Chapter 4.

4.

But the summer did end, so Tammy assured me I was off the hook and my childcare services were no longer required. I kept helping out, anyway, just to make things easier for my sister. If Abigail had math club after school, I made sure she arrived on time. I brought her to a pediatrician to get all her shots up-to-date. I found a good dentist to fill her many cavities, and he referred us to an orthodontist, who peered inside her mouth with wonder and awe, like he’d just been presented with the greatest technical challenge of his career. “She’s going to need a lot of braces,” he announced. And then I spent a week on the phone with Pennsylvania Medicaid, begging them to cover the costs. They kept trying to steer me to a cheaper provider, but I wanted the job done right, so I ended up paying most of the bill myself. I wasn’t going to let some jackass ruin her teeth.

By October, the three of us had settled into a nice daily routine. One afternoon, my sister hit a snag at work and asked me if I could get Abigail from school, so I picked her up in my Jeep and brought her to Tammy’s condo. I made tacos for dinner while Abigail sprawled out on the living room floor with her homework. After we finished the dishes, we watched a little Netflix together—one of these cooking shows where complete morons attempt to bake, with disastrous results—and then I sent her upstairs to bed. I gave her a half hour to read, and then I stopped by her bedroom to say “Lights out.”

“Five more minutes?” she asked. “Please?” She was reading a fantasy novel about Warrior Cats, and she swore she was ten pages from the end.

“Five minutes,” I agreed. “But you better be asleep when Tammy gets home, or I’ll catch all kinds of hell.”

Abigail flashed me a thumbs-up and returned to her book—and as I turned to leave, I noticed a map pinned to her wall, just above her dresser.

She had recently gone on a decorating spree, papering her bedroom with mazes, crossword puzzles, Sudoku grids, Disney movie posters, and glossy advertisements cut from magazines—and the map was half-hidden amid the clutter. It was a small topographical drawing of Lake Wyndham, specifically the square mile or so fronting Osprey Cove, with wavy contour lines and numbers detailing the elevation of the land and the depths of the water.

“Abigail, what is this?”

“The summer camp.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Aidan gave it to me.”

“When?”

She shrugged. “When we got back from New Hampshire, I found it in my suitcase. In the side pocket. I think because Aidan knew I liked geography, so he wanted me to have it.”

I looked more closely at the picture. It looked like a photocopy of a much larger map, the kind of navigational tool used by boaters and fishermen. Someone had used a pencil to sketch in some additional features: the boathouse, the L-shaped dock, and Osprey Lodge. But the most notable addition was a bright red X in the deepest section of the water, an irregularly shaped crater with a depth of fifty-two meters.

“How do you know it’s from Aidan?”

“There’s a note on the back,” Abigail said. “You can take it off the wall if you want to read it.”

I carefully unpinned the map and then turned it over to read the message: This could be helpful someday. Don’t be afraid to use it.—Aidan

Abigail saw the confusion on my face and offered a theory. “I think it’s a treasure map.”

“You do?”

“One day, I’m going to go back to Osprey Cove and look for the X . I’ll buy a scuba suit to see what’s down there. You should come with me.”

“Have you shown this to anyone? Has Tammy seen it?”

Abigail shook her head. “She says we’re not supposed to talk about Osprey Cove. She says that if DHS knew what happened there, we would all get in trouble.”

I felt like I was going to be sick. I knew I had to choose my next words very carefully. “Abigail, listen to me. I think you got this map by mistake. I don’t think Aidan meant for you to have it.” Her expression turned suspicious and I quickly explained: “I think Aidan wanted to give you money. I think he wanted to give you a thousand dollars.”

She thought I was teasing her. “Very funny, Mister Frank.”

“No, I’m serious.” I proceeded to outline my theory. I told her that Aidan had left $1,000 in my suitcase because he didn’t realize Abigail and I had switched bedrooms. “You were in the master suite and I was in the kids’ room. So he put the money in my suitcase, and he put this map in yours.”

“That’s crazy! Are you kidding me? One thousand dollars? ” By this point she had cast her book aside and was standing up on her mattress in her pajamas. “Do you still have it?”

“I do. I haven’t spent a single penny.”

“Then will you trade it with me?”

I don’t think she ever imagined I would say yes, but I agreed it was the fair thing to do. I had eighty-four dollars in my wallet and I gave her all of it, with a promise to put the rest in a savings account. I told her I would try to get her a bankbook, if they still made them, so she could keep track of her wealth and grow it with future deposits. Abigail fanned the bills with an eye-popping grin, like the lottery winners in a Mega Millions commercial. But I could barely hold on to the map because my hands had started to shake.