Page 29 of The Curse Breaker

Zara nodded. “Yes! He said someone else lived at that farm. Then he started acting strange and said he had to go see someone. We just don’t know who. Gil, do you remember who lived there?”

Boom! Another book fell out of Gil’s hands. “My apologies,” he said quickly. Benny noticed his hands were shaking. “Er, no, I’m afraid not.”

“Gil?” Benny kept her voice neutral. “Do you know who Calia or Charlotte is?”

“I never met someone named Calia or Charlotte,” Gil said, not making eye contact as he rushed the words.

“But…” Benny hedged her bets as the rain pounded the roof, “you did meet someone unusual around the Blood Orange Moon, didn’t you?”

Gil looked up then; his glowing eyes seemed sad. “Yes. Someone I fear I shouldn’t have trusted.” He swallowed hard. “Maybe that note you found was meant for me, and I never got it. Which means what happened was my fault.”

“It’s alright,” Benny said, moving closer. “Whatever happened, happened. It’s in the past. If we’re going to fix it, you need to tell us everything you know.”

Gil stared at the sneakers that were a size too big. Benny made a note to order him better clothes. “Right around the time the island appeared, a woman came into the mercantile. She said she was looking to buy land in Greenport. A private island. She said her name was Connie.”

Another C name, Benny thought.

“I told her she should speak to Elias Rudd. He owned everything. I said I knew of no islands for sale, and I thought she left.” He played with the pages of the book on the table in front of him. “Then Sparrow came to speak with me at the shop. She was talking excitedly about our island. We’d only just found it days before. We agreed to meet that afternoon to explore it, and Sparrow left. That’s when Connie came around one of the shelves. She’d heard everything. She said she wanted to see this island Sparrow found and said she could make me rich. She was very persuasive. There was something I didn’t trust about her, but when she offered me a whole dollar to take her to the island, I was weak. I said yes.”

“A dollar was like a week’s salary in the 1820s,” Zara explained to Benny. “Grams does a whole speech about money in the museum. Like a dollar could buy seventy pounds of potatoes or a pair of boots. It was a lot of money.”

“I never had money of my own before,” Gil said miserably. “My aunt and uncle didn’t pay me to work at the mercantile. I thought if I saved that dollar for someday when I wanted to travel, it could go a long way.” He pursed his lips.

“So you took her to the island?” Benny wanted to know.

“Not exactly,” Gil said. “I took her to where we always met Sparrow, but then I couldn’t find the island on my own. I explained to Connie that Sparrow was the only one who seemed to know exactly where to go. Connie said I could keep the dollar if I told her how to find Sparrow.” Gil looked ashamed. “I told her where she lived.”

Benny pressed her hands into her legs. “If Connie and Charlotte and Calia are the same person, then they targeted Evelyn to find the island.”

“And since they were searching for it already, they had to know about the treasure,” Zara realized. The sound of rain against the roof cut the silence in the room.

“So you see? This is my fault,” Gil said, his chin quivering.

“No,” Benny insisted. “She tricked you. Whoever she was. And we still don’t know if she ever found her way to the island. Or if she could find the treasure on her own. If she did, she could have taken coins as well, which means more are missing.”

“Or she got nowhere,” Zara countered.

Benny bit the pencil in her hand. A bad habit. “Evelyn’s letter said there were others after the treasure that we had to watch out for. Kimble is searching for treasure too, and maybe more. If Kimble mentioned Grace to Evelyn, then I think we have to talk to Kimble about who Grace is. And get him to tell us if he knows who this Connie-slash-Charlotte-slash-Calia person is.”

“If he doesn’t, maybe Aggy does,” Zara suggested.

“Let’s go,” Benny said, feeling charged, her fingers tingling.

“Problem: time works differently there,” Zara reminded her. “If you go now, you’ll miss the vineyard, and Vivian and Ryan will wonder where you are.”

“I’ll go,” Gil said suddenly. “Let me risk it and talk to Aggy.”

“You shouldn’t go alone,” Benny said worriedly. Behind them, the clock chimed 3:30. The rain was starting to let up. They were supposed to meet Kimble at four anyway. The new questions were so big, it was enough to make her want to curl up in a ball again and sleep for a week.

But that wasn’t her style. They needed to get to Greenport.

Benny jumped, heart racing. “Gil, you’re about to learn how to ride a bike.”

***

Gil was a natural. Ten minutes after Benny and Zara showed him how to pedal, he was speeding along.

“I love this wagon with two wheels!” Gil shouted, tipping his head to the sky, which was still gray. Drizzle was coming down as Benny and Zara led the way into town. The sound of chainsaws cutting down trees filled the air, while the power company had a truck on Main Street working on the downed wires. Two of the cross streets were closed off, yellow caution tape blowing in the breeze. The water, visible through openings between shops and streets, looked choppy, most of the boats still docked after last night’s storm; foot traffic on the usually busy street was almost nonexistent.