“Stop.” Bolt clung tighter, squeezing his eyes shut. “Stop!”

  And it did.

  Bolt dreaded opening his eyes. He waited, huddled in the lake. All he heard was the hush of water and his own panicked breathing.

  When he finally unpeeled himself and waded out of the shallows, he still couldn’t feel his legs. Finally, his sneakers squelched on dry grass—

  And Bolt woke up under his blankets to pale morning light in the motel window. He gave in to the fuzzy confusion for a second before he sat up, relief blooming in his chest because the dream was over. He pulled the bedspread over him, fabric scratching fabric. The fan turned above him, casting shades of blue across the ceiling. He breathed in the motel’s powdery ’70s scent.

  Bolt threw off the covers and planted his feet on the floorboards—heavy wet clunks. He looked down. He was wearing his shoes.

  They were damp.

  * * *

  “You’re a lifesaver, Cuz,” Lark told Mitch fervently from the passenger seat of his truck. Twelve boxes of telescopes were bundled into his truck bed—only half of what she’d packed so far in the leftover cardboard boxes she’d gotten from Bud over at the Mosquito Bite. They jostled restlessly with each bump in the road. Lark couldn’t resist glancing back to check on them.

  “It’s about time I did something to help you,” Mitch grumbled as they took the loop away from Echo toward Fairchild’s Treasures. The lake glittered out the window. “Least I can do. Cassie said she’d be happy to take a look.”

  “I just really appreciate it.” They passed the church, where June’s aunt was the pastor. Lark turned in her seat to look at the little plot, but there was no sign of June out on the rectory’s porch swing. Eliza had been cool about picking June up so late after their surprise treasure hunt the other night.

  Mitch followed her gaze. It was noon, and the modest steeple clock was chiming the hour. “Diego and I did some roof work for Eliza a few months back, and the bells up in that steeple are gnarly. All green and brittle,” he told her. “They’re much older than the building itself. Mom told me the Old Prosper church folk carried those bells out with the silver candlesticks and the altar cloth right before the dam.”

  “Seriously?” Lark cracked the window to hear them. They rang out across the gravel parking lot and the churchyard, and their sound was, she realized, somewhat hollow. They were small bells, and their tolling was tinny, rather muffled, as if, despite their escape, they still had to sing from beneath the water.

  “Have you talked to Uncle Stu since you’ve been down here?” Mitch asked as they pulled into the antique shop lot. “Mom told me he hasn’t been saying much.”

  Lark winced. The effort it took for Mitch to bring up this difficult topic was almost a physical presence in the car. “No,” she admitted, her voice low. “He’s still pretty—upset. I haven’t wanted to worry him with boat stuff when he’s…trying to get better.”

  Mitch parked the truck, letting out a breath. He cut the ignition, and they sat there as the cab started to heat up. “I’m really proud of you,” he said gently. “I know this isn’t easy.”

  Lark nodded at him quickly. “Thanks, Mitch,” she managed, vision blurring right at the edges. Her eyes felt hot. There was so much she couldn’t say about her time on the boat, the things she’d seen in the spyglasses.

  They sat there together for another moment or two. Lark’s T-shirt started to stick to her back from sweat, but it wasn’t a moment she wanted to rush away from. Mitch, Valerie—they were the steady side of the family. She needed them, even if she couldn’t tell them everything. “Okay, then,” Mitch said at last, smiling at her. “Ready?”

  They walked toward the shop together. Fairchild’s looked as old as the antiques it sold, its wood exterior and sign shabby from time and lake weather, but the windows were clean and cheery, lit from the inside by lamps that once must have rested on bedside tables and beside sofas and loveseats. The lamps were an eclectic mix of pottery and mosaics, one delicately painted with a dogwood flower. Several small mason jars of honey glinted in the sun, each topped with cheesecloth and wrapped tightly with twine. The sign was tilted on open.

  Mitch held the door and called, “Knock, knock.”

  At first, the young woman behind the counter blended in with her stock, another relic from the past. Pale and intensely freckled, she was surprised and then pleased when her gaze flowed from Lark to her cousin. Her hair and eyes were the color of lake-bed mud, and a braid as thick as a rope hung over her shoulder, nearly grazing her waist.

