“I’m generally not big on basements, but this one takes the cake,” Miles says as we creep through a mess of cobwebs and forgotten furniture. The basement of the factory is composed of damp concrete and brick walls, cracks creeping along the floor. It reeks of some combination of mold and decaying animal, in the running to rival the van for worst stenches I’ve ever experienced.
“It’s a step up from the tunnel.” Leo reaches for a positive.
“Barely,” Caleb grumbles.
Daisy shrieks, making us all jump as phone light skitters across the massive floor. Leo tenses, wielding his hockey stick. “What?”
“I definitely saw a rat.” She shudders. “Oh, thank God, there’s the stairs.”
Quinn tests the first one, and although it creaks precariously beneath her foot, it seems to hold. Carefully, we make our way up the steep incline to the door at the top. “Rusted shut,” she grunts. She looks back at us, the sharp lines of her face highlighted in the phone light. “Back up. Gotta bust through.”
With a bang loud enough to wake the dead, she plows her shoulder through the door, and it bursts open. I hurry up the last few steps, entering the factory.
And I stop. Because this isn’t the factory I remember.
It still has the huge floor-to-ceiling windows across the front, which let in enough moonlight that we don’t need our phones. But now, the windows are filthy after years of neglect. There used to be neat rows of long tables throughout, with chairs and sewing machines at each. The machines are gone, but the tables remain, some chairs even pushed out as if employees got up for their lunch break and never came back. Lights descend from the ceiling. Some still have bulbs, but the spiders have clearly made them their home, webbing glinting in the faint light.
My heart pangs as I take in the mezzanine, which encircles the entirety of the massive rectangular space with two staircases at either end of the factory leading up to it. How many times did I stand up there as a child, in Dad’s arms or pressed against Gram’s legs behind the metal railing, watching the workers stitch and cut and measure below? I felt like a princess then, ruling over my kingdom.
The memory is so powerful that I don’t realize the stillness of the others until Caleb stoops, picking something up I hadn’t noticed. A piece of paper, rectangular. He holds it up to the light.
Benjamin Franklin stares back at us.
“They’re everywhere,” Miles marvels. I turn slowly, skating my eyes over what used to be polished hardwood floors and now are worn and dusty boards. Worn, dusty, and coated in one-hundred-dollar bills.
My heart is going to explode out of my chest.
“We did it.” A grin splits Leo’s face. “We fucking did it!”
Quinn whoops, a sound so pure and joyous that I’m not sure she’s ever made it before. She scoops a handful of bills up, holding them to the light and laughing. “Holy shit, we’re rich! We’re rich!”
“A briefcase would have been cool, but this works, too,” Caleb chuckles, and I realize what this means for them. For all of us. College, money for our families, a future. It’s everything we could ever want.
So why is Daisy frowning?
Not at the money, but at a point behind me. I turn. The smile slides from my face.
There’s nothing except a single rack. One luxurious wool coat hangs from it, likely an old design because I don’t recognize the dark red exterior and black silk lining from anything recent. Around it is even more money, like some kind of séance circle. Daisy and I step toward it, bills beneath our feet and our friends’ happiness at our backs.
“Do you think this is for us?” she asks me.
“It must be. Maybe Gram left something in the pockets?”
She’s apprehensive, her hand poised above the right pocket of the coat. When she nods, I dip my hand into the left. My fingers brush the familiar texture of folded cardstock. I pull it out, heart hovering in my throat.
Daisy’s face falls at the paper in my hand. Nothing is in hers. Her pocket was empty.
“Open it,” Leo urges, making me jump because I hadn’t realized the rest of our crew was gathered around us.
“I bet it’s a big fat congrats,” Quinn offers.
“Let’s hope it’s not another riddle,” Caleb says.
My fingers shake as I unfold the paper, find the smudge, and lick it. I scan Gram’s script as it appears. My eyes pass over it once, twice, three times. Each time makes less and less sense.
