19
Kayla
My heart starts to pound as I insert the key into box number twelve, turn it over, and pull open the small metal door. Inside is another sheet of paper and we both groan.
Daren puckers his lips. “And… the scavenger hunt continues.”
“That it does,” I mutter, pulling out the note and closing the box. I read it out loud. “ ‘Life Lesson number three: Money is a journey. It comes and it goes and sometimes you have to work hard to find it. Your next clue is at the place where you can see the whole world.’ ”
I stare at the note, speechless. I can’t believe he remembered.
“What?” Daren cocks his head at me. “Do you know what that means? The place where you can see the whole world?”
Thunder rolls in the distance as I nod. “It’s in the forest by the Ridge Burn. My dad and I used to go pretend fishing out there sometimes and there was this tree we went to…” The memory is so raw I can almost taste the forest air. I shake myself. “I’m pretty sure that tree is where we need to go.”
We exit the post office and hurry through the summer rain to my car. Soon my eyes are on the road that leads out of town but my head is somewhere else entirely. Somewhere seven years ago, when I was fourteen and Josh Blackhill had just broken my heart.
I remember my father had taken me pretend fishing and told me the world was so much bigger than Josh and that my broken heart had so much more to look forward to. He walked me to a giant tree beside the river and we climbed it together.
I remember thinking how silly it was for a teenage girl to be climbing a tree with her father, but inside I was having a really great time. It had wonderful climbing limbs, and the trunk was sturdy and smooth, so we were able to climb higher than I’d ever climbed before.
When we reached one of the upper limbs, we settled into a seat-like branch and my dad pointed out at the forest. From where we sat, we could see above all the other trees for miles and miles.
From way up here, you can see the whole world, he said. And when you can see the whole world, your troubles don’t look so big.
I looked out to the mountains in the east and up into the big blue sky with a smile, wondering if I’d ever seen anything so pretty in my whole life. While I was in that tree, I forgot about Josh Blackhill and my broken heart. Because Daddy was right. From way up there, I could see the whole world.
“… should have come with a warning label.” Daren’s voice pulls me back to the road as the wipers slide across the windshield in rhythmic beats.
“What?”
He says, “I was just saying that your father’s will should have come with a warning label. Who knows how long this scavenger hunt is going to go on for?”
I nod absently. “Yeah. Who knows.”
“And now he has us driving all the way out to the Ridge Burn?” He whistles. “What could possibly be so significant about an old tree?”
I look through the gray weather at the mountains in the east and exhale slowly.
Plenty.