  “Mitch,” she said.

  “Hey, Cass.” Mitch grinned at her. “Mom used those light bulbs you brought over in the lobby.” He set the two telescope boxes he was holding on one of the tables. “This is my cousin, Lark. Lark, remember Cassie? We’ve been friends for…” He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t even know how long.”

  “Hey.” Lark thunked her own box beside his, giving Cassie a breathless smile. “I used to come in here with my dad sometimes.”

  Tell that little crawdad I say hello, Valerie had said when they left. Lark could sort of imagine what she meant by it; Cassie was thin and spindly, and she dressed like she spent her days in a canoe drifting nowhere on the water. She wore a soft men’s linen shirt and baggy overalls, the butter-soft kind designer stores were always trying to mimic. Only these were real, flecked with whitewash.

  “Right. Of course.” Cassie offered her a hesitant smile. “What have you got for me?”

  Lark showed her the box. BOX 8, she’d scrawled on its side. Taped to its lid was the little chicken-scratch inventory she’d made for it. “I don’t really know very much about them,” she confessed. “I’ve been doing my best, but there are about a hundred more where these came from.”

  Mitch laughed, a little nervously. “I’ll go unload the rest of what we brought.”

  The box opened, silent as a cat’s yawn. Inside, treasure glinted. Cassie pulled out the first telescope, which was enclosed in a beautiful leather container. It smelled like polish and age. It was a spyglass, proud and brassy with a black leather exterior worn away in bronze streaks from being opened and closed. Lark knew it was heavier than it looked. She’d held it when it went into the box, and it had had a firm, real feeling in her hands. Cassie pressed it against her eye.

  She pulled, and it expanded, growing four rings. “Leather case doesn’t match. Brass. Handheld,” she murmured to herself and rubbed her thumb over the inscription: “Bardou & Son Paris. John P. Lovell Arms Co. in Boston…circa early 1900s.” Cassie nodded. “It’s a rifle-range telescope. Lovely piece. It was from here in the shop.” She looked up. “The man who bought it also bought a beautiful pair of 1920s binoculars with a working stand the same day. I remember. That was your father?”

  Lark couldn’t pull her eyes from the spyglass. She nodded. “He was in here a lot.” This shop was exactly the kind of place where Lark’s dad would have loved to search. She could imagine him so easily here, a proud connoisseur browsing the store, peering in the cases like a little kid at the zoo, eagerly talking about objects on display with his familiar enthusiasm.

  Cassie hummed without looking at her. She retrieved another telescope, this one small, made of burnished brass, with a clamshell clasp protecting the lens. “This one was from our shop too. But not all of these. He must have been to every shop in the state if this is only one box.”

  “Oh yeah.” Lark had to laugh. There had been weekend getaways, years ago, roaring down Arkansas back roads in Dad’s classic car, a 1969 Austin-Healey Sprite, taking detours to waterfalls, weaving up through the Ozarks, testing the car’s upper registers on the open yellowed land of the Delta. They’d found new telescopes, new ways of seeing, all over the place. But that had been years ago. “He found a lot online too.” She swallowed. “But we just need them gone now. If you’re able to help, I can pay you. For consulting, or—”

  “No, this is interesting,” Cassie said. “Besides, you’re Mitch’s cousin.” The rifle-range telescope had absorbed her again. “I’ll buy some off you. This one, if I can. It’s a lovely piece.”

  “Absolutely.” Something in Lark’s heart yanked to part with it, but that was absurd. “Thank you so much. I’ve been sort of up a creek.”

  Mitch returned with another load of telescope boxes. “Cass, Mom said you’re having dinner over at the Destiny tomorrow with Jeff Daley? What’s that about?”

  “Is the Godfather his boat?” Lark asked. That was the name painted across the side of the behemoth parked in the very last slip on Echo.

  “Yes.” Cassie put down the telescope before brushing her hair back over one shoulder to jot down notes—an offer on paper for Lark to consider. “He says he has a business proposition, and the Destiny is better than his houseboat.”

  “He’s a snake. Thinks he can sneak over here from Charlene and take everything over.” Mitch scowled. “I’ll tell him what he can do with his business propositions.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Lark chuckled, patting him on the shoulder. It was quite a reach. “Simmer down, why don’t you.”

