8 The Reading
Thom is only beginning to recover from the funeral when the reading of the will pops up like an uninvited relative. He doesn’t even remember he has to attend until Aunty Val shakes him awake in his old bed, three days after the funeral, where he has been having nightmares for most of the night. She says they’re leaving in an hour.
He turns on his side and stares at the wall. He sees the faint remains of the treasure map he and Richard drew on the wall the first summer he’d been here. Daniel insisted it was too simplistic and went to draw his own, more complicated and realistic map. Two hours after they finished their hunt, Daniel appeared with a five-page map, complete with cryptic clues. He and Richard could make no sense of it and resorted to mocking him instead.
This i
