Page 106 of Your Every Wish
I turn to the excavator and sure enough it’s a piece of red plastic, probably a piece of trash that found its way into the hole. I let out a breath.
Bent takes another swing through the trench with the shovel, then turns off the machine. Giving us time for our ears to adjust, he calls that there’s nothing down there. My chest feels less tight, like a vise has been loosened around it. And suddenly I can breathe again. It is not lost on me that I should be feeling the opposite way.
“It’s there,” Misty says, and Emma, Liam, and I move closer to the wide maw Bent has dug and circle the trench. “Not here. There.” She motions to a section of the stone wall that’s covered in shadow from the trees. “I see it clear as day. The golf bag. The money. It’s there. Under the wall.”
I don’t know what to believe. We could spend all day destroying the remainder of Bent’s rock wall and still find nothing. Or it could be in the exact spot Misty says it’s in.
“What do you want me to do?” Bent folds his arms over his chest.
Emma and I turn to each other. “What do you think we should do?” I ask her, a lot less sure than I was a few hours ago. Though these last few days the sense of doom has been creeping up on me.
“I don’t know,” she says but I can tell she’s even more hesitant than I am. The thing is, I’m the one who desperately needs the money and Emma has miraculously had my back. Truthfully, I don’t know what I would’ve done without her these last few weeks. “It’s up to you, Kennedy. Whatever you decide.”
Bent is leaning against the excavator, all loose limbs and smiles. He’s the only one who appears to be enjoying this. Even Liam seems . . . reluctant. Nervous.
“Can we sleep on it?” I ask.
He fishes his phone out of his jacket pocket and scrolls through it. “Yep, but Hoss here”—he slaps the side of the machine—“is spoken for Monday. So don’t sleep too long.”
“You’re not going to let me redeem myself?” Misty steps forward, scowling.
Emma takes Misty by the arm and tells her in the kindest way possible that this isn’t about her. Then we drive home, defeated. Liam puts up a pot of coffee and the three of us sit around the kitchen table. The mood is glum, even though in a weird way I feel as if a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
“Madge will be disappointed,” I say, breaking the silence.
“I thought you didn’t tell her, that you let her think there wasn’t any money.”
“I didn’t. But if we’d found the money I would’ve had to tell her.” I can’t decide which would be more pressure: worrying about having to launder dirty money or having Madge, and by extension Max, on the gravy train.
“What about Misty?” Emma says. “What if it’s really where she says it is?”
“It would solve my immediate problem, that’s for sure.” Monday is the deadline for Brock Sterling and here it is Wednesday.
“Let’s do it, Kennedy. Let’s at least try in the spot where Misty says it is,” Emma says.
I know it’s more for me than it is for her. Still, I grab onto it like it’s a lifeline because in essence it is.
“Liam?” He’s been so quiet I almost forget he’s here. “What do you say?” While his opinion doesn’t matter as much as Emma’s does, he’s part of this now. He’s as much a part of it as even Misty.
“It’s up to the both of you. But I don’t have to tell you that it comes with risks.”
“We can fix up the trailer park,” I say because I’m tired of it always being about me. “Maybe if we shined the place up, we could figure out how to make it profitable.”
“The both of you should sleep on it.” Liam gets to his feet. “I’ll leave you to talk.”
Emma watches through the window as he walks home.
“What’s going on with you two?” I address the elephant in the room.
“Nothing,” she says too quickly and a little defensively, like she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t. “He’s hiding something, you know?”
“Like what?” Liam isn’t exactly a sharer but hiding something? He just seems private to me.
“His past. I’ve searched the internet and can’t find anything about him. Not even his name shows up in searches. There are lots of Liam Duffys but none of them is him.”
A sense of unease creeps through me. And I remember my mother’s saying:If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Emma