“Well?” Daisy prods.
My mouth is ashy, the moisture sucked out. Because the words before me . . . they don’t add up. I don’t get it.
“Everything cool, Lily?” Miles asks.
“Let me see it.” Daisy snatches it from my grasp.
My hold was weak on it anyway, as weak as my stomach. I might throw up.
She reads it, her brow furrowing. When her eyes meet mine, confusion ripples through the brown. “She can’t be serious.”
“Can someone clue the rest of us in,” Quinn demands.
I take the note back, clearing my throat. The words are written in Gram’s writing, but nothing about them feels like something she’d say. When I speak, my voice doesn’t sound like my own.
Dear Lilylove,
I knew I could count on you. I’m sorry it had to be like this. I need you to do only two more things. Once that’s done, go back the way you came.
First, go to my office on the second floor. There, you’ll find the key to all of this. And then . . .
I can barely force the words out.
Walk away from the money, the building, the name. And burn it all to the ground.
Shocked silence meets my words. It’s like I’ve just stepped off a teacup ride, and I can’t remember what it’s like to not be spinning. Nothing makes sense.
“No,” Leo says, voice dripping with disbelief. He grabs the note, reading it himself. Taking a page out of my book, he starts pacing, muttering to himself. “That can’t be what she means. She told me if I did what she said, we’d all be led to the money. That it would be ours. This isn’t—this isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”
I stare at him. “What do you mean she told you?”
He freezes. “I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you did.” Quinn steps to my side. “What are you talking about?”
Daisy’s on my other. “Leo? Do you know something we don’t?”
Panic flashes across his face. And that’s when I realize that for all the ways I might have felt close to him in the past week, that doesn’t mean I know him. Not at all. Not when he’s standing before me, fumbling for a lie.
Before I know it, I’m in front of him, kicking his hockey stick from his hand and grabbing his dress shirt in a way that is completely different from how I grabbed him hours ago on the boardwalk. My vision blurs as certain things click into place. Gram and Leo spending long days together, understanding each other and talking. Strategizing. How Gram wanted me to notice him so badly that she would talk about him all the time. He’s excellent company. Have you seen him yet? she had asked me the night of the party. Because even then, he knew something that I didn’t.
And then, another thing. Leo said he was grounded because he passed out at the party and woke up hours later when it was over. If that’s the case, and that’s the night Gram died, then that must mean—
“You were there, weren’t you?” I ask, hot tears brimming. “When Gram died. What happened that night?”
His panic bleeds into horror. “No! No, I wasn’t there. I mean, I was, but not like that. I did pass out, and I woke up and saw lights were still on in the manor and I was thirsty, and I went inside but—”
He cuts off, shuddering.
“What?” I hiss. “What happened?”
In one shaky breath, he says, “She was already gone.”
I let go of him like he burned me, stumbling back until Miles’s hands steady me.
“Like . . . dead?” Miles asks, horrified.
Leo nods.
“Why didn’t you call an ambulance?”
Leo’s frantic gaze cuts to me. “I thought I was seeing things. That I took something to make me hallucinate or was still dreaming or—”
“Spit it out,” Quinn growls.
“I was scared,” he admits. “I was drunk and knew I’d get in trouble. And I was the only one around. But she looked . . . peaceful. Calling for help would get me involved, and I couldn’t let that happen.”
“So you just left her there?” Rage laces Daisy’s voice. I can’t speak, can’t breathe. I have no idea what the fuck is going on.
“I checked her pulse, I swear. She was gone. There was nothing else I could do.”
“You could have called someone!” I snap. “Everybody knows you get shitfaced at parties. Getting in trouble shouldn’t have mattered more than getting help.”
I take a step toward him, not even sure what I’m going to do, but Caleb presses me back.
“You knew about all of this, didn’t you?” he asks Leo, who gives a timid nod. “Explain.”
