly kind I saw in the diary or the penmanship she had right before she died. It’s a cursive developed from a time in between.

  “‘In the room where stories dwell,

  where Hunt tales and secrets swell,

  the journey starts within these walls.

  Worry not, the paper room never falls.’”

  A riddle? Grandma Ginny left me a riddle.

  Luke looks amused. He rubs his blond beard as he barely holds back a smile. “So your grandma’s parting gift is a treasure hunt?”

  I feel my jaws clench; I don’t like his reaction. Maybe this last bit of my inheritance is a bit strange, but as with a lot of things pertaining to Grandma, I feel defensive.

  “Well, thank you for your time, Luke Gabelman,” I say curtly while swiftly making my way past him and toward the door.

  He laughs. “Let me know if you find money.”

  Chapter 11

  I arrive back at the cabin in no time. I’m in a rush, but not because of the riddle. No—I solved that one when I read the first line. “In the room where stories dwell” obviously refers to the library at the cabin. “Where Hunt tales and secrets swell” refers to the generations of Hunts who contributed to the collection. And Luke solved the third line: “the journey starts” must mean that Grandma Ginny has woven together the treasure hunt of a lifetime.

  No, rather, I’m desperate to read the diary itself. I saw references to the fabled summer camp within its pages when I was skimming it earlier, piquing my curiosity, and I get the feeling that the diary isn’t a random object in which to hide the map. Grandma’s will said as much.

  I start at the beginning, which dates back to 1950, when Grandma was thirteen years old. She mostly writes about things that happened to her at school, the friends she made, and the crushes she had. That summer is the first time she documents Tim Gabelman’s summer camp.

  A wave of nostalgia hits me even though it’s not my memories. Camp songs, coordinating t-shirts, bug bites, belly flops into the lake, gross dares from fellow campers—it all feels like an alternative childhood of mine.

 

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