Page 50 of The Treasure House

“I feel you,” I said fervently. “I hope I like my new job.” Which also started on Monday.

Flo lapsed into silence, staring moodily out the window as I unpacked my books.

“Do you think Jake could get the old radio cabinet thing working?” she asked abruptly. “Can I go visit his puppy and ask him if he’ll come fix it? I found all these old records in the room with the clothes, and I want to play them.”

“Don’t bother him now, babe, it’s the lunch rush.”

She snorted. “There isn’t anyone there.”

“Well, then definitely don’t bother him. I don’t want you alone with strange men.”

“Mooooom,” she said in drawn-out frustration. “It’s Jake.”

“I said no.” I looked up and saw her restless irritation. “If you need something to do, go unpack the rest of your things.”

“I’m sick of unpacking.”

“Then go outside and pick me some lilacs.” It would be nice to have lilacs in my bedroom the first night I slept here.

She pulled a face.

“Read a book?”

“I’ll be reading books all year in school. I don’t want to waste the last two days of summer vacation reading.” She cocked her head. “Why don’t we go have a couple of lobster rolls and give Jake something to do. Then I can pet his puppy, because you’ll be there.”

“I need to keep unpacking, Flo-bug.”

“But we’ve never even had a lobster roll! Don’t you think that’s sad, given we live in Maine?”

“Flo, I seriously need our stuff unpacked before I start work on Monday.”

She gave me a look I rarely saw. A kind of wobble-lipped look, like she might cry. My heart sank. I hated it when she cried.

“What if I help you unpack the rest of this stuff, really quick, and then we go?” she said, blinking away her upset, still trying to find a way to get what she wanted.

The tightness in my chest constricted even further. She’d been such a good sport about this move, and all she wanted was to walk to the corner, pet a dog, and eat lunch with me.

“You’re going to hate lobster rolls,” I warned her, as I capitulated.

“I bet I won’t hate lobster rolls as much as I hate Moxie,” she said as she collapsed beside me and grabbed a handful of books out of the box. “You’d hate Moxie too if you tried it.” She began stacking my books on the shelves, pushing the hardbacks into one row and the paperbacks into another. “Those records I found are probably worth a fortune,” she chattered at me. “We could sell them online, you know. Dad says vintage vinyl fetches a lot of money.”

I made a noise to let her know I was listening and opened another box.

“I’ll take photos of them all, if you want, and work out if they’re in mint condition. Dad says you get more money for mint condition.” She paused as she pulled an envelope out of a book. “Hey. You’ve got a letter here you haven’t opened. It must have got packed away by mistake.” She handed it to me, then resumed her chatter about how to sell vintage vinyl.

My heart gave a lurch as I stared down at the letter. It was the one that had arrived on the day I’d first started scrolling treasure houses. The one Suni had handed me as we ate pizza and discussed which state we should live in. Hazelton FCI was stamped across the envelope.

Tina.

I folded it and tucked it into my pocket. I glanced at Flo, but she was more interested in hurrying through the boxes so she could get to the puppy than in my letter. Thank goodness, because she still didn’t know about Tina and I wasn’t ready to tell her yet. I didn’t know if I’d ever be ready.

“Flo, I’m just going to, uh, grab a glass of water from the kitchen,” I lied, slipping out of the room. “You’re doing a great job.”

Opening Tina’s letters was like sticking your hand in a box without knowing what was in there. I felt guilty and vaguely nauseous as I headed downstairs and out to the back porch. We’d pulled the decaying screens out and cleared everything except the swing and the heavy old wireless radio. The old records Flo was obsessed with sat in careful stacks. Shakily, I tore open the envelope, so full of nervous energy that I paced as I skimmed her words, barely taking anything in. My stomach was in a knot, my heart racing, my hands sweating. My whole body was preparing for bad news.

Tina had loopy, girlish handwriting—her Gs were big curls and her Os looked like bubbles about to pop. But there was no bad news. Her letter was chatty, full of gossip about her friends at Hazelton. Over the years, she had made a lot of friends in prison. And she’d once scored a lot of dope and pills from those friends. I’d stupidly thought being locked up would help her, that she’d get clean, but the federal prison was even worse than the state prison. The one and only time I’d gone to visit her, she’d been high on some kind of tranquilizer, barely even cognizant of my presence.

But she certainly hadn’t been tranquilized when she’d written this letter. It was speedy and manic, leaping from topic to topic like a cartoon frog leaping onto lily pads. She told me how her roommate had found out her husband was cheating on her, and how he’d still had the nerve to turn up for his conjugal visit, and that Skye and Julia (whoever they were) were hooking up. Tina herself had a bit of a thing going on with one of the guards. “We got talking about Real Housewives, of all things!” she wrote, her loops getting even loopier. “Isn’t that crazy?” The letter went on like that. Only at the end of the final page did she stop talking about herself long enough to be curious about me.