“Decided she wanted more than a mechanic husband and a daughter who preferred grease to dolls. We weren’t enough for her vision of life.”
Dylan remembered the morning her mother left with the clarity that only trauma provides—standing in the kitchen doorway with two suitcases, wearing the pearl earrings Dad had saved six months to buy. Her lipstick was perfect, a red Dylan would later see on other women and feel her stomach clench.
“Take care of your father,” she’d said, not quite meeting Dylan’s eyes. “You’re more like him anyway.”
The words had been meant as explanation but landed like prophecy. Dylan had become exactly that—her father’s keeper through the good years, then his nurse through the bad ones. She’d learned to read his silences, to know which meant contentment and which meant the hollow ache of abandonment. They’d developed their own language in the garage, one built of socket wrenches and comfortable quiet, of teaching moments that were really about holding on to something solid while everything else felt untethered.
“When the cancer diagnosis came,” Dylan said quietly, “he apologized to me. Can you imagine? Dying man apologizing to his twenty-two-year-old daughter for the inconvenience of his mortality.” Her voice caught. “He was more worried about me being stuck taking care of him than about his own death. Said he didn’t want me to waste my youth changing his bedpans and fighting with insurance companies.”
She paused, remembering those last months with a vividness that still stole her breath. “But I wasn’t stuck. I was terrified. Every morning I’d stand outside his door, listening for breathing, bargaining with a God I wasn’t sure existed for just one more day. One more joke about my terrible coffee. One more argument about the proper way to gap spark plugs. One more anything.”
The weight of those days settled over her—the smell of antiseptic mixing with motor oil, the way his hands had thinned until his wedding ring slipped off and he’d asked her to put it somewhere safe, not realizing he was asking her to acknowledge the ending.
“The last six months were the worst,” she continued. “He couldn’t work anymore, could barely hold tools. For a man who’d defined himself by what his hands could fix, it was its own kind of death before the actual one. I kept the shop running, lied to his customers, said he was just slow on their repairs, not dying by degrees in the apartment above. He made me promise to finish every project. Said a mechanic’s reputation was all they left behind.”
Her hands clenched involuntarily, remembering. “The night he died, he asked me to bring him a torque wrench. Just wanted to hold it. His fingers could barely close around it, but he smiled like I’d brought him salvation. ‘At least I’ll die with clean hands for once,’ he said. I laughed—God help me, I actually laughed—because even with the morphine eating holes in his awareness, he could still make jokes. He died two hours later, still holding that wrench, and I sat there until dawn, afraid that if I took it from his hands, he’d really be gone.”
She looked at Aidan then, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “I finished every project in that shop. Delivered the last car the day after his funeral. Then I packed everything I could fit in my Charger and ran. I’ve been running ever since, because staying means watching things end, and I’d already watched the two most important people in my life leave—one by choice, one by force. I couldn’t do it again.”
“Is that why you run? Because you watched him wait?”
The question cut deeper than intended, finding the soft place she’d protected for thirteen years. “I run because staying hurts more when it ends. And everything ends, Aidan. Your grandfather’s treasure hunt is literally about finding a ring in a cemetery where the love story is already over.”
“No,” he said with surprising firmness. “It’s about finding a ring that survived the ending. That continues, waiting for the next story. Love doesn’t die just because people do.”
They sat in comfortable silence while shadows crept across the sundial face like time made visible. Sophie appeared at some point with a picnic basket, took one look at their proximity on the bench, and left with a smile that promised immediate family-wide notification.
At four o’clock exactly, they watched the shadow align with a mark on the sundial’s base. When Aidan pressed it, nothing happened.
“Try again,” Dylan said, kneeling beside him.
He pressed harder. A soft click, but still nothing opened.
“Wait.” Dylan ran her fingers along the sundial’s base, feeling for irregularities. “There—feel that? There’s another mark here, at two o’clock.”
“So maybe we need to—” Aidan checked his watch. “We missed it. Two o’clock was hours ago.”
“No, look at the design.” Dylan traced the ornate metalwork around the sundial’s face. “These aren’t just decorative. They’re Roman numerals worked into the pattern. What if we need to press them in sequence?”
They studied the sundial together, heads nearly touching. The Roman numerals were cleverly hidden in the scrollwork—IV disguised as part of a vine, IX worked into a flower’s petals.
“Four o’clock,” Dylan said. “IV. Then what?”
“The clue mentioned sacred vows. Marriage vows.” Aidan’s eyes lit up. “My grandparents’ anniversary—June 21st. Six and twenty-one. VI and…there’s no twenty-one in Roman numerals on a sundial.”
“But two and one,” Dylan said suddenly. “II and I. Press them separately?”
Aidan found the hidden II worked into what looked like parallel stems. “Got it. So IV, then VI, then II, then I?”
They pressed the sequence. Another click, louder this time, and a section of the pedestal shifted but didn’t open.
“We’re close,” Dylan said. “But something’s still missing.”
She stood back, studying the whole structure. The sundial sat on an octagonal base, each face decorated with different scenes—gardens, mountains, water, stars.
“The clue,” she said. “Where love was witnessed by the stars. Which face has stars?”
They circled the pedestal. The north face showed a night sky worked in metal, constellation patterns picked out in tiny holes that would let light through.
