Searching For Treasure

chapter 4

Dana slept fitfully that night, troubled by strange dreams. In one, she was a dog chasing her own tail. In another, she was back at her old high school running down the corridors looking for Jack who she could hear calling her name. But each time she turned a corner, he seemed to be further away than before. In the last one, she thought she heard Freddy Krueger bellowing at the top of his lungs and tap dancing on some stairs. Oddly, when she awoke, she could still hear it.

"Oh, what a beautiful morning!" Tap, tap, tap.

Dana stared blearily at her watch. 6 a.m.! The morning outside her window was barely there, the Sun still struggling to rise, and someone was singing and dancing outside of her room.

"Oh, what a beautiful day!" Tap, tap, tap.

In almost synchronous accord, bedroom doors were flung open and disgruntled sleepers staggered out to glare down the stairs at whoever was so offensively happy that early in the morning. The mystery was soon solved when Rose leaned over the railing and did a little bellowing herself. "Grace!"

Grace was dressed in white leggings and a black t-shirt that read, ‘My mind is like lightening, one brilliant flash and it's gone’. She turned and waved cheerfully up at them from the landing below. "Good morning everyone! Isn't it a glorious day? I've got a beautiful feeling!" Tap, tap, tap.

Then to everyone's further shock she jumped onto the banister sidesaddle and attempted to slide down. Amazingly she almost made it, only to teeter and fall backwards out of sight when she reached the bottom. With a collective gasp, several members of the group rush to the top of the stairs, stopping when Grace bounded back into view. "Everything's going my way!" Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. She wound up her dance routine with a wobbly pirouette and took a little bow.

Rose looked around at all of the faces staring back at her, some thunderstruck, others glowering. "What can I say?" she said with a shrug. "She's a morning person."

With the early morning excitement over for the moment, Dana turned to go back to her room. She caught sight of Jack leaning against the door of his room as if that was the only thing holding him up. His dark hair was tousled, his eyes were heavy and he smiled at her sleepily. Dana felt her ears burn and her toes curl. Things had really changed, she realized. Somehow since yesterday, the two of them had changed.

No matter what did or did not happen between them in the future, they were now aware of each other as a man and as a woman instead of just friends.

She returned his smile with an uncertain one of her own and hurried back into her room, afraid she would embarrass herself by doing something uncharacteristic, like falling to the floor and kissing his feet.

Sometime later after showering and dressing, and semi-confident she had herself back under control, Dana headed down downstairs to breakfast. Halfway down she found Austin playing doctor with the banister, sporting a stethoscope and wielding a tiny hammer that looked as if he expected to check the reflexes of the polished mahogany. Every few inches he would tap lightly and then listen with the stethoscope.

"You're not wasting any time, I see," Dana said.

Austin smirked at her. "I would have been doing this last night if the old man hadn't laid down the law."

Brett walked down the stairs behind her. "The early bird catches the worm, Miss Parker. And may I say you are looking extra tasty this morning."

The look Dana gave him could have frozen a charging two-ton rhino at thirty paces. Brett never stood a chance.

Dana continued her way down the stairs, hearing Austin chuckling behind her. "Maybe later you'll find out that I'm made of sterner stuff," Austin said. She didn't bother to respond.

When she reached the bottom, Jack was waiting for her. "What's up, doc?" he said.

Dana relaxed. She had been afraid that they would feel awkward towards each other this morning.

"Jerks,”she replied, one word saying it all.

Jack glanced back up the stairs. "You want me to clobber them?"

"Nah, not before breakfast. Maybe later."

Jack grinned at her, hooked an arm around her neck and kissed her on the ear. Then he gently pushed her towards the dining room in comfortable camaraderie. The relief Dana felt was so enormous she was almost weak from it. The easy bantering, the closeness they shared, it was still there. Her greatest fear had been that they would lose that if they-

Her thoughts skittered to a halt, still refusing to put a name to it.

Jack seemed determined, and she intended to follow his lead that things should still be the same between them. She was almost tempted to pretend the time in the gazebo had been a dream, except that Jack had left his mark. She could still feel his kiss on her lips.

With the exception of the two treasure hunters upstairs and Mark, who had yet to make an appearance, everyone else was already enjoying breakfast which was fully as sumptuous as the dinner the night before.

"This Cook of yours is a thousand wonders, Oscar,”Henry enthused, happily smearing butter on a biscuit. "I think I'm in love."

"Have you seen her yet?" Grace asked.

"Nope, don't have to," Henry replied.

Noah and Dana each speared a couple of slices of cantaloupe onto their plate, ladled milk gravy over them, and then sprinkled the whole thing with salt and pepper. They took their plates back to the table, broke open a biscuit and began eating with gusto. Jack, who was used to seeing this, didn't bat an eyelash. Everyone else stared at them in shocked silence.

