Chapter Thirty-Two, Part Two

That night after Sophie went to bed, Robert sat at the table for a long time with the most recent Santa Fe newspaper, which he subscribed to even though it was always at least a week old by the time he received it. He flipped to the business pages, then took a pad of paper and a pencil and made note of the gold and silver exchange rates. They would have changed by now, but this was the best he could do. He scribbled a few calculations, then went to the safe and took out a bag of coins.

He was relieved that even with the addition of a jacket for Mateo, he could accomplish this transaction using only paper southwesterns and a couple of silver coins. He would feel uncomfortable giving the town messenger gold for his purchases. Not that the man wasn’t honest, but he would talk and people would nod, their suspicions and all those years of rumors about the Dubeck family gold confirmed. Although Robert didn’t feel like his life would be in danger if the gold cache became known, it would certainly drive a wedge between him and the community if they thought he was richer than they were.

Maybe that was why Arthur had never spent the gold and had used little of the silver. In a town like this, so remote from any banks or other places where he could exchange a gold coin without all his neighbors knowing, how would he spend such a thing? It wasn’t as if any of the local businesses could give change for a purchase made in gold. Not at the current exchange rate, anyway. Perhaps it was true what the philosophers had said down through the millennia, that wealth was a curse.

Well, it was handy for buying winter coats, at least. He put the bag back in the safe and hid the key. Unnoticed was the pair of eyes following his every move from around the corner. And unheard were the quiet stockinged feet as Sophie slipped up the stairs to her room, having now seen where her father kept his fortune.

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Sophie lay in bed, unable to read or sleep. Mateo was right – there really was a secret fortune! Or at least there was a secret, she reminded herself. That her father drew two silver coins out of the hidden box in the wall proved only that he had some savings, which was hardly news. But if it was just an ordinary box of coins, like her mother used to keep in the kitchen pantry “for a rainy day,” why was he being so secretive? Her parents had never kept secrets from her in Kentucky.

If her father was keeping secrets about money, then it had to be something big. Maybe this was why the other girls didn’t like her. They knew she was rich and they were jealous. Well, too bad for them. Once they saw what nice presents she was willing to give a friend like Mateo, they would all wish they hadn’t been so mean.

Sophie sighed. The idea of showing those girls that they’d made a mistake in not befriending her was nice, but not as nice as actually having friends. She wished she was back home in Kentucky, planning scary costumes with Riley and wondering if Sean would dance with her at the school’s Halloween party. After that, everyone would talk about Thanksgiving and what kind of pie they would eat first. And then, best of all, Christmas! There would be sleighs and tree-cutting, and parties in every house to decorate the trees. On Christmas morning, she would wake up before it was even light out and sneak to the living room to find her stocking full and brightly wrapped gifts under the tree. She had always known it was her parents who gave her these things, but it was fun to pretend it was Santa Claus. As if she could read her mind, her mother would go into the kitchen and—

Mother.

Sophie felt a sudden sting in her eyes. She held her breath, but her nose and eyes filled up anyway and she struggled to breathe. She must not cry. If she cried, her father would hear, and although he would do his best to comfort her, he would likely start crying too. That was worse than anything else. Sophie could tolerate almost any kind of pain as long as it was only inflicted on her, but she couldn’t bear to see her father cry. And so she fought to get her breathing under control again, get her mind calm. She did a few times tables in her head, the hard ones like the 9s and the 12s, to take her mind off anything that might make her sad.

When she finally felt like she was herself again, she allowed her thoughts to return to the locked box inside the wall. There must be important things in there if her father didn’t want her to know about it. Her mother had always said you shouldn’t keep secrets in a family, even though in the year leading up to her mother’s death, Sophie had begun to suspect there were quite a number of things she wasn’t being told. Well, this was one secret she would get to the bottom of. Sophie wasn’t sure how she would accomplish it, since it seemed she was hardly ever at home by herself, but she would find a way. Even if took months or years of waiting, the day would come when she would be alone at the house. And then she would find out just what was in that secret box.