He climbed back down, and they both stood looking at the tree, thinking.
“The roots,” Dylan said suddenly. “Check around the base, where the roots create natural hollows. That’s where an older man could reach.”
They searched the ground around the massive trunk, pushing aside years of accumulated leaves and forest debris. Dylan found it first—a depression between two large roots where the earth seemed disturbed.
“Here,” she called.
Together they excavated the spot, finding a metal box wrapped in oilcloth and buried just deep enough to survive weather and time but shallow enough for an elderly man to manage.
Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, was another clue in Patrick’s handwriting:
You found our hearts carved in the tree, / Now seek the place where we could see / The valley spread like promised land, / Where water mirrors sky so grand.
The chapel stone though walls have fell, / Where sacred vows were spoken well. / Find the altar where we knelt, / And know the love we truly felt.
Dylan read it twice, her mind working through the riddle. “A chapel with a view of the valley, near water.”
“The old chapel ruins,” Aidan said with sudden understanding. “By Mirror Lake, on the ridge. My great-great-grandfather built it in the 1880s for the family and ranch hands. Couples got married there for sixty years until it burned in 1945.”
“How far?”
“About two miles up the northern trail. It’s steep but beautiful. The foundation’s still there, and the altar stone. On clear days you can see the entire valley reflected in the lake.”
“Today?”
He looked at the sky, calculating. “It’s a tough hike. Steep in places. We could wait until next Saturday.”
It was the sensible choice. But standing there in the perfect morning with Aidan looking at her like she held answers to questions he hadn’t asked yet, Dylan didn’t want to be sensible.
“We have Anne’s emergency supplies,” she said. “Might as well use them.”
His smile was slow and warm. “You sure?”
“I’m sure I want to know what happens next.”
They set off up the trail, walking single file where the path narrowed, then side by side as it widened. The forest closed around them, intimate as confession, the kind of quiet that made truth easier.
“Can I ask you something?” Aidan said after they’d been hiking for twenty minutes. “Why didn’t you ever date anyone here?”
Dylan considered her answer. “I didn’t plan to stay. Dating someone would have meant pretending I might.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m opening a restoration shop and hunting for treasure with my business partner. Dating seems complicated.”
They climbed in companionable silence, the trail growing steeper, more challenging. Dylan’s legs burned, her breath came short, but she didn’t complain. There was something cleansing about the effort, the simple goal of moving forward together.
The chapel ruins, when they finally reached them, were heartbreaking in their beauty. Stone walls stood open to the sky, Gothic arches framing views of the valley below and Mirror Lake spreading like liquid silver at the ridge’s base. The altar stone remained intact, worn smooth by weather but still bearing the carved cross that had blessed generations of unions.
“This is where they started,” Aidan said quietly. “Twenty years old, newly married, probably terrified.”
Dylan walked through the ruins, her footsteps echoing on stone. Behind the altar, partially hidden by climbing ivy that had spent decades claiming the walls, she found a brass plaque green with age: Patrick and Margaret O’Hara, married here June 21, 1962.
“This is where they really began,” she said softly.
Together they cleared away the leaves and forest detritus, revealing that the stone had been hollowed out beneath. Inside was another box, another piece of Patrick’s elaborate puzzle.
But when Aidan opened it, there was no clue. Instead, there was a black-and-white photograph—Patrick and Margaret on their wedding day, radiant with certainty.