"Ewww, gross!" Josie finally declared. Everyone nodded in agreement.

Noah and Dana glanced up from their plates and looked around at the myriad expressions watching them eat. "What?" they asked in unison.

Henry shook his head; glad he had almost finished eating. Otherwise, watching them might have put him off his food. "Dana, Rose and I were putting our heads together trying to decide what you did for a living," Henry said.

"I told him I thought you looked like a glamorous spy," Rose said.

"Really?" Diane looked at them with keen interest. "What does a spy look like?"

Rose blinked and then laughed. "You got me there, hon. I don't really know."

"She's actually a show girl at one of the riverboat casinos on the Red River," teased Noah.

Dana, who had gotten up from the table to fetch another biscuit, did an impromptu bump and grind. "Only part-time,”she said in a breathy voice.

Everyone laughed. Jack practically choked on his black coffee. Josie looked a little confused. "You're just fooling, right?"

"Yeah, hon, she's just fooling," Rose answered her, chortling with laughter and wiping tears from her eyes.

"So, what kind of job do you have, Miss Dana,”Josie asked, her shyness from the day before quickly fading.

"I work out of my home. I have my own online mail-order business."

"She started out from nothing," Noah announced proudly. "At first she just sold arts and crafts and home canning at festivals, garage sales and craft shows. Then when the Internet came along, she went high-tech."

Noah looked at his sister, a wealth of memories in his eyes. He thought back to the dark days after their parents had died and when Dana had discovered there was very little money left for them to go on with. He remembered waking up to the sound of Dad's circular saw whining in the night. He walked outside to his father's workshop to find Dana cutting up boards into ten-inch squares. He could tell she had been crying.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing, go back to bed."

By the next morning she had decoupage pictures cut out of old calendars and magazines onto about two dozen of those squares and hauled them down to a nearby consignment shop to sell as wall hangings. By the time he got home from school that day, the house looked like a factory.

Jack told him years later that Dana had received a visit the day before from someone at child welfare services who was concerned about her ability to provide for a ten-year-old. Terrified of losing what was left of her family, armed with creativity and fueled by a fierce determination, she quit college and turned to the only thing her parents had left them: the contents of their house.

She went through all the closets, pulling out old clothes, cutting off buttons to sell to sewing and craft shops and used the fabric to make rag rugs. She finished up the scraps by using them to turn old picture frames into something new. Even the 1950s-era suit her mother had worn on her wedding day had been ruthless sold to a vintage clothing store, though it had broken Dana's heart to do so.

Her father had been an avid gardener, so she dug up his plants and sold them at farmers markets. She painted the rocks he had used in landscaping and turned them into interesting conversation pieces or paperweights. She took the junk he had never gotten around to discarding and turned them into birdhouses and bird feeders. She became adept at turning the leftovers and castoffs of her parents' lives into something beautiful or whimsical or useful and then selling it to someone by convincing them that they couldn't live without it.

Their mother had been a wonderful baker and had loved making her own jams, jellies and pickles. Knowing that she had passed this same ability to her daughter, Jack had suggested bake sales at local flea markets and participating in the arts and crafts show circuit. Eventually she gave up the handcrafts and concentrated on baking and canning.

Noah watched his sister beat back her fears with work and had been inspired to do the same. He held his own lawn sales, bargaining with the neighborhood kids over the price of old toys. He sold Kool-Aid and some of Dana's home-baked cookies on the sidewalk in front of the castle. He held puppet shows and magic shows in the backyard charging a nickel a head to anyone who would come. When he was older he had a paper route and mowed yards during the summer.

The first day he had poured out his accumulated pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters onto the table in front of his sister, his face had beamed with pride at his contribution. But Dana had not failed to see the traces of uncertainty lurking in his eyes, a fear that what little he had to offer wasn't good enough. Dana thanked him seriously and praised him lavishly for his cleverness and ingenuity. That night she cried herself to sleep.

Dana smiled at her brother, memories both bitter and sweet flowing thickly between them. Grace brought them back to the present when she asked, "What kind of things do you sell on the internet?"

"I have my own line of jams and jellies. I also dabble in pickles, relishes and hot sauce. One day, when I can reproduce my father's secret barbecue sauce, I'll add that to the inventory. I don't know when that will be. I've been trying for years and I still haven't got it right."

Jack laughed. "And I'm the scorched-tongued guinea pig to prove it."

Just then Mark rushed in, carrying an old book in his large hands. "Grandpa, guess what I found!"

"Boy, you're about to miss breakfast. I thought you must be sick. Not like you to miss a meal. What have you got there?"

"It's kind of a history book, except it tells you where people used to hide their money."

