My mother pushed the sliding doors open, and I heard her approach. “Rosaura, I hope you’re not leaving all the packing for me to do. Are you all right? What’s wrong?”
“Wait,” I said, and kicked off my shoes and socks and tried to roll up my jeans, climbing into the fountain. The water came up to my knees and it was cold. The bottom of the fountain squished between my toes. I crouched down to hold on to the brick wall as I shuffled around.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “Get out of there. That can’t be clean.”
I bent down to feel with my hands as well as my feet. The bottom of the fountain was bumpy, and I kept almost falling. “There’s something in here.”
“How can you see anything?” My mother leaned over the edge of the fountain with an expression of skeptical disgust, hesitating to touch the water. But then she took the plunge and immersed her arms up to her armpits. “I think I have something.”
I shuffled over to her, swishing around in the dark water until I found her hands, following down to where her fingers gripped what felt like a slippery, slimy leaf. We pulled up and discovered a black garbage bag, difficult to lift, but as we did, I glanced down and saw through the murky water a floor of dollar bills.
In fact, they were one-hundred-dollar bills, vacuum-sealed in plastic, lining the fountain floor.
My mother and I stared at our hidden treasure, unable to move. My jeans were cold and clammy against my skin. The cloying, rotten smell of the unclean water hung in the air.
For some reason, I remembered one of the many Goofus and Gallant cartoons from the Highlights magazines. Goofus and Gallant each found a dollar bill lying on the ground. Gallant returned the dollar to his father in the hopes of finding whom it belonged to, but Goofus took it and bought a candy bar.
The thought came to me as I stared at the money of the many thousands of candy bars it could buy. More than I could eat. More than I wanted to eat.
My mother rubbed at the plastic, trying to clear away the muck. Claude had meant for us to find it. Maybe she thought of our future, of the new apartment we were moving to, and our lack of beds for the bedrooms and pots and pans for the kitchen.
“What should we do?” I asked.
She sighed. “What do you think?”
I smiled. I couldn’t help Claude. I hadn’t helped Alex or Tina. There was nothing I could do for my father. But I could do this one thing. And maybe that was my purpose, found at the bottom of the fountain.
Inside, I waited on hold while someone at the sheriff’s station located Deputy Mike. Gazing out to the garden, I searched for the ghost, but he wasn’t there. I wasn’t sure he had ever been there.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many have helped or guided me on this journey. My deepest, sincerest gratitude to my editor at Vintage/Anchor Books, Andrea Robinson, and my thesis advisor, Christopher Meeks, for their patience and for an incredibly enriching experience. Special thank-you to Andrea, for taking a chance on The Cake House. I want to thank my agent, Diana Fox, for sitting down with me one day and letting me talk about this book, and for her enthusiasm. Thank you to the many teachers in my life, too many to list here, but in particular Janet Fitch and Gina Nahai, for their constant generosity. A big hug and thank-you to my best friend, Sarah, for reading, and for so much more. Thank you to Terri Oberkamper, for her sharp grammar skills. Thank you to everyone at Vintage and Anchor Books. To my family and friends, a mere thank-you is not enough; you have my love forever. And lastly, I’d like to travel back in time and buy William Shakespeare a drink and say thank you for your writing.
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