The Last Treasure (19 page)

“I'm sure the team's taken note of any discrepancies,” Beth says.

Team
. The word makes Liv's teeth hurt, as if Theodosia is a medical experiment requiring clinical observation.

“Theodosia was obviously under great strain,” Beth continues. “All the trauma she'd been through and her failing health. It's more than likely she might have had hallucinations. That she would have misunderstood her surroundings.”

Liv bristles. “I know what kind of strain she was under.
But everything I've ever read showed Theo to have possessed a sturdy mind in the midst of great challenge. Her father's political ruin, losing her son. It seems surprising that someone so lucid in the face of stress would misrepresent such a simple detail as windows.”

Sam takes a step toward her. “We should get going,” he says to Beth. “We need to let you prepare for tomorrow.”

“Oh, don't rush off just yet.” Beth's polite smile softens. “I actually packed us a little snack. I thought we could take it down to the beach, catch the sunset. I feel like we've hardly had a chance to catch up.” She moves behind her desk, leans down, and reappears with a basket, which she carries to the table and sets down.

She opens the lid of the basket, and the peppery smell of summer sausage rises. On top, a bottle of Prosecco—and two wine goblets.

An uncomfortable quiet settles in the room.

Beth smiles tightly. “I'll find us a third glass.”

•   •   •

T
he air is soft with evening. The sun slides down the sky, a honey-colored lozenge about to be swallowed by the horizon. Liv tries to keep pace with Sam and Beth, but their long legs carry them farther faster and the sandy path is really only wide enough for two, or maybe this is what Liv tells herself so she can hang back in silence and tie off her dangling thoughts. Sam's resignation, his lack of doubt, confounds her, enhances her own doubt. Has no one else found the entries curiously uneven? Beth called the details
discrepancies, as if they were a few missed pennies in an accountant's books. Liv wishes she could see it that way too. She'd been so sure after reading the journal, the mystery solved, she'd feel the shawl of relief and understanding draped over her, would know how warm and cozy it would feel at last to know the truth.

But then, so much of this moment isn't as she imagined it.

At the top of the beach, they leave their shoes in a pile and pick a spot to sit. While Sam scans the water, Liv helps Beth unpack the basket. Smoked meats and blocks of cheese. Grapes and figs. A container of strawberries, plump and shiny. A flush of embarrassment courses through her as Liv sets down each carefully wrapped item. This is a feast for lovers. The flavors of seduction. How very disappointed Beth must be to have to share it.

Sam joins them. “This is quite a spread.”

“It was nothing, really.” Beth sweeps the dark curtain of her hair behind her ear. “I never asked you where you're staying.”

Sam glances at Liv. “We're not.”

“I don't understand.” Beth looks startled. “You're driving back to Topsail
tonight
?”

“It's not a bad drive,” says Sam.

“But it's almost seven,” Beth says.

“We have to get back.”

Liv looks up to meet Sam's eyes, seeing a curious flash of question in them. Is he waiting for her to disagree and give them permission to stay on?

“If you're driving, then I suppose you won't want any of this,” Beth says, returning the bottle of Prosecco to the basket.

“Don't bury it on my account,” Sam says, looking at Liv. “Not all of us are driving.”

Liv concedes. “Maybe a little.”

Beth hands Sam the bottle and he tears off the foil and points the Prosecco toward the water. The cork gives with a fat pop. Beth holds up the glasses and Sam fills them. The sparkling wine is the same copper as the melting sun.

Beth raises her glass. “To Theodosia, may she finally rest in peace. . . .” She turns to Sam, her eyes warm. “And to old friends.”

Liv takes a full sip, the carbonation prickling her tongue.

“It won't be long before the hunt for the wreckage starts up again, now that there's proof where she went down,” Sam says.

Of course, the ship. Liv's focus has always been on Theodosia, but this information will provide answers about the final resting place of the
Patriot
too. Assuming it's all true.

There she goes again. Questioning their findings. She saw the book with her own eyes, read the words herself—why can't she simply accept them? God knows how long she's waited for the truth.

