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that one of Bull’s cousins out in Montana had a potential lead on Malcolm Carter. Though I was reluctant to be away from Millie Jo for the week that we’d planned to be gone, I would be lying through and through if I didn’t acknowledge the intensity of my elation at the prospect of all that incredible time alone with Mathias. We kept calling it our ‘pre-honeymoon.’
    â€œJuly fifth,” I reminded Mom, taking a long swallow of my cold beer.
    â€œIt’s great out that way. The mountains will draw you in, watch out,” Blythe teased. And then to Mom, “You don’t think he’s cold, do you?”
    The boat’s motion stirred the still air, creating a rushing breeze that was a little chilly. Mom bent and nuzzled Matthew’s little cheek, making him squirm and giggle. She assured Blythe, “He’s not cold, sweetheart. He’s right up against you.”
    â€œYou two out to look for that stash of gold that Bull’s crazy Grandpa Grafton raved on about in the old days?” Dodge asked me then.
    Mom and Aunt Jilly both groaned at this question.
    â€œHere, hon,” Aunt Ellen said, handing me a plate. As Dodge was busy driving the pontoon, Aunt Ellen was taking care of grill duty.
    â€œThanks,” I told her, and then to Dodge, “What do you mean?”
    â€œBull hasn’t told you that story yet?” Aunt Ellen asked me. “I’m stunned.”
    Dodge assumed his storyteller voice, the one we had all listened to a thousand times sitting around the fire, and said, “I heard the tale for the first time when I was just a boy. My pa was still alive then and he knew Grafton Carter well. Grafton was Pa’s second cousin, once-removed, on the Riley Miller side…”
    â€œNo, for the love, don’t get into family connections,” Jilly scolded, though not without affection. “We’ll never get to the point!”
    Dodge draped his wrists over the top of the big steering wheel, gazing into the middle distance, seemingly serious. This was unusual enough that I sat straighter to listen. He continued, “Grafton swore that there was a legend in the Carter family about a letter scribbled with a map, with directions to a stolen haul of gold from sometime back in the 1870s, if I do recall. Not that the Carters would ever admit to thievery, being a prideful lot, so sure as shit there was a good reason for the theft. That is, if the story had any truth to it. Somewheres out west was all Grafton knew.”
    â€œDoes it have anything to do with Malcolm?” I asked, rapt with attention. The old, fading picture of Malcolm and his horse, Aces, was still in the top drawer of my nightstand. I had found it over two years ago; fate, I was certain, as the discovery had led me to White Oaks and eventually Mathias.
    â€œThat I don’t know,” Dodge said, speculation ripe in his tone. “Ask Bull. From everything I know, Malcolm was the boy who disappeared. I don’t know if he’s connected to Grafton’s story or not.”
    â€œThere’s no record of him after the telegram from 1876,” I affirmed, heart increasing in speed at the thought.
    â€œI just felt a jolt when you said that,” Aunt Jilly said intently. “There may be no record, but he lived beyond 1876, I’m certain.”
    â€œWe’ve searched through everything that Bull could find in the attic at White Oaks,” I said, goosebumps shivering over my arms at Aunt Jilly’s words. I believed whole-heartedly in her ‘notions,’ which she had once explained to me as striking her with all the unexpectedness of lightning on an otherwise clear summer night. Usually they were precognitive, and when she told you something, you’d do well to heed it. “But there’s more, I know there’s so much more. That’s what we’re hoping to find in July,” I added, catching my ring between the index finger