Otis knows what I’m feeling as soon as I feel it, and I can read his every ear tilt, every eyebrow crinkle, every wag and thump.
“It’s not just one-way,” I said. “We take care of each other.”
“That must be nice for you.” Jules jammed on her giant sunglasses.
Was she being sarcastic? I couldn’t tell.
Otis left the tube in front of the long, skinny ramp to the dock and rolled around with his tongue hanging out, scratching his back on the prickly seagrass. I gave his belly a quick rub, and then he jumped up and followed me while I dragged the tube the rest of the way.
Our boat’s a twenty-two-foot Mako with an outboard motor and a little sunshade over the wheel. It’s old and not super comfortable, but it’s also fast and reliable. Otis climbed on after me and settled into his usual spot in the well at the front while I tied on the tube with a bowline knot.
Jules got on after Otis, grabbing the handrail to steady herself. “You sure you know how to drive this thing?”
“Definitely. My grandfather taught me.” I could steer the Mako through a harbor full of paddleboarders in a dense fog and not clip a single oar. Well, maybe not quite, but Pop Pop made sure I knew how to handle a boat.
After I finished with the tube, I rigged a sun awning for Otis by tying four lengths of rope around the corners of a beach blanket and then attaching the ropes to stanchion posts on the sides of the boat with clove hitch knots.
I lowered the motor into the water and turned the key in the ignition. The water was calm, and we’d be in a bay, not the ocean, so I didn’t bother with life vests for me and Otis, but I gave Jules a vest for tubing.
“We have to get to open water first,” I said, over the noise of the engine.
There was open water a few minutes from our cove, but my plan was to go all the way to Gardiner’s Island, because that’s where the treasure was.
At least, that’s where I thought the treasure was.
CHAPTER SEVEN
True Fact: Cleft chins and folding tongues aren’t the only things people inherit from their ancestors.
When Pop Pop first told me about the treasure, I was so little that we didn’t even have Otis yet. He called me into the living room, and I climbed up next to him on the couch. On the coffee table was a mess of a book with a cracked cover and warped pages, some of which were sticking out of the binding. Pop Pop ran his fingertips over the stained leather. The wrinkled, blotchy cover looked a lot like the back of his hand. The book had to be old. Super old.
Pop Pop leaned in close to me, so I leaned in close to him. I could smell his smell, which I now know was a combination of mentholated shaving cream and diesel fuel.
“You see this book, BB?” he said. “Inside is the name of every single person in our family.”
“Whoa,” I said in a church-library-ghost-story voice.
Pop Pop nodded, slow and serious. Then he opened the book and showed me the newest page, the one with my name on it. Next he showed me Dad’s name and his own and his parents’, all the way back to page one, to the very first names: Petra De Winter and Abraham Broen, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents. Black ink long faded to brown said that Petra was born in 1651 in Amsterdam, and Abraham was born the same year in Java. He was a carpenter, and she was a healer.
Then Pop Pop dropped an even bigger whoa: “In 1665 Petra and Abraham sailed right here to Sag Harbor”—he paused—“on a ship of gold.”
I was so amazed that my eyes quadrupled in size. Or at least that’s how I picture myself when I look back now.
“For really real, Pop Pop?”
“Yup. I’ve even got proof.” He pulled a gold coin from his pocket, about the size of a half-dollar. “This coin came from their ship. See these letters? V-O-C. That means the ship was owned by the Dutch East India Company,” he said. “My grandpa gave me this coin. One day I’ll give it to you.”
Pop Pop placed the coin, still warm from his pocket, in my palm.
“Where’s the ship now?” I asked, tracing the raised letters with my index finger.
“Good question,” he said. “It sank, and Petra and Abraham had to swim the rest of the way to land. But the gold was too heavy to bring with them. It’s still out there somewhere.” Pop Pop rested his hand on the book like he was taking an oath. “In view of paradise, watched over for eternity by a sorrowful hound.”
I looked up at him. “What does that mean?”
“That’s what we have to figure out, BB.” He leaned in again, even closer this time. I loved the way the insides of his wrinkles didn’t get as dark as the rest of his face. It gave him tiger stripes around his eyes. “For three hundred and fifty years, people in our family have been looking for that ship. And you and I are going to find it.”
From the first warm day in spring to the last warm day in fall, Pop Pop took me on his treasure hunts. “We’re partners, BB,” he used to say. “Shipmates.” When Pop Pop got sick last October, he promised he’d be better in time to hunt for treasure again this spring. But by the time the doctors found his cancer, it was already too late.
After Pop Pop died in February, Dad sold his gold VOC coin, the one Pop Pop had always promised me. He wouldn’t tell me why. I was so angry that I didn’t speak to Dad for days. Now I have nothing left of my grandfather except our hunt.
Finding the treasure for Pop Pop became my secret life mission. All winter and spring, I schemed and researched, but I had no idea where to look until one day in May when Nora and I were out on the boat playing that game where you pick a cloud and describe it.
“I see a cloud that looks like soft-serve vanilla ice cream,” I said, peering through a pair of binoculars.
“You think all clouds look like soft-serve vanilla ice cream,” Nora said. “Try again.”
Unlike me, Nora always saw exciting things in the clouds: roller coasters, fettuccini alfredo, Kermit the Frog.
I scanned the sky. Ice cream, ice cream, melted ice cream…
My eyes drifted lower. To the houses along the coast, to the gulls swooping over the water, to a boulder on the southwest shore of Gardiner’s Island with two lumps sticking out of it that looked exactly like a dog’s head.
I stood up and refocused the binoculars.
“Well?” Nora asked.
“Not ice cream,” I whispered.
Goose bumps popped up on my arms. Suddenly, all the pieces clicked into place:
In view of paradise, watched over for eternity by a sorrowful hound.
Paradise = Garden of Eden = Gardiner’s Island
Hound = Dog
Sorrowful = No idea
About twenty minutes after Jules, Otis, and I left our cove, we got to Gardiner’s Bay, a big protected circle of open water with Sag Harbor and Shelter Island at our backs and Gardiner’s Island ahead.
Picture a T-bone steak with a pointy hat on top. That’s Gardiner’s Island.
I steered us to the southern end of the island—the left corner of the bottom tip of the steak bone—and shifted the boat to idle, my heart racing like an open balloon when you let go of the neck. Because there it was: a boulder with a long chunk sticking out of the side in a snout-ish fashion and a smaller chunk sticking up from the top in an ear-ish fashion.