A banana freeze meant two spoons, the window booth in the corner. It meant Eureka on the edge of her seat, laughing over the same stories she’d heard Dad tell a hundred times about growing up in New Iberia, about being the only boy to enter the pecan pie bake-off, or how the first time he invited Diana to dinner, he’d been so nervous, his flambé set the kitchen on fire. For a moment, Eureka let her mind travel to that booth at Jo’s Snows. She saw herself spooning the cold banana ice cream into her mouth—a little girl who still thought her father was her hero.
But Eureka didn’t know how to talk to Dad anymore. Why tell him how crippled she felt? If Dad breathed one wrong word to Rhoda, Eureka would be back on suicide watch, not even allowed to close her door. Besides, he had enough on his mind.
“I can’t,” she said. “I have another ride.”
Dad looked around the mostly empty parking lot, like she was kidding.
She wasn’t. Cat was supposed to pick her up at four to study. The reading of the will had finished early. Now Dad was probably going to wait awkwardly with her until Cat showed.
As Eureka scanned the lot looking for Cat, her gaze fell on the white truck. It was parked facing the building, under a golden-leaved buttonwood tree. Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat, staring straight ahead. Something silver gleamed through the windshield.
Eureka squinted, remembering the shiny square—that unusual citronella air freshener—hanging from Ander’s rearview mirror. She didn’t need to see it up close to know it was his truck. He saw her see him. He didn’t look away.
Heat coursed through her body. Her T-shirt felt oppressive, her palms clammy. What was he doing here?
The gray Honda almost ran Eureka over. Cat hit the breaks with a harsh squawk and rolled down her window. “S’up, Mr. B?” she called from behind her heart-shaped sunglasses. “Ready, Reka?”
“How are you, Cat?” Dad patted the hood of Cat’s car, which they called Mildew. “Glad to see she’s still kicking.”
“I fear she’ll never break down,” Cat moaned. “My grandkids will drive this POS to my funeral.”
“We’re going to study at Neptune’s,” Eureka said to Dad, walking around to the passenger door.
Dad nodded. He looked lost on the other side of the car and it made Eureka sad.
“Rain check,” he said. “Hey, Reka?”
“Yeah?”
“You have everything?”
She nodded, patting her backpack, which held the ancient book and the strange blue chest. She touched her heart, where the locket lay. She held up Diana’s tearstained letter, like a wave. “I’ll be home for dinner.”
Before she got into Cat’s car, Eureka glanced over her shoulder, to the spot under the buttonwood tree. Ander was gone. Eureka didn’t know what was stranger: that he’d been there or that she wished he hadn’t left.
“So how’d it go?” Cat turned down All Things Considered. She was the only teenager Eureka knew who listened to talk instead of music. How was she supposed to flirt with college boys—was Cat’s defense—if she didn’t know what was going on in the world? “Are you the heiress to a fortune, or at least a pied à terre I can crash at in the south of France?”
“Not exactly.” Eureka opened up her backpack to show Cat her inheritance.
“Your mother’s locket.” Cat touched the chain around Eureka’s neck. She was used to seeing it around Diana’s neck. “Nice.”
“There’s more,” Eureka said. “This old book and this rock in a box.”
“Rock in a huh?”
“She wrote a letter, too.”
Cat put the car in park in the middle of the lot. She leaned back in her seat, propping her knees on the steering wheel, and turned her chin toward Eureka. “Feel like sharing?”
So Eureka read the letter once more, this time aloud, trying to keep her soft voice steady, trying not to see the tearstains at the end.
“Amazing,” Cat said when Eureka was finished. She quickly wiped her eyes, then pointed at the back of the page. “Something’s written on the other side.”