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“Sweetheart don’t pull on people,” Melissa corrected him, patting his hand away from me.
Jackson held up a worn piece of paper with old looking markings on it. “Do you think it’s a treasure map?”
I leaned down to inspect the page as he pulled it tight. It was a map of some kind but the shape didn’t look familiar to me. But Jackson clearly wanted the answer to be yes, and it would keep him entertained. “Ya know what, buddy. I think it just might be. Should we buy it?”
“I’ll pay you back when I get my share of the treasure!” His eyes went even wider, already seeing a chest of coins.
I laughed. “You strike a fair bargain. Come on, let’s go.”
I glanced back at Melissa as Jackson dragged me in the direction of the vendor who had the map for sale. She smiled at me and shook her head, clearly amused by her small son’s big personality.
The flea market was much larger than I’d expected. There were close to thirty different booths set up in a semi-circle and three rows deep. Some of the vendors had jewelry and other accessories, like wallets and purses. Others had larger items, like woven baskets in all different sizes and shapes, piles of multi colored blankets, and one shop even had an array of furniture, mostly made from locally sourced wood. A handful of tables were there to sell food and beverages. The resulting mix of smells and sights and sounds was intoxicating. For the first time since the job had begun, I let myself go a little, and slipped into tourist mode.
If things were different, and Melissa was my wife, and Jackson was my son, this might be just a normal day for us if we were on vacation in Manzanilla. We’d have woken up in a hotel room, had a great breakfast together, and then spent the day wandering the city, taking it all in.
“Here they are! Oh, look at this one, Chase!”
The vendor smiled when we approached.
“These are beautiful,” I told the woman in Spanish.
She nodded and blinked slowly. “Your son is very charming.”
I glanced down at Jackson who had no idea what the woman had said. “Thank you,” I replied, not wanting to get into the weeds over the particulars. “We’ll take one of each.”
“Very good, sir.” She went about selecting a map from each of the stacks, three designs in total, and carefully wrapped them in a thin layer of tissue paper before rolling them up into a tight cylinder. I paid her and took Jackson by the hand to lead him back over to his mother.
“How do you know all those words?” he asked me once we were a few feet away from the stall.
“I learned Spanish back in high school,” I replied. “Someday you’ll learn another language too. Maybe even more than one. You’re a smart guy.”
Jackson beamed at the compliment and then hurried off to see what Melissa was looking at. She was standing in front of a stall that had a large array of jewelry. She was fingering a turquoise pendent on a silver chain but let go of it when Jackson barreled into her legs. I winced at the impact. Jackson might be small for his age but at full speed, he could pack a wallop.
Melissa said something to him and he cast his eyes down at the ground.
On second thought, the flea market might not have been the best place to bring an energetic five-year-old.
Melissa took Jackson by the hand and they wandered down to the next row of shops. I swooped over to purchase the necklace that she’d just been admiring and stashed it away in my pocket before going to join them at the stand selling tamales that were rolled with banana leaves.
When we finished lunch, we left the flea market and wandered the beach. Jackson was fascinated by the workers and buzz at the docks. I smiled as I remembered the satisfaction when I’d dropped the tracking device into the produce barge. It seemed so long ago.
A lot had changed.
“It’s nice to be out of the house for a little while,” Melissa said, drawing my attention away from Jackson as he started hunting the beach for seashells.
“Yeah, I think we were all going a little crazy.”
She laughed. “That obvious, huh? And here I thought I’d hid my crazy pretty well.”
I brushed her hand with my fingertips as we strolled. “Hey, I got you something.”
“You did?”
I pulled the necklace from my pocket and held it up, letting it dangle from my fingertips to show it to her. She gasped and covered her mouth. “Chase!” she exclaimed, reaching for it. She ran her fingers over the stone. “How did you know?”
“I saw you looking at it before Jackson ran you over.”
She laughed. “Right. Perks of having a bodyguard, huh? You’ll always know just what I like from watching me window shop. Or booth shop?”