"Let me see that,”Rose commanded. Mark handed her the book and she flipped through it eagerly as Grace peered over her shoulder.

"According to the book, Grandpa,”Mark continued excitedly, "most people used the same kinds of places to hide their stuff. Like inside a well or cistern. What's a cistern?"

"It's a water tank," Henry answered.

"Oh. Well, they also liked to hide stuff in fireplaces or in a secret hidey-hole inside the chimney."

"That had to be a man,”stated Rose, turning a page. "What woman would want to scatter soot everywhere each time she wanted to get to her pin money?"

Mark gave her a puzzled look, then shrugged. "What Austin and Brett are doing is in the book, too. It said that people used to hide stuff in steps and something called a newel post."

"That's what you run into with your backside when you slide down a banister,”Henry told his grandson.

Rose snorted with laughter. Grace ignored them both.

"There's places outside they used to use, too, Grandpa. That's where I want to look. Fences posts and stepping stones and near animal pens."

Oscar murmured to Dana and Jack, "This is the most animated I've seen the boy since he arrived."

"I guess it just took him a while to get into the spirit of things," Jack said.

Dana changed the subject. "Oscar," she began diffidently, "last night Jack and I were out back and we heard what sounded like whispering by the old oak."

"Did you really?" He looked at both of them sharply. "How very interesting."

Jack and Dana looked at each other and wondered at his reaction. All other conversations had stopped and Grace sat back down in anticipation. "Is this another ghost story?"

"I suppose you can call it that. That tree is called, The Whispering Oak, and the story is that a young girl who once lived here used to meet her lover at night under its branches. Her father disapproved of the young man and one night he caught them together there. Despite his daughters tears, he had a couple of his men drag the boy away, severely beat him and ran him out of town, never to return. The daughter was heartbroken, never married and died an old maid."

"What a sad story!" Rose said.

"The legend has it that on some nights they whisper to each other in the dark. But only certain couples can hear them."

Grace was practically vibrating with excitement. "What certain couples? You're not telling us the whole legend."

Oscar looked at Dana and then at Jack and smiled his maddening, mysterious smile. "It's only a legend, after all."

Everyone turned towards Dana and Jack in speculation. To Dana's relief, Brett chose that moment to come bursting into the dining room.

"Oscar, we need a claw hammer."

Henry couldn't resist the dig. "You mean that was something you didn't think to bring with you?"

Austin sauntered in. "Can't think of everything." He looked Dana up and down with what he obviously thought was a smoldering look. Jack noticed and grimaced.

"In the shed, where I keep most of my tools, but I'm not certain I have a claw hammer. You are welcome to anything in there as long as you return it. If there's something you need that I don't have, I suppose you could drive into town," Oscar said.

"The closest town, if you want to call it that," growled Austin in disgust, "is twenty miles away.”He sauntered back out, Brett following, muttering about hammers.

Henry shook his head. "I swear, he'd gripe if he was hung with a new rope."

Oscar sighed with resignation. "I guess I'll have to keep an eye on them just to make sure they don't tear up too much. I have every confidence that the rest of you will use good judgment and consideration."

"Don't worry, Oscar," Mark assured him, "we won't hurt anything."

Anxious to get started, Rose and Grace hurried off, discussing a plan about looking for hidden rooms. Henry and Mark left, heads together, still pouring over the book and discussing possible places to search. Dana looked around and noticed that she and Jack were alone in the dining room. "Hey, where's Noah?" Dana asked.

"He and Josie slipped out the back a couple of minutes ago. I think they are checking out the gazebo." Where Austin had only thought his look was smoldering, Jack's really was. Dana felt herself blushing under his gaze. How does he do that? She had blushed more around him in the last eighteen hours than she ever had in her life. In fact, she hadn't blushed this much since her freshman year in high school when Mrs. Lien, her science teacher, had caught Dana necking with her son Josh in a janitor's closet. Boy, had her face been red then!

"So," he said, edging closer towards her. He gave her a slow, sexy smile. "A part-time showgirl, um?"

Dana's breath caught in her chest. Why hadn't she ever noticed before that Jack had a sexy smile? Apparently, Jack wasn't that determined that things should still be the same between them, at least not all the time. Dana felt her stomach fluttering around her breakfast. I shouldn't have had that last biscuit, she thought. She decided that a light answer would be best for her digestion.

"Yeah, I really look cute in feathers."

Jack moved even closer to her and she shivered from his nearness. His voice was a soft breath in her ear. "How about me Dana? Am I cute, too?"

Cute? Are you kidding? Dana took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of him, a scent so familiar yet now so new. She leaned back slightly so she could look at him. She gave him a sexy smile of her own. "You're beyond cute, Jack."

He grinned and bringing her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles affectionately. "Come on, D, let's go searching for treasure."