  Cassie only smiled. “I’ll hear what he has to say. But I can’t imagine there’s much we’ll have to talk about.”

  “Well, then.” Lark thunked another box down between them, its content shifting. This shop, this woman, soothed something in her. Her spirits were lighter than they’d been in days, and the visions out on the water felt far away. “I guess it’s lucky that you and I have so much to talk about.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Cassie lingered in the shop past closing time the next day. Customers had come in surprising numbers that afternoon, most drawn to the front, with the honey, candles, clay mugs, and oiled wood serving bowls. These were all the new things. Not everyone wandered into the back, where she kept the true treasures and curiosities rescued from the water. Photographs. Old mirrors. Pieces of silver.

  After the tourists were gone, heading out for early dinners or to snatch a good spot in the coves to watch the sunset, Cassie lingered, enjoying the emptiness and silence. She’d spent some time with the spyglasses from Lark’s boxes, taking careful notes. Many of them were quite valuable. Now she sat behind her desk in the light of a beautiful Handel Company lamp with yellow glass flowers glowing on its bowed shade, polishing a silver clasp with a single pearl. It came from a mink stole fished out of the lake so heavy with weeds, Mitch had needed to lumber down from the grocery and haul it to Cassie’s antique shop for her. The silver mink, rich with charcoal stripes, had been almost entirely ruined. It needed fresh stitching, deep cleaning, hours and hours of brushing and oiling, and time in a vinyl garment bag. She’d had to call in a fur expert from the original Neiman Marcus storefront in Dallas to guide her through the process of saving it. Now it sat on the old dressmaker’s dummy in the front window, waiting for its clasp to be returned to it.

  She didn’t dread her dinner with Daley; in fact, she felt a stirring of curiosity. Everyone who lived around the lake knew Cassie Fairchild, mostly by Grandad’s reputation, but she was rarely sought out. She was quiet, and odd, and most of her talents were with objects rather than people. Once, she’d expressed this idea to Mitch, and he’d grumbled around and said maybe other people were the problem. She’d cling to that thought if the dinner with Mr. Daley grew awkward.

  Before she left, Cassie picked a couple of jars of honey, both light gold, easily digested, the kind Valerie preferred for honey pie. With the jars clinking in her passenger seat, she drove home and paused there long enough to change her shirt, then took the short path down her hill and onto Valerie’s property.

  The lights of the resort twinkled through the leaves like fireflies. Mitch’s grocery was already shut up. It was always quieter on weekdays, but a few people were on the benches outside motel rooms or lounging beside the pool. One of the swan boats, rented for the day, was paddling home now over a blood-orange lake. Daley’s Jeep sprawled in the lot outside the restaurant.

  Valerie waved as Cassie came in, a quick flap as she rang somebody up on the register. On a Wednesday, most of the diners were locals, but they kept her busy.

  “Cassie.” Jeff Daley was at one of the tables by the big windows, the lake glinting behind him. He stood to give her hand a warm shake. “So good to see you!”

  “I hope you weren’t waiting long,” she said, sliding in across from him. There was already a glass of sweating sweet tea in front of her place at the table.

  “Not at all, not at all.” Daley looked crisp as the golf course in his sports polo, and he smelled like money, like dry cleaning and small expensive bottles of cologne. For someone who worked down at a marina all day, he smelled nothing like bait. He pushed one of Valerie’s well-worn menus over to Cassie. “I tell you what. Your brother has been such a great addition to the marina team. That boy works so hard. Everybody loves him.”

  Bolt was an easy topic, a safe one to start with. “He’s always been a hard worker, even when he was young. Isn’t your son there too? They were friends, I thought.”

  “Oh yeah, they’re thick as thieves again.” Daley chuckled. “He’s always been such a good influence on my boy. I’m counting on Bolt to guide him down the straight and narrow.” Daley raised his eyes heavenward as if this might be an impossible task, then went on. “He told me he has his heart set on Vanderbilt. I know someone in the dean’s office, so I told him I’d put a good word in for him just as soon as he has his application in order.”

