Piper climbed onto her bike and pedaled slowly toward home. As she'd listened to her aunt talk, the pain of her terrible loss seemed so fresh. Piper could imagine a seven-year-old child waiting up late into the night, eager to see her father again after his long months at war.
"Father wrote to me every week while he was away." Her face was old and worn now, decades later, her voice quiet and steady as she spoke, but Piper could see in her eyes the hint of the little girl Hannah had been, vivid and curious, determined to see life as it was, not just as she wanted it to be. "He told me an elaborate tale of how he'd saved a Russian princess from certain death at the hands of a roving gang of miscreants. She had already escaped the Russian Revolution, and here she was about to die on a lonely French road, when my father appeared on the scene and rescued her, bringing her to safe quarters. She was so impressed by his courage that she insisted upon rewarding him. She had no money, only gemstones and a Faberge egg."
Piper had been skeptical. "Hannah, that sounds like the sort of fanciful story a father would tell a precocious seven-year-old daughter to keep her from worrying about him getting killed in battle."
"I know. For years that's what I thought. But now"—she'd exhaled deeply, fixing her gaze on her only niece—"now, I'm not so sure."
And so she'd explained.
In the weeks since she'd moved out of the Frye House, new details of her memory of that night eighty years ago had emerged from deep within her subconscious. "It's as if they've lain dormant all these years, and only now, free of that house, could I bring myself to remember. And now that I do, Piper, I remember so clearly!"
In her excitement at the prospect of seeing her father, she'd been unable to sleep. She reread his letters to her, which she'd kept in an iron box, and played in bed, until the scent of roses and the sea in the cold night air drew her to her window.
"The wind had shifted, as it often does. I thought nothing of it at the time. But now—I don't know if I can explain. It's as if my parents were sending those scents to me as they died, enticing me to the window so that I would see what I saw, knowing that I was too young to understand, that it would be many decades before I would seek the answers I'm now seeking." She'd paused, her jaw setting. "It all comes back to destiny."
Afraid Hannah would drift back to the subject of Clate Jackson, Piper had steered her aunt back on course. "What did you see?"
"A shadowy figure. It was dark and cold, the wind was gusting. I heard digging. Then the clouds shifted, and in a quick ray of moonlight, I saw a small trunk sitting on the ground."
"A trunk," Piper repeated.
"Correct."
"Did you mention this trunk to anyone at the time?"
"I told you, I've only remembered seeing in the past few weeks."
"So after eighty years, you suddenly, out of the blue, recall a scene you witnessed on the most traumatic night of your life." Piper didn't bother hiding her skepticism. "Hannah, repressed memory is a tricky thing."
"Of course it is. That's why I'm dispatching you instead of calling the police. My parents were murdered, and I think it's because of the gems and Faberge egg—the treasure—the Russian princess gave to Father. Piper, someone else must have read my letters and known about the treasure, and then deliberately set out to rob him and Mother that night."
There were a million holes in Hannah's story. Caleb and Phoebe were off course. How could the perpetrator have known where to find them? Even if they hadn't been that far off course, how could he have known it was their boat in the fog? Premeditation made little sense—not, Piper thought, that happenstance made any sense, either.
And treasure buried for eighty years in the Frye back yard made no sense whatsoever. Why risk being seen by a Frye, never mind a seven-year-old?
Even if Piper indulged Hannah and chose to believe in her conveniently recovered memory, any treasure would have to be long gone by now. Whoever had buried it surely would have dug it up some time during the past century.
But Hannah was visibly tired and shaken after telling her story, and Piper didn't have the heart to blow holes in her theory. "Well, I just wish you'd thought of digging up this treasure of yours during the umpteen years you lived in the Frye house."
She sniffed. "I didn't think of it then."
Piper had sighed, exasperated, worried, haunted by the palpable horror of that night almost a century ago.
"I know nobody's going to believe me," she said calmly. "That's why you have to find the treasure first, Piper. Discreetly. Then I'll know for sure. You do see, don't you? I have to know what happened to my parents. Before I die, I have to know."
Getting morbid had always been one of Hannah's last-ditch ploys to persuade Piper to do her bidding. This time, it had the ring of authenticity. She'd convinced herself the notorious mystery of her parents' deaths was within her power to solve—with Piper's help, of course.
"It's as if I couldn't let myself remember while I was living in that house."