AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do we dare go in?” Ryan asks.
“Do you have a small hard hat?” I ask, pointing to Luke.
Ryan’s eyes grow and his lips part at the novel idea. “That would be so cute. A tiny hard hat for the little guy. What about a small football helmet? I bet they make miniature everything.”
I can’t help but be tickled by how amused he is by Luke’s size and accompanying accouterments. “You do realize that someday he’ll grow up and use regular-size things.”
“Yeah. He’ll someday be big and strong like me. Won’t you, little man?” He bounces Luke.
I recognize the love in his eyes—it’s the same as when my dad, Uncle Eddie, his uncles, and even Brando, who claims to be allergic to kids, have when they’re with my son.
The Givenator took the bad deal, that’s for sure.
We decide to bring Luke back to the house where he’ll take a nap under the careful eyes and ears of my sisters while they make Plundering Pelican plans. There’s a lot of debate about what to keep from the old menu.
Ryan and I return to the ice cream shop. He opens the door with a creak and then a cloud of dust puffs out. “Smells bad.”
“Like sour milk.” I frown.
We carefully pick our way inside, avoiding the debris. It’s surprisingly bright considering the electricity is cut.
“I don’t remember a skylight,” Ryan says as he glances up at the ceiling.
“Looks like part of it caved in.”
“The tables are somewhere underneath it.” He points.
Chairs are askew, bird droppings cover the surfaces, and I’d bet money that wild monkeys came in and redecorated, but the ice cream cooler is still intact.
Ryan pushes the double swinging doors to the kitchen open and then waves his hand in front of his face. “We’ll save that for another day. Maybe one when we’re wearing hazmat suits.”
He turns toward the crumbling plaster walls. The enormous mirror that ran along the wall broke and is in slivers. Ryan walksover to it with his usual swagger which makes me almost forget where we are.
“That looks like a lot of bad luck,” I say, trying not to get drawn into the tractor beam of his attractiveness.
“It also looks like a map.” He tilts his head.
Contacts or not, I don’t quite see it.
Keeping his finger an inch from the wall, he traces a rippling line that leads to another.
Faint shapes slowly come into focus. I start to see the edges of what I can only guess are islands. These islands? “Yeah, I see it now.”
“Could this be what we’ve been looking for? Well, what my brothers are looking for?”
I carefully brush the remaining corner of the mirror away. “There’s a folded piece of paper tucked in here. Looks like part of a map. See here, it’s torn.”
To my surprise, Ryan’s eyes light up. “It must be. Royal and Magnus found parts of a map that looked like it was torn into quarters. Why would it be hidden here?”
“By who?”
“I’m hoping you can help me with that.” Ryan carefully removes the map fragment from the wall. We speculate that it was tucked behind the mirror at some point and had been there a long time, possibly forgotten.
“It looks like we have our work cut out for us,” I say when we step outside.
“You sure you still want to do it?”
“If I get to eat ice cream every day, how could I say no?”