  Vanderbilt? No one had told Cassie about Vanderbilt. As far as Mom expressed, Bolt would be going to the University of Arkansas, hopefully with at least some scholarship money. Vanderbilt.

  “That’s generous of you,” Cassie managed.

  Valerie came to the table to get their orders. Bolt wasn’t working that night, so she was just a little shorthanded. Even so, she seemed especially gruff with Daley.

  “What can I get you, Jeff?” she asked shortly.

  Daley gave his menu a friendly once-over. “I’ll have the special.” It was chicken-fried steak that night. “Side salad, Italian dressing. And how about an order of those fried green tomatoes I’ve heard so much about?”

  Valerie’s pen swiped aggressively over her pad. “What about you, honey?” Her eyes softened as they landed on Cassie.

  “My usual,” Cassie asked. “I brought this as well.” She produced the two jars of honey. One, she pushed across the table to Valerie. Then, though it felt as natural as a stage play, she pushed the other across at Mr. Daley. “For your tables.”

  Valerie thawed out a degree or two as she took the nectar. “You are just too sweet,” she said, heading back to the kitchen with the slightest shake of her head.

  “My, my. So kind of you to think of me. Thank you.” Daley patted the top of the honey, fingers drumming some rhythm Cassie didn’t recognize, maybe from a song on the radio. “Well, I won’t leave you in suspense, Miss Cassie. You’re a successful business owner in the area. I’d love to tell you some of my plans for the marina.”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘successful,’” Cassie admitted, twisting her hem in her fingers, unable to quite take her eyes off the honey. Bringing Daley a jar had felt like the polite thing to do, and it was her habit to bring gifts of honey to people; now she wished she hadn’t. “It’s a small antique shop, and if you mean the honey, that’s just a hobby.”

  “You’re being too modest. You’ve managed to make a living in a humble little place like this,” he said, smiling at her. “And I’ve been speaking to the surveyor. Your property holdings around the lake are not insignificant.”

  Cassie couldn’t speak while he took a sip of his iced tea—he’d looked into her land. Into Grandad’s land.

  There wasn’t enough time for Cassie to figure out how to reply. “Any idea why your grandad had the deed under his old name? Except those four acres, where your shop sits. Those are under T. Fairchild,” Mr. Daley continued. “Took me finding your name on both papers to realize Taft Farhi and Tobias Fairchild were one and the same.”

  In those times, Grandad once told Cassie many recent immigrants were changing their names to sound more American, the Farhis becoming the Fairchilds, the Pescatores becoming the Fischers. These were deep family roots, and Daley must have scavenged to find them.

  “Why were you looking into our property?” Cassie asked.

  “Well, I didn’t know it was yours until I looked,” he explained with that same twinkle in his eye. “Don’t be modest. Amassing what he did was quite an accomplishment. I always respected Tobias. He was a good man. I think he saw in this place the same thing I do.” He leaned forward on his tan forearms, a bulky watch glinting at her across the Formica table. “Have you ever been over to the Charlene marina, Cassie? I grew up right over near there—got a business or two in the area nowadays. They expanded about ten years ago, and it’s just beautiful now. They’ve got houseboat rentals, state-of-the-art marine services and repair shop, at least a dozen brand-new docks…even a Starbucks. Can you believe that?” He chuckled, unrolling the paper napkin from around his silverware. “What I’m looking to do is make Prosper a real competitor in Arkansas leisure. I’ve already hired a pyrotechnics company to do a massive Fourth of July fireworks show over at the dam. This guy is world-class, seriously.” He gave her a conspiratorial look. “Given that you have so much of your personal capital invested in this land, I wanted to discuss some potential opportunities with you.”

  Personal capital. Invested. These were not words Cassie had ever used. The land didn’t even feel like hers. It was Grandad, who worked on the Great Damnation, who must have foreseen the growth of Charlene and how the developers would one day move in to claim chunks of Prosper. He’d bought it up when no one cared. Grandad never did anything with it, just left it wild and free, so Cassie only had a vague idea how much it was. Grandad himself never talked about it, other than to say he hoped the shores where their home stood and the shore across from it would stay exactly as they were for as long as a Fairchild held the deeds. Most of it was untouched.