Leo takes a deep breath like the act is a life preserver. I lean into Miles, needing the stability.
“When I would come over to take care of the yard, Gram would be outside with me. I started noticing that some days she just . . . didn’t look too good. Just walking from the patio to the gardens would make her short of breath. She’d press a hand to her chest like it was hurting her. She’d have to sit down because she felt weak or dizzy. One day, I asked her if she was okay after I saw her down some meds. I didn’t think she’d tell me anything, but she got this . . . look in her eye. It was like for the first time, she wasn’t Iris Rosewood but just a regular person. She looked afraid. And then, she said she was recently diagnosed with heart disease.”
“So she told you and not even us?” Daisy asks.
“Only because I asked. She said I couldn’t tell anybody. That she didn’t want people to know, even family.”
“Why?” My voice cracks. “I lived with her. Why wouldn’t she tell me how bad it was?”
“But that’s the thing—it wasn’t bad. She told me it was super treatable, that there was nothing to worry about because she was taking medication. She thought she had more time.”
“So where do you come into all of this?” Miles asks.
Leo swallows. “After that, we spent a lot more time just talking about all kinds of things. Situations I thought were hypothetical. She asked me if I knew the legend about Hyacinth’s hidden fortune, and of course I did. But then we talked about it, a lot. About where the best hiding places in town were, what kind of clues to plant, things like that. We talked about it every week and we kind of created this . . . game. Like a town-wide hide-and-seek.”
He flashes an apologetic glance at me. “I thought it was all just a joke, for a while. Just making things up while we played chess together after we solved each other’s Sphinx riddles. But then one day, she was like, deadly serious. She told me when she died, I had to go into her office and get everything in the bottom left drawer of the desk. She’d leave instructions, and all I’d have to do was follow them.”
Daisy shakes her head. “When did she tell you all this?”
“I think . . .” Leo pushes out a breath. “Sometime in May? It wasn’t that long ago.”
Daisy looks at me. “She changed her will May fifteenth, remember? This must be why.”
My inhale is sharp. If not for Miles’s hold, I’d be one with the bills on the floor.
“And none of this was a big fucking red flag?” Quinn asks Leo.
“Of course it was!” Leo throws his hands in the air. “But what was I supposed to do? We had spent weeks planning out this—this fake treasure hunt. I thought it was a game, and suddenly it was real. When I looked in the drawer, there were three letters already addressed and four pieces of the map. Plus three clues, a ring of keys, and a note for me written in invisible ink. The instructions. Where to hide the clues and put the pieces of the map. That I couldn’t drop off the letters until Lily turned eighteen if Gram died before then. And the final thing was that I had to play dumb and only help as a last resort.”
“But you didn’t wait.” I find my voice. “You sent them a week early.”
“I had to,” Leo says. “The Saturday after Gram died, I overheard Chief Claremon telling my dad that Ell was asked to come back to London early because the board at Rosewood Inc. wanted to talk to her. Chief Claremon suspected they were trying to push the Rosewoods out and wasn’t sure if he should bring it up to your uncle or not. I realized Gram must not have remembered that rule about Rosewood Inc. when planning the hunt. She just wanted you to be eighteen so you’d legally be an adult. Plus, Daisy had mentioned the will reading might happen on Monday, so I knew you’d get your letter then. I figured if I timed everything perfectly, we’d find the last clue after you turned eighteen but still finish this before the Rosewood Inc. deadline was up because I knew how important that is to you.”
My head spins. I should have known all of this revolved around me turning eighteen. No one can take the money or control me. And if Uncle Arbor is implicated, Daisy will need a legal guardian for three months until she turns eighteen in September.
“That’s why you wouldn’t leave me alone,” Caleb says. “You knew the museum had a security system, but saying so would blow your cover.”
Leo has the presence of mind to look guilty. While we were at the gas station, the same look crossed his face when I asked him how he was so sure we’d find the next clue. I didn’t recognize what it was then. But I do now.
