Page 25 of Finders Keepers
He squints at it. “You mean the mausoleum?”
“A mausoleum that doesn’t actually hold any remains is called a cenotaph,” I say, enjoying the way Quentin’s eyebrows still get that deep dividing line between them when I’ve said something that annoys him. “And Fountain wound up beingburied in Baltimore, in the same plot as his brother and parents, remember? So technically…”
“Then yes, I checked thecenotaph,” he says, and pauses before continuing, “inside and out.”
The only clue Fountain left was that the treasure was hidden somewhere at Sprangbur, and the riddle: “Stiff of spine, body pale, you shall find what you seek beneath the whale.” Much of our time on the estate that summer was spent looking for carvings or markings that even remotely resembled a whale. The problem wasn’t that we couldn’t find one so much as we found about two hundred. Whales were second only to stars as Fountain’s favored decorative motif.
But in early July, we found a newspaper article talking about Fountain’s burial in Baltimore and learned that what we assumed was just another weird stone outbuilding was actually what Fountain had once intended as his final resting place. “Stiff of spine, body pale” certainly seemed to apply to a dead person. So we started focusing on the cenotaph, which, frustratingly, was the one place on the property we couldn’t seem to find anything whale-related. We figured we were on the wrong track and went back to researching and wandering aimlessly around Sprangbur together in hopes of having an epiphany.
Then, on Quentin’s penultimate night in Catoctin, as we were talking through our windows, he switched over to his normal voice and asked me to meet him out back. I snuck out of the house and went around to the gate at the end of his yard, where he directed me to a fleece blanket flung over the grass near the garage, where it was darkest. We lay there, arms pressed together, the air still warm and humid despite it being near eleven. The memory of how my heart kicked up when he asked if I’d stargaze with him, beating so hard it felt like it was trying toknock its way out of my chest, is still surprisingly fresh in my mind. I tried to bury every other memory of that summer after it became clear Quentin wasn’t going to be in my life anymore. But that one I’ve kept a bit closer than the rest.
Quentin reached over and handed me something. It was a planisphere—one of those star charts where you adjust it to the right month and time and you can see what constellations are in the sky above you. He said, “I found this while packing up my bedroom.”
I spun the planisphere to August, eleven p.m., and adjusted it so the cardinal directions around the outside lined up with our position.
“I bet,” Quentin started, “that I can accurately identify more constellations than you can.”
It turned out he could, and I didn’t really mind, because it meant I got to lie there beside him while he pointed up at the sky and taught me about the stars.
When he finished with what we could see, I thought he would stop. Instead, he continued, taking the planisphere and rotating it to different dates, telling me stories about the constellations currently in hiding.
“That one, there, is Cetus,” he said quietly. “The sea monster, or whale.”
“The whale, huh,” I said. “Wait. Quentin.The whale!” I sprang up then and grabbed the planisphere. “What if this is what Fountain meant?”
Which is how we realized there may be a whale on the cenotaph after all.
I feel the sudden and urgent need to explain myself. To confess what I discovered on my own and why I never made it to the cenotaph that night as we’d agreed. But before I can decidehow to start, how to phrase it, Quentin walks to the outer edge of the gardens, where his fingers graze against the top of a well-manicured hedge. It sends a shiver through me, as if my skin can’t help but imagine being one of those waxy leaves.
“I thought about this place a lot when I was overseas,” he says matter-of-factly. “I visited a bunch of the grand European estates while I lived over there. Versailles. Boboli. Schönbrunn. Keukenhof. And even after seeing all of those much bigger, much older mansions and gardens, I couldn’t help but compare them to Sprangbur and find them…well, lacking.”
I let out a surprised laugh. The gardens here are beautiful, and the county and volunteers have always done a great job with their upkeep, even when the Castle itself was a condemned eyesore. But the property is also much less ornate and, like, one-twentieth the size of the famous ones Quentin mentioned.
“I didn’t say I thought Sprangbur wasnicer,” he clarifies. “There’s just…something really special about it.” He smiles fondly as his gaze sweeps over the large house and the land surrounding it.
Maybe that’s what I’ve been missing about that summer whenever the memories of it have managed to slip through my defenses. In my head, it was the time Quentin and I were closest, inching toward some precipice that was terrifying and exciting all at once. I thought that maybe I was developing romantic feelings for him, thatwemight have been developing those sorts of feelings for each other, and that’s one of the reasons it hurt him so much that I went behind his back. But now I’m wondering if it wasn’t that Quentin and I were falling in love, but simply that we were overcome by the surprising magic of this otherworldly domain that Fountain built.
Itismagical. Not literally, obviously. But I can’t deny thatthere’s this sense here that anything might be possible. Even when the Castle had broken windows, flaking paint, and a partially caved-in roof, it still exuded this quiet yet enticing playfulness. I suppose that’s why Fountain loved living here so much. And why it’s always felt like such a touchstone for Quentin (and, I guess, for me) as we went about the rest of our lives.
Maybe all of my overwhelming feelings back then weren’t even about Quentin at all. They were just grief over the end of my love affair with this fascinating place.
Even more reason to put the past behind us and finish what we started so we can move on without the risk of becoming enchanted again.
“So,” I say, still feeling the need to explain myself. It’s part of our agreement, after all. The word comes out croaky, so I clear my throat, then point down the path. “That night. When you were at the cenotaph. I, um, went inside the house.”
Quentin’s eyes go wide in disbelief. “You…Jesus, Nina. That was stupid.”
“Excuse me?”
“What if you’d gotten hurt? The place was falling apart and—”
“I was careful,” I argue. He shakes his head in exasperation.
My left knee twinges, thanks to the long walk and many stairs it took to get here. I sit down on a small bench tucked among the rosebushes that make up the southwestern edge of the formal gardens, hugging one of the mansion’s rough-hewn stone walls. The fragrance drifts through the air and a pink petal falls at my feet as if saying hello. “I didn’t find anything. Obviously.”
“Okay. And…?” he responds, as if still waiting for more.
“And what?”
