Love Next Door (Lakeside 1)

“Sure. Thanks.” I hold my hands up in a catcher’s pose, and he tosses it to me.

It’s a college T-shirt, the logo faded and the fabric soft from wear. I pull it over my head and inhale the scent of Van’s laundry detergent mixed with the familiar smell of Bee’s clove and citrus candles. He crosses over to the end of the bed, a furrow forming between his brows.

Bending, he picks up the picture that fell off the wall thanks to our aggressive sex. “What the heck,” he mutters.

I set my mostly empty glass on the nightstand and lean forward so I can see what he sees.

The framed picture shows the lake, taken before all the monster cottages and homes went up. But that’s not what has Van looking all confused. It’s the confetti of twenty-dollar bills scattered across the floor, along with the ones clutched in his fist.

He waves the stack around. “Is this real?”

“It’s likely, yeah.” I consider all the things I know about Bee and her unconventional way of managing her finances.

The furrow in Van’s brow deepens. “Why don’t you look surprised?”

“Because it’s pretty typical of Bee to hide money in places people aren’t likely to look. Have you started cleaning out any of the rooms in the house?” A pang of worry hits me, because it would be awful if he’s been throwing stuff out in here without realizing there might be treasure hiding inside.

“No. I’ve been focusing my efforts on the garage.”

My shoulders come down from my ears. “Okay. Phew. That’s good.”

“I don’t get it. Why is that good?”

“It’s better if I show you.”

“Show me what?”

I roll out of his bed and hold out my hand. “Come with me.”

He laces his fingers with mine, still clutching the stack of money in his other hand.

We pad down the hall together, to the living room. I stop in front of the hutch, coated in a layer of dust that tells me it likely hasn’t been touched since Bee passed. She dusted every day when I was a teenager.

I pick up an old canister. It’s metal and dented, with a lid on it. Something from another era that held candies. I let go of Van’s hand so I can open it and then peek inside. I lift the piece of paper and reveal a roll of bills, secured with an elastic band, and hold it out to Van.

His eyes flare as he takes it from me, tipping the can over and catching the roll in his palm. A one-dollar bill is wrapped around the outside, but I unfold the note on top and show him the number 5,001 scrawled in Bee’s familiar writing.

“There’s five grand in here? That can’t be possible.” Van tugs on the elastic securing the bills, and it breaks apart, pieces falling to the floor as he pulls the dollar bill free to reveal a hundred-dollar bill underneath. “Holy shit.” He unfurls the rest of the roll, which matches the hundred. He looks around the cottage, maybe seeing it with very different eyes for the first time in his life. “How much money does she have hidden around the cottage? Is it just the cottage? Or the garage too?”

“Just the cottage. At least that I know of. And I don’t know how much, but there’s probably a lot.”

“Holy fuckballs. Why would she do this? Why not keep it in the bank?”

For a moment I worry that I’ve made a mistake in telling him, but I realize I was going to have to eventually and probably should have long before now. I shrug. “She didn’t always trust the bank, and she wanted to have cash on hand just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“Another world war? An apocalypse? Her estate getting tied up with red tape? Take your pick of options, I guess. At first it was a few stashes here and there, but over time she kept adding to it, almost like a game? An Easter egg hunt, but with money instead of chocolate.” I found out about it when I once helped Bee dust and dropped one of her many trinkets. A roll of bills had fallen out. She hadn’t made a big deal of it. Just winked and said sometimes it was good to have a little cash hidden around the house, for emergencies.

I move to the wall of framed family photos and pick up one of her with Van when he was a kid, playing in the water down by the beach. I flip it over and push the pegs out of the way so I can remove the backing. Between it and the photo are two envelopes. One has a small stack of twenties, the other fifties. Each one includes a small slip of paper with the amount in each envelope.

“There could be tens of thousands of dollars in here. Maybe even hundreds,” Van muses.