“Don’t look so surprised,” Jay said with a chuckle. “Everyone in the military learns how to sew.”
“Everyone?” It didn’t matter, but my brain had taken a vacation.
“There are a few exceptions, but most of us learn basic stitches. You’d be surprised at how often soldiers repair their uniforms in the field,” John said.
“Of course, officers like Austin usually paid someone to do it for them.”
Austin flipped Jay the finger. “I did my time in the field.”
“Yeah, sitting back and giving orders while the rest of us did the work.”
What I knew about military life could fit on a two-by-two post it note, so I didn’t understand the exchange, but I had a feeling they were teasing each other.
“I’ll have you know, I spent months training so I could serve with DEVGRU.”
“You earn a trident?” Jay asked.
“Nope. Didn’t need it,” Austin grinned. “Just so we’re clear, being an intelligence officer didn’t make a comfy bed magically appear every night, or make MREs taste any better, and it sure as hell didn’t create a bulletproof force field out of thin air when the bullets started flying.”
“As a ranking officer on my team, I can assure you he’s telling the truth.” Ryan held his fist up for Austin to bump.
“Good to know,” Jay said with a nod. I didn’t know him well, but I’d swear I saw respect in his eyes.
“Are you two done?” John asked, his impatience bringing out his dad voice.
Tired of being left out of the conversation, I asked, “You were a SEAL?”
“No, I served as an intelligent officer attached to a SEAL team.” Austin shot Jay a withering look. “I didn’t always work from the safety of an office.”
“Let’s get back to work,” John said.
Austin handed me two small plastic bags. One contained a key and the other, a slip of paper.
“These are what we found in your teddy bear.”
Eddy hid these all these years? How had I never noticed? I’d washed him a dozen times; how did the paper survive?
“What are they?”
“The note says, ‘Where the sun and moon align, the treasure resides’, but we don’t know what it means yet.”
I nodded like I understood, but I didn’t. Not one bit.
My life had turned into some kind of crazy mystery movie, and I still couldn’t believe it was real.
“What does that mean?” I asked as his words sank in. “Sorry. You just said you don’t know.”
“It’s okay. This is a lot to take in.” Austin looked like he wanted to touch my arm, but then he pulled his hand back. “Can you think of anything that might help us connect the dots? It doesn’t have to make sense. Just blurt out anything that comes to mind.”
There wasn’t. My mind was a big jumbled mess of nothing.
“It’s okay if nothing comes to you. But if you think of something later, you can text or call. Sometimes this stuff comesup when you’re doing something mindless, like taking a shower or driving,” John said.
“Okay.” I didn’t expect anything to come up, given I’d never met my parents and knew nothing about my life prior to living with the Novaks.
Did the Novaks know more than they let on? Did the secrets die with them?
There were boxes of stuff I’d never looked through in the small attic space above my grandmother’s house. Maybe they’d hidden answers, thinking they’d tell me when I was older. Only they didn’t survive long enough.
