trips with your father,” she told Marc. “We would trek out along the cliff at dawn, backpacks full of drinks, snacks and lunches, and your father would lead us to the most interesting places, nooks and crannies that you would never think existed if you just drove by them. And he’d find some quartz or some rocks with hornblende or muscovite and he’d use his rock hammer to break specimen-sized pieces out of the rock. Then Billy and I would wrap them in paper and pack them away in canvas bags and then tote the bags home for him.” She grinned at Billy. “We had a glorious time.”
“That we did,” Billy said, grinning right back.
Marc nodded at the reminder and listened to them reminisce, but the whole thing created a bit of an empty feeling in his soul. He’d known his father was interested in rock collecting, but he’d never really paid much attention. He’d only listened with impatience whenever his father tried to talk to him about it. Which might have been why he never got invited along on any of these expeditions. Probably because he was too old when the hobby began to appeal to his dad. He’d been seventeen when Torie was twelve.
Still, he wished he’d known, wished he’d participated. It seemed more and more that there was a whole side to his father that he had known nothing about. He would have been a good man to get to know.
Too late now. He grimaced. He wasn’t used to feeling this sort of regret. It made him uncomfortable. He looked at Torie, and for some reason, he felt a little better. She was like a light into the past that he’d been ignoring for years. She was helping him clear up some things. For the first time, he realized he was actually glad she’d come back to Shangri-La.
Torie brought up the treasure and Marc began to listen more carefully. Billy remembered it, but he claimed he didn’t know anything about what had happened to it, other than the newspaper accounts about Hunt having dumped it in the sea, and didn’t think anyone else knew anything new about it either.
“There’s really no one else still left around who was working at the place in those days,” Billy said earnestly. “Except Griswold, of course. But he’s not much use these days.”
They chatted for a few more minutes, and then Torie gave Billy a hug and they said good-bye. He rode off on his motorcycle; they got back on the horse.
“I’ll drop you at the house,” Marc told her. “I’ve got to get this little lady back home before she starts to worry about lunchtime.”
She smiled, liking that he had a sense of understanding for a horse. Okay, it was time to admit it. Down deep, she knew him well enough to know he was a pretty good guy. Unless something had changed him while he was overseas, he was one of the best men she’d ever known. Maybe his family had been cruel to her father—he hadn’t been involved. Not directly anyway.
Closing her eyes and letting the sway of the ride take her, she mused on life and the U-turns she seemed to find all along the way. So far, it had been a disappointing day as far as her aims and goals were concerned. What if she never found out the truth about her father? What if the truth was hidden somewhere and no one alive knew where it was? Could she live with that? Could she go back home and find a way to be happy? Could her mother snap out of the depressive state she’d been in for years?
Not likely.
Even more scary, what if she found out the truth and it was worse than she’d ever believed? What if her father was really and truly guilty? What if there was even more to it, more things he had done? Her mind cringed away from those stray thoughts. Some ideas were just too painful to explore.
Too soon, Shangri-La loomed on the hill ahead. She remembered she’d told Carl she would be back in time to go over the map with him again. That hadn’t happened. The time had long passed. He was going to be angry.
Oh well.
She turned back to look at Marc.
“Can I come with you to your neighbor’s?” she asked him. “I don’t want to go back to the house just yet.”
He nodded, his face unreadable. “Sure,” was all he said.
But he didn’t complain when she leaned back against him. He was strong and warm and she had a sudden fantasy of letting him be her champion in the world. She could use one. The only problem was, she had a feeling he wasn’t in the market for a girl like her. After all, she tried to get his attention before, when she was a chubby young adolescent. That hadn’t worked out so well.
Now she was back and he only cared because she was threatening his family’s reputation with her crazy theories and searches. But at least he was paying attention now. She smiled at the irony of it all.
“How can big things happen—big, important things that change the shape of our lives—and a few years later no one remembers anything about them?” she asked him over her shoulder.
He didn’t answer for a long moment. Finally he leaned forward and spoke softly in her ear. “The people who are directly affected remember. Sometimes it takes a surprise to get them to open up to the past once they’ve tried to put it behind them. But they remember when they have to.”
She wasn’t sure she bought that. It seemed as though her father had passed through this life without anyone much noticing him. He’d tried so hard to be a good man and good at his chosen profession—and he’d done well at both. But when his heart got broken, so did his spirit—which started the chain of tragedy that pretty much ruined her whole family. And no one seemed to care.
If only the treasure had never disappeared. If only they had stayed and she’d finished her childhood here where she belonged. He would still be alive today, and her mother wouldn’t be the faded shell of a woman that she was. Everything would have been so different.
She glanced back at Marc. His father might still be alive, too. And Ricky? She didn’t really know what had happened there and Marc definitely bristled whenever she asked questions.
If only she could pretend she was any closer to finding out about her father. She’d always had a feeling deep in her heart that clearing his name would change everything. It wouldn’t bring any of those people back to life, of course, but it would surely brighten her mother’s life—and her own.
Funny, but in some ways she had begun to realize that she felt close to Marc. He was a part of her past. She might even venture to call him a part of her present. There was a reserve in him that appealed to her.
And then she frowned, wondering if it was really just a certain dignity that set him apart—or was it actually a wariness, and a basic distrust of her and who she was.
They delivered the horse to the neighbor and got into Marc’s long, low sports car. She expected him to turn for home, but instead, he took a side road that took them on a curvy two lanes into the hills. He pulled into an overlook and turned off the engine.
“Wildflowers,” he said by way of explanation.
She looked out and sighed. “Wow. How beautiful.”
The hills were covered with masses of golden California poppies fighting for space with sky-blue lupine and bright yellow mustard, all dancing in the breezes. In the distance, looking back at the way they’d come, she could see the blue ocean. Oaks and flowering purple bushes filled the valleys. It was one of the most beautiful places she’d ever seen.
They got out and walked to the edge of the overlook, leaning against the guardrail that had been put up
