Page 134 of In the Pursuit of Haven
The end table in Haven’s room had been thrown to its side. I heaved it back up, pushing the rickety legs in place. My emotions were threatening to boil over at any moment, especially after already losing so much—the rage, the horror, the sadness of seeing my aunt’s personal belongings treated worse than trash was too hard to handle. Haven’s pictures had been ripped off the wall. I gathered them up with shaking fingers.
“What’s this?” Jessie asked.
I swung around. He held the divorce papers. My heart dropped at his stricken expression. This was the last thing I wanted to face right now. “You’re not planning on going through with this, are you?”
“I…”didn’t know.I’d gotten them because I thought he was having an affair with Divine, and after he’d cleared that up, I really thought we’d be fine with a few bumps along the way, but now all these secrets were coming out that he hadn’t bothered to tell me. Everything was falling apart all at once and I couldn’t handle thinking about this at all.
I was shaking so hard with all these emotions that I could barely get my brain to work, let alone my mouth. “I wanted to tell you,” I said, “but… so much was happening.”And still is.“I thought we’d be okay, but…” more tears squeezed from my eyes, “I don’t know anymore, Jessie.”
I wasn’t sure about anything right now.
Normally, he was the one to soothe my hurt feelings, but he watched me like I’d taken a machete to his heart. His fingers tightened on the papers, and he set them down on the bed. The silence stretched out between us.
“Let’s just”—I glanced around at the wreck made of Haven’s room—“clean this up.”
He didn’t answer, and I knew he was doing his best to block this new heartbreak from his mind, like he’d been doing with Abby, like he’d always done with his father.
And now he thought I was getting ready to run.Is he right? Am I? He shuts me out from everything. He left me first!
We were quite the pair, weren’t we?
Not knowing what else to say or do in my confusion, I headed for Haven’s closet and took out the rest of the shelves to find the rope hidden behind the boxes so that I could open her secret room. The ladder rolled out easily like the hinges were greased. Fighting my feelings of emptiness, I climbed up to the top, taking a deep breath when I confirmed nothing had been touched up here.
I tugged off my backpack.
To my surprise, I heard steps behind me. Jessie had followed me up here and watched on grimly as I pulled out all six Relics—Crabb’s locket, the piece of tin from the scrap yard, the weathered Bible, the cross, Old Dimond’s rattle, and the whittled Norseman head.
The Crabbs had been searching for centuries to find these Relics, and we’d managed to gather six in less than a week. If I wasn’t so miserable, I’d have a reason to celebrate.
Each Relic boasted the shape of a snake—whether on the front or hidden in its depths—which marked them as Shepherd Relics. I began picking out the letters from each one. So far, we had an “I,” “N,” “O,” “D,” and an “E.”
“You think it spells out something?” Jessie asked.
Now I did.
He sighed and sat against the side of the desk. All his energy from earlier had been drained from him. “Do you have that picture of the cane on your phone?” he asked.
Nodding, I hurriedly brought out my phone, but let out a sound of dismay when I saw I hadn’t captured the part on the cane that held the letter. “It must be on the other side,” I said.
We needed the real thing…from my grandfather—not that I was about to bring that up at the moment.
Instead, I pulled out the locket. “It’s the only one without a letter,” I whispered. My finger ran across the line sitting diagonally against the top of the “S” like the snake was wearing a hat. “You think this line is just telling us that this is supposed to symbolize an ‘S’ too?” I asked Jessie.
He steadied himself so he could study out the puzzle before us, but I could tell his heart wasn’t really in it. “Maybe that’s what it’s saying… I mean the “S” is backwards, but…” He pulled back. “Yeah, I guess.”
I started moving the relics around to form the letters into words—the first word became “DIE,” then an “ON.”
Jessie pushed the locket next to the second word to make “SON.” If the locket truly represented an “S,” that would work, except now, it spelled “DIE SON.”Not the cheeriest message.
It was the ultimate Scrabble game… or Jeopardy, since we were dealing with phrases.
I tried another configuration of the letters and made “DONE.” Taking the remaining relics, I spelled out “IS.”
“Is done,” Jessie read.
“Great,” I said. “We can pack up and go home. The treasure hunt is finished.”
Jessie turned silent at my lame attempt at a joke. His fingers ran across the desk in a nervous rhythm. “Huh, yeah, there really isn’t anything to go on.”