“When the news releases, everyone with a boat will be looking, I'm sure,” Beth says.

Sam smiles at Liv. “I guess we don't need our map anymore.”

Beth looks between them. “Map?”

“Liv and I kept all our notes on a chart. Filled it up over the years with all our theories, all our clues.”

Until you took it,
Liv wants to add but doesn't. Of course he'd leave out that part for Beth's benefit. She is visibly excited by his confession.

“I wish I could see it,” she says.

“You can,” says Sam. “It's in the truck.”

“You brought it?”

Liv looks at Sam, but this time his gaze doesn't shift her way.

He stands and brushes sand off his shorts. “Why don't I go get it?”

When he disappears over the dune, Liv scans the water, hoping a breeze will blow away the uncomfortable silence between her and Beth. Or maybe Liv is just imagining it. Maybe it's just her own guilt at being here with Sam, that Beth knows their history and doesn't approve. Like Liv's friend Rachel. What Liv wouldn't give to talk to her right now.

“It's amazing to me,” says Beth.

Liv turns to her. “What?”

“That you should pick up on that about the windows after only one reading.”

“I pay attention to details.”

Beth fingers the stem of her glass. “Sam tells me you and he and Whit are in the middle of a salvage project. I hadn't heard about it. A blockade runner, he said.”

“Whit's had his eye on her for a few years. He's sure there's a great deal of gold to be brought up.”

Beth frowns. “That would be unusual. Most blockade runners carried supplies, not gold.”

Just as Sam had pointed out. Liv knows this too—it's one
of the reasons she was apprehensive about the mission, even before Whit's mess. Which Liv can't bring herself to admit to Beth, and why should she? It's none of her business.

Beth reaches for her earring, gently twisting the thin hoop. “Can I be honest about something?”

“Of course.”

“I never understood why so many women fell for Whit in school. I mean, yes, he was ridiculously charming and handsome, but he was so
manic
.”

“He still is.”

“Handsome or manic?”

Liv smiles. “Both.”

She sees her purse where she left it a few feet up the beach and wonders how many more calls from Whit she has missed. Avoided. Maybe he's back at the house by now. Maybe he knows where she is.

Beth offers her more Prosecco and takes some for herself. “It shocked me when I heard that you'd left Sam for him.”

Liv blinks at Beth. “I didn't leave Sam for Whit.”

“Didn't you?” Beth looks genuinely confused. “I just assumed when Sam said . . . My mistake.” She smiles sheepishly behind her glass as they both see that Sam has reappeared with the chart under his arm.

He spreads the map out over the sand, using bowls to hold down the corners.

“Good Lord.” Beth scans it. “It must have taken you years to write all this.”

“It did,” Liv admits, feeling an unexpected swell of pride.

“And look.” Beth lands her finger on the stretch of writing
near Hatteras where Liv wrote
BANKERS
in big letters. “You even put a star beside this one,” she says, her eyes bright with awe. “It seems you knew even then which theory was right.”

Did she? Liv scans the rest of the pencil marks, memories of the house in Hatteras flooding her again. How little she understood about anything then. Not just about Theodosia, but about Sam. Whit. Herself. What it meant to crave someone so much you couldn't take a bite of food without wondering what his tongue might think of the flavor.

“How long have you had this?” Beth asks.

“Since grad school,” Sam says.

“And you've kept it all these years.”

Liv feels a strange blush of discomfort and glances up to find Sam staring at her.
I meant to send it back to you a hundred times. . . .

“Would you be willing to lend it to the museum for the exhibit?” Beth asks. “I think it would make a fascinating display. We'd credit you both, of course.”

“And Whit,” Liv says. Sam's dark eyes burn on her, quizzical.

Beth smiles politely. “Think about it. There's no rush.”

The wind picks up, fluttering the edge of the map. Beth closes the top of the basket and sits back.

“So, what have you been able to find out about Simon?” Liv asks.

