Kayla ignores the guys in the corner, keeping her focus ahead as rain beats against the post office windows and blurs the world outside.

We scan the boxes in silence until I find number twelve, point to the keyhole, and grin. “Yahtzee!”

19 Kayla

My heart starts to pound as I insert the key into box number twelve, turn it over, and pull open the small metal door. Inside is another sheet of paper and we both groan.

Daren puckers his lips. “And… the scavenger hunt continues.”

“That it does,” I mutter, pulling out the note and closing the box. I read it out loud. “ ‘Life Lesson number three: Money is a journey. It comes and it goes and sometimes you have to work hard to find it. Your next clue is at the place where you can see the whole world.’ ”

I stare at the note, speechless. I can’t believe he remembered.

“What?” Daren cocks his head at me. “Do you know what that means? The place where you can see the whole world?”

Thunder rolls in the distance as I nod. “It’s in the forest by the Ridge Burn. My dad and I used to go pretend fishing out there sometimes and there was this tree we went to…” The memory is so raw I can almost taste the forest air. I shake myself. “I’m pretty sure that tree is where we need to go.”

We exit the post office and hurry through the summer rain to my car. Soon my eyes are on the road that leads out of town but my head is somewhere else entirely. Somewhere seven years ago, when I was fourteen and Josh Blackhill had just broken my heart.

I remember my father had taken me pretend fishing and told me the world was so much bigger than Josh and that my broken heart had so much more to look forward to. He walked me to a giant tree beside the river and we climbed it together.

I remember thinking how silly it was for a teenage girl to be climbing a tree with her father, but inside I was having a really great time. It had wonderful climbing limbs, and the trunk was sturdy and smooth, so we were able to climb higher than I’d ever climbed before.

When we reached one of the upper limbs, we settled into a seat-like branch and my dad pointed out at the forest. From where we sat, we could see above all the other trees for miles and miles.

From way up here, you can see the whole world, he said. And when you can see the whole world, your troubles don’t look so big.

I looked out to the mountains in the east and up into the big blue sky with a smile, wondering if I’d ever seen anything so pretty in my whole life. While I was in that tree, I forgot about Josh Blackhill and my broken heart. Because Daddy was right. From way up there, I could see the whole world.

“… should have come with a warning label.” Daren’s voice pulls me back to the road as the wipers slide across the windshield in rhythmic beats.

“What?”

He says, “I was just saying that your father’s will should have come with a warning label. Who knows how long this scavenger hunt is going to go on for?”

I nod absently. “Yeah. Who knows.”

“And now he has us driving all the way out to the Ridge Burn?” He whistles. “What could possibly be so significant about an old tree?”

I look through the gray weather at the mountains in the east and exhale slowly.

Plenty.

20 Daren

The Ridge Burn.

I used to come out here during the summers and play Capture the Flag with my high school buddies. I was never really good at the game. In fact, I was never really good at any sports. Running and catching and competing were never really my strong suit. Now, sexing and charming and making girls melt? Those were activities I could win a gold medal in.

I rub at my wrist where the skin is slightly raw and shiny. “Your father could have at least picked handcuffs that weren’t so wickedly uncomfortable.”

“I guess it’s better than wearing fuzzy cuffs where people would think we’re on some kind of kinky sexcapade,” she says.

“Oh right. Because looking like chained-up fugitives on the run is so much better.”

Eleven miles down Canary Road, we pull into a muddy clearing and park by the Ridge Burn.

“So how far away is this magic tree of yours?” I stare out at the wet forest.

The rain is more of a light drizzle now and less like a downpour so at least we can see relatively clearly.

“A hundred yards or so.” She shuts the engine off.

“Wonderful.”

We climb out of the car and I stretch my stiff limbs. She leads me by the wrist through the woods for fifteen minutes until we come to a large tree beside the river that looks exactly the same as every other tree we’ve passed.

“How do you know this is the one?” I gaze up at the thick trunk reaching into the low gray clouds.

She sighs quietly. “I just do.” She marches around the trunk. “Look for another clue.”

I search high and low for anything that might be a clue. My eyes catch on a small green pole sticking up out of the muddy ground at the base of the tree and I stop.

“Could that be it?” I point to the pole.

“Maybe.” She hurries to dig it up and, once the dirt is cleared away, there is a box. It’s no bigger than a shoebox, but it’s large enough to hold a few stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

“Bingo!” I smile.

She grins at me then opens the box.

Another piece of paper.

She pulls out the paper inside and reads, “ ‘I’m pleased you remember this tree, Kayla. It holds a special place in my heart, just like you. Lesson number four: The world is bigger than what you know. There is more to life than what you see and what you think. And if you ever reach a place where you think you know it all, then you are most definitely lost. Now go home to the place where winning is relative.’ ” She frowns. “What does that mean?”

“It means your dad had a fantastic memory.” I smile and shake my head, shocked that Turner remembered a conversation we had years ago. “It also means we’ve got a long drive back up and through Copper Springs.”

“What?” she says, dragging behind me as I start heading back to the car. “Why?”

“Because I’m pretty sure your dad wants us to go to Copper Field.”

“The baseball stadium?”

“Yep.”

As we drive back in the direction we just came from, I think back to when I was thirteen and had my baseball championship game out at Copper Field.

I was no good at sports. But I was a guy, and guys in small towns are expected not just to play sports, but to excel at them. So my father put me in baseball and forced me to stay in it for ten years. Ten long years of misery.

The championship game came and, unfortunately, I was up to bat right when we had two outs and the game was tied. If it had been a movie, that would have been the moment where I finally hit my first home run and scored the winning point, and we’d win the game and the crowd would go wild.

It wasn’t a movie.

I struck out and the other team came up to bat and hit a home run on their first swing. So essentially, I was blamed for our team losing. My father was sorely disappointed and my teammates were giving me shit about how lousy I was, but Marcella still believed in me.

She came to every one of my baseball games, rain or shine, and sat in the stands with a beaming smile like she wanted the whole world to know she was proud of me.

That was my favorite part of playing baseball—Marcella’s proud smile watching me from the stands. God, I miss her.

But at that particular game, even Marcella’s confidence in me wasn’t helping. I started thinking about how I really was lousy, and how I was always going to be a loser. I wasn’t a good student, I wasn’t good at sports, and I had no real talents… I was just lousy, in general. And maybe I always would be.

But Marcella wasn’t the only spectator rooting me on that day. Old Man Turner came to every single one of my baseball games too. We didn’t usually talk or say hi, but I always saw him in the stands, watching me and cheering for me.