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“I thought the last hot tub was for me.”
“It was.” She waggles her brows suggestively. “But I liked it.”
“And now that our house won’t be right on the edge of town, we’d get more use from it.”
“Come on, baby,” she says as she opens it. “Casey wants a hot tub.”
“You know I could build you—”
She points a finger at me. “None of that.”
“We could build one together. Constructed of wood we cut and seasoned ourselves, for economy’s sake.”
“Perfect. And it seems we’d have to do that, because this is not treasure. It’s a love letter. A very old love letter.”
She lifts it and begins to read, “Dearest love.” She looks over the top. “It actually says that.”
“As it should.”
“Dearest love, I can’t wait until I see you again. Soon! So soon! Everything is ready. He’ll be gone tomorrow on an all-day fishing trip and won’t be back until nightfall.”
Her nose scrunches. “Okay, that’s not quite as romantic as I hoped. Seems a lodge guest was taking a vacation from everything, including her husband.”
“Hmm.”
“Oh, wait.” Her brow furrows. “Shit, okay. I take that back. I’m okay with her taking this break, and I only hope it was permanent. She was escaping an abusive husband. She’s thanking her lover for believing her when no one else did, for understanding that there’s no place she can hide. They’re... Huh.”
“What?”
“They were running away together. Into the forest to live until her husband stopped looking for her. She gave her lover her jewelry, and he’s hocking it for camping equipment.”
“And...?”
“She’ll leave as soon as her husband does and meet him ‘by the three rocks.’ Seems to be a spot over by the bluff.”
“That’s a good two miles from here.”
“Well, according to this, they were going to meet closer, but she’s worried someone will see her. So she left this message changing the location.”
“Left it in a log?”
Casey shrugs. “She presumes he’ll get it, so it must have been planned.”
“Except the message is still there. How many years later?”
“Decades later.”
“That’s not good.”
“No, it’s not.”
* * *
We’rein the lodge library. The fire is roaring, taking the chill out of the air. Casey sits cross-legged on an overstuffed recliner, with a steaming mug of coffee and freshly baked brownie. Before Devon and Brian left, they’d stuffed the freezer with bread and baked goods, not telling us until after they’d left, because if they had, we’d have insisted they shouldn’t go to the trouble.
Also, I have no idea what Phil meant about the bakery being favored by the women. I put the tray of brownies out to cool, and came back to find a huge chunk missing... and Phil slipping out the other door with a plate. I suppose that means he really did target the bakery as a luxury and not just because he personally wasn’t interested in it, so I’ll give him credit for that. Still don’t understand the guy.
Casey and I have maps spread across the coffee table, books piled to one side. We spent three weeks in the Yukon forest with a bush plane, searching for possible sites and camping for a few days in any contenders, with Casey taking photos and writing lists, me drawing diagrams and maps. All of that is here. Five potential sites.