“Nothing yet,” Beth says. “There's no record of anyone named Simon having sailed with known pirates You or Payne, though it's possible, probable even, that Simon wasn't his real
name. We've only really started to dig.” She sweeps sand off her slacks. “As you can imagine, the diary presents as many questions as answers.”

“Like if her father ever received it, as Theo had hoped,” Liv says.

Beth nods. “Obviously the diary made it off the island eventually, but not likely into Burr's hands. There was never any mention of the journal in any of his papers or letters—and one has to imagine he would have shared the news in some way, even if only in his personal diary. The portrait, of course, survived too. The director of the Lewis Walpole Library was quite stunned by our discovery. This revelation is monumental news for them as well.”

The portrait. Liv has nearly forgotten. Memories of her long-ago debate over the painting's origin with Harold Warner at his lecture, his dogged insistence that the famous Nags Head portrait held no significance in the
Patriot
mystery, how unlikely that it was even Theodosia, let alone that it offered proof of her fate. A tremor of satisfaction moves through Liv, only to be quickly buried under a cloud of regret. After Whit's fiasco, she has no business being so smug.

“All the stories that claimed the portrait came off the ship, that it came with Theodosia from Georgetown,” Beth says. “It's amazing how little we got right.”

“Assuming what she wrote is what actually happened,” Liv says.

An awkward silence lands over the blanket like a dropped glass. Beth takes up her drink, her eyes flashing warily. “I thought you'd be more pleased than anyone, Liv. The diary
proves everything you'd believed all along about what happened to Theodosia.”

Liv glances at Sam. “It does.”

“Then why are you trying to discredit it?”

“I'm not trying to discredit it,” Liv says.

Sam frowns. “Aren't you?”

Beth smiles patiently. “Liv, I know it must be hard for you to accept. Knowing how long you've searched, how hard. If it makes you feel any better, I'm a little sad myself that it's over.”

Liv forces a polite smile to match the one Beth and Sam share, but her thoughts continue to spin with doubt. Beth is wrong: This feeling of inaccuracy that she can't shake has nothing to do with an inability to accept this proof. It's not the violence of the story; Liv had been prepared for Theo to have endured much worse at the hands of the Bankers. Something in the entries seemed . . .
inauthentic
.

Liv can't think of another word, and it circles her mind like a noisy gull.

•   •   •

I
t is nearly dark when they walk back up the path to Sam's truck, the sand cool under their bare feet without the sun's heat. Back at the museum, Liv asks to use the bathroom. Sam and Beth walk toward the wall of windows that look out onto the road.

“Are you sure I can't convince you to stay the night?” Beth asks him. “I've got a guest room. And the couch pulls out if . . .” She swallows the rest of the thought, her pale skin flushing noticeably.

“Thanks,” he says, “but we should get back.”

“Of course. Whit's waiting.”

Sam nods, even as a fierce knot of frustration fists in his stomach. He has purposefully avoided Whit's name all night to pretend he isn't part of this, to keep Whit Crosby at bay, maybe even because he hopes the exclusion will cause Liv to forget her husband even exists. Sam knows Beth doesn't mean to do any kind of damage by mentioning him, but still Sam resents it. Or maybe it's Liv he resents: her inability to simply take the truth of the diary and move on. It should have been enough that he brought her to the answer, the proof she'd wanted for so long, the truth Whit had promised her and never delivered. It never occurred to him she'd find suspicion in the diary—maybe it should have, knowing how deeply she once cared for the search. Or maybe her doubt has nothing to do with the diary and everything to do with her own conscience.

When he glances back at Beth, she brushes her hair from her face, the movement oddly erotic. “Or maybe you and Liv aren't so anxious to get back to him, after all,” she says. Her voice is clipped with uncertainty, but her eyes flash with expectation. He watches her play with her bracelet, twisting the thick silver cuff back and forth as if it's a screw she's trying to loosen.

Outside, the traffic speeds by. Across the road, a restaurant's wraparound deck teems with diners.

She lets her hands drop to her sides. “I feel foolish,” she whispers. “When you said you were coming to see the diary, I just assumed you wanted . . . I thought maybe . . .”