I push through the heartache and force myself to realize the other signs I missed. How Leo just so happened to be at Rosewood Manor the same time as me when we both found our pieces of the map. He hid the clue by the cannoli because he thought that was Gram’s favorite snack since she always brought him one when he worked. Then at the Ivy, when I was ready to give up, Leo spun me across the dance floor. Dipped me right under the mirror ball.
He knew. The entire time, he knew.
I fish the last clue from where I tucked it in my Converse and reread the first line. Dear Lily Love.
Lily Love. With a space. Gram never wrote it with a space. That should have given it away immediately, but I didn’t even think to look. And now that I truly take the time to examine it, the script isn’t nearly as precise.
“You never went to my uncle’s,” I say, realizing Daisy was right to be confused how he saw the clue on the table when she didn’t. “You took a while because you needed to rewrite it. Because you memorized what it said but had to make it seem like you went and got it yourself.”
Another guilty nod. It doesn’t make me want to knock his teeth out any less. “And that key ring you had leads all over town?” I knew it had seemed like a lot.
“To the major places. I needed it to get into the Ivy, the museum, and the deli.”
“Well, that was just so convenient for you, then, wasn’t it?” I bite.
“How’d you get past the security system at the museum?” Caleb asks.
Leo glances at the ground. “Gram told me what door to enter through at night that was closest to the security room and the code to disarm it. She knows this town, inside and out.”
“Did she tell you the reason for all of this?” I ask, an emptiness yawning open inside of me, like a tear in fabric that just keeps ripping. “Did she know the truth about Uncle Arbor and my dad?”
“I don’t know,” Leo says softly. “But she did tell me that she was worried about you.”
“She didn’t have to be. I’m fine.”
I’m so clearly not. The pathetic way my voice breaks, the tears clouding my vision, the fire burning beneath my skin are dead giveaways I couldn’t be further from okay.
“But Gram wasn’t,” Daisy says. “Maybe that’s the same reason she let go of Stewie and other employees at the manor. She knew she was getting worse and didn’t want anyone to see her not at her best.”
I force myself to recall the week leading up to the party. Gram had seemed normal, but she must have been hiding that she wasn’t feeling well.
And then I remember. The night of the party, she was out of breath. I thought it was just the brisk walk, but if she felt ill and was nervous it was more severe than she thought, then maybe that’s why she sent me to Daisy’s house. So I wouldn’t see her not at her best.
“I still think what I said last night holds true,” Caleb says quietly. “Maybe Iris knew the truth about what your uncle did to your dad, but she also did this for us.” His warm brown eyes are the only thing keeping me from falling off the ledge into a breakdown. “She knew each of us felt this—this cavernous loneliness. And that, like her, it would hurt us if we didn’t learn to let people in.”
I know in my heart he’s right. But I can’t help feeling that if I had not made a scene and stayed at the manor, I would have been able to save her. To call for help as soon as the heart attack happened and hold her until the medics arrived. I was too late to save Dad, but maybe I wouldn’t have been too late for her. She could have been my second chance, and I could have been hers.
“Listen, obviously there is a lot to unpack here. Like, a lot,” Miles gently interrupts. “But we should figure the details out after we secure the money. Your uncle isn’t going to search the church forever. Maybe you should go upstairs and find whatever else Gram left for you. We’ll start collecting the money in the meantime.”
“No,” I say quickly. “Gram said to burn it. There must be a reason.”
“We can’t burn it,” Leo argues.
Miles clears his throat before I can object. “I agree. Even if we don’t keep the money ourselves, think of all the charities it could go to. And burning money is illegal.”
“Maybe we were never supposed to have the money. Maybe this is a lesson. If burning the factory is what it takes—” Daisy says.
“Daze, we can’t just set fire to this place.” Leo reaches for her.
