Something Wilder(91)
You’re barely an adult. Don’t tie yourself down to a place or a person yet. Don’t let your world be small until you’ve seen more of it.
I know you love that ranch. But it will mean something different when you get out in the real world and choose it. That’s what I’m giving you. With this money, I want you to travel. There are horses all over the world, Lil. Go ride ’em. I want you to explore, and branch out, and be brave. If, at the end of a year, you still want the ranch, then buy your own land and make a name for yourself that way.
I see how you might just return to Laramie and be there forever, and never understand why I couldn’t do it, why I couldn’t stick it out in one place. Maybe after you travel, you’ll get the travel bug, too, and you’ll want to make that part of your life the way I have. Or, maybe you’ll hate it, but then at least you’ll know how your heart is built and you can tell me to shove it with real wisdom. At least you’ll have choices in front of you, which is the only thing I want for you.
Most of all, I just don’t want you to end up with a life half-lived.
So. Open this safety-deposit box.
And live.
—Duke
“I tell you what.” Walt covertly wiped his eyes before passing the paper back to Leo. “That hunt would have been a lot easier if Duke had been there.”
“He wouldn’t have helped, are you kidding?” Lily reached for her champagne, washing her laugh down with a sip of bubbles. “And I can’t even imagine how homicidal the ASCII code would have made me at the end. It would have taken me weeks, and then to decode a note telling me to look at home? Homicidal. Thank God for Leo.”
“But only you would have figured out where the key is,” Leo reminded her. “Only you had the right pattern—LILI.”
Nicole reached for the bottle, leaning across Walter and momentarily distracting him with a boob pressed to his forearm. Pretending to be oblivious to the way his eyes followed her when she straightened, she filled her glass to the brim, bending to suck when the champagne flowed over the lip of the flute. “I can’t get over that he wanted to do this with you.” She wiped a hand across her foamy upper lip. “I think it’s sweet.”
“Of course you do,” Lily said, “because everything turned out okay.”
Beside her, Leo leaned back in his chair, sliding his hand across her shoulder, fingers digging with unconscious familiarity into the hair at the nape of her neck. “Feels weird to be even a little grateful to Bradley and Terry, though. If they hadn’t dragged us there, we never would have known.”
Murmurs of agreement rippled around the table.
More than anything—more than the crime, the sheer magnitude of the treasure, or the unlikely band of misfits who managed to pull it all off—the media loved discussing how her dad hid everything he unearthed back in Telluride, the city where Butch Cassidy robbed his very first bank. Bills, coins, jewelry, documents. What a rascal, she’d thought with a sharp laugh, and then it had broken into a terrible sound. She’d crumpled down right in the middle of the bank after that nice man took her hand, realizing that Duke really had found the money years ago, years before his stroke, certainly before he sold the ranch. And then the safety-deposit box had swung open and the letter fluttered onto the marble floor at her feet.
Fifteen million dollars in today’s currency. The number still didn’t feel entirely real. After negotiations with the authorities, a chunk of it went to the national parks, historical societies, and Southwestern tribal lands. The rest of it was divided between them. Walter was looking at places but still weighing his options, noting there were 1,500 Petco locations across the continental US, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Lily was hoping he’d been waiting to see where Nicole ended up, and she, of course, used her money to buy the ranch next door.
The rest of the money allowed Leo and Lily to buy Wilder Ranch back from Jonathan Cross, but it was the media attention that already had it booked solid for the next three years. And just because she was wise enough now to know what she wanted didn’t mean she wouldn’t still honor her dad’s wishes—however misguided. The interest was what they would use to travel. First up: a trip with Cora to Japan to meet relatives she and Leo had never known.
“What a crazy story,” Walt said.
He could be talking about Butch, or Duke, or what they’d all gone through in May. But when Lily looked at Leo, she thought the craziest story might be this one—that she fell in love when she was nineteen and lived through a decade of loneliness and scrabbling only to wind up right back here, saved by the history she’d figured was her curse, living blissfully with the man she’d convinced herself was lost forever.
They finished the bottle, and another, and then the beer came out—along with the playing cards. There was shouting (Nicole) and wrestling (again, instigated by Nicole), and it all devolved into laughter and chaos and drunken pledges of lifelong friendship. They planned their first new-group trip, and Nicole teased Walter for claiming to be wearing his “dressy” T-shirt. They harassed Nic and Walter to just kiss already—and they did, Walter’s cheeks turning the color of a sunrise over red rock as their lips met under the celebration of their friends’ obnoxious cheering.
But when the small hand on the clock hovered around the two, Leo gave Lily that look, the one that told her he was done sharing for the night. He stood and pulled her up off the floor, guided her to their bedroom.