“Don’t call me Daze,” she says stiffly, evading his touch. “You should have told me about this. Instead, you went behind my back, hanging out with my cousin on some secret mission from my grandmother and you didn’t say a word. So you know what, Leo? For once, I don’t feel like defending your mistakes.” Tears well in Daisy’s eyes. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because he’s the yes guy.” I throw his words against him. “Gram told you to do something, and you did it.”
“I’m sorry.” His eyes beg me to understand, but I don’t. Those gray eyes I was getting lost in mere hours ago. “At the time I just . . . I wanted to do something that mattered. This felt like it mattered. And if it somehow led to money, I thought maybe I’d finally make things right in my family. That I could stop weighing them down. But I never thought Gram was serious about any of it until it was too late.”
“Then you didn’t know her.” The words are guttural and thick, pulled from my chest as tears spill down my cheeks.
“Maybe you’re right,” he agrees.
The others watch us warily, but Leo pays them no mind.
“But I knew you. Or at least, I used to. And I missed you. So fucking much. All those days I’d spend with Gram playing chess, we weren’t just planning this. She was telling me about you. About the things you liked, the ways you amazed her and made her proud, how you were funny and kind. And none of that matched up with the girl who I thought pushed me away because she was too perfect and stuck-up to want me anymore. So yeah, I wanted to know who Gram was talking about. The Rosewood version of you, or the Lily version of you I grew up with. Because they’re two different people.”
I’m breathing so hard I might bust a seam in my dress. Suddenly, it makes sense why Leo knew my favorite omelet; why he gave me the Hostess cupcake. Because Gram told him those little, tiny things about me, and probably a million others. Things he wouldn’t have cared about when we were kids but cares about now. Things that make me me.
“Well, did I live up to everything she said?” My voice is a sob breaking free of the cage of my throat. “While the rest of us were trying to solve Gram’s clues, I was the puzzle for you, wasn’t I?”
Leo searches for words. “I—I just wanted to know who you really are,” he finally says.
“Yet I have no idea who you are.” My temper capsizes me. “How could you keep this from me? I fucking hate you.”
“You know what? You are different from the girl I knew four years ago.” His face cracks, a look passing over it that I can only describe as heartache mixed with fuck it. “You’re more clever, and way funnier. Your eyes are green but have weird little gold flecks close up, which I never saw before. And you still have the worst attitude ever, but I’ve never met anyone more daring, more caring, and I don’t know if I’ll ever figure you out. So yeah, Lily, guess what? I meant what I said at the boardwalk. You’re rare, but not because you’re perfect or special or whatever. You’re rare because you’re you, with all your thorns and sass and relentless ambition, and that’s what made Gram love you.” He pauses, breathing hard. We’re inches apart. “It’s what makes me love you.”
I suck in a breath, ready to argue that he loves whatever version of me Gram contrived, but he can’t love me. Not when I barely know who I am myself anymore.
“Fuck us, am I right?” Quinn laughs before I can say it, the sound sharp and brittle. Her eyes are rimmed with surprising red as they dart to Daisy. “We all love Rosewoods, the most frustrating people on earth. So let’s at least make sure we get paid for it.”
She drops to her knees, bills crinkling in her hands as she scoops them up, stuffing her pockets. Daisy stares at her, jaw slack. Caleb and Miles swap a look.
“Lily, I’m sorry,” Leo begs, locking eyes with me.
I shake my head, words stuck in my throat.
“I wanted to tell you. I should have told you. All of you. I’m—”
His face morphs into confusion. He focuses on something over my right shoulder, through the windows.
And then his hands are on me. He shoves me so suddenly, so roughly that I have no time to prep myself. I crash into the ground, pain flaring up my side.
A breath later, he’s on top of me, yelling, “Get down!” There’s a sound so loud I’m sure it will echo through the entire town. I realize through a bleary haze that Leo didn’t shove me to hurt me. He’s huddled over me. Protecting me.
Because shards of glass are raining down.