Read Online The Last Treasure by Erika Marks - Free Book Online

ghost stories and superstitious nonsense.”
    â€œIt’s hardly nonsense, Francis,” her mother had argued. “It’s history.”
    â€œIf you’re so bent on taking her to a museum, take her to Raleigh. There’s a new exhibit on the feud between Newton and Leibniz.”
    â€œShe doesn’t care about Newton and Leibniz.”
    â€œShe should. They’re important.”
    â€œNot to her.”
    â€œAnd whose fault is that?”
    So they’d gone anyway. Just two days after the argument, when Liv was deep and woefully lost in a fractions test, she’d looked up to see her mother in the doorway of her classroom. “A doctor’s appointment,” Liza Connelly had said to Liv’s teacher, Mrs. Wilson, without blinking. “She’s been fighting this very stubborn cough lately and I’m worried.” Liv offered up a small hack, loud enough that Mrs. Wilson blinked with alarm. As she followed her mother back out to the parking lot, Liv’s heart had raced, terrified they might be caught and dragged back. When they reached the flagpole, her mother’s steady march had turned into a playful sprint. She’d hurried them inside the station wagon like escaped convicts. Revving the engine, she’dturned to Liv and winked. “That cough at the end was a nice touch, sweetie.”
    They’d stayed at the aquarium for nearly three hours. Poring over every display, every recovered artifact, every map, and every chart. They’d found the portrait of a dark-haired woman in white at the end of the exhibit and Liv was riveted by the woman’s deep-set eyes. She’d scanned the label beside it, trying to pronounce her name. “Theo . . . Theodo . . .”
    â€œTheodosia.” Her mother had arrived beside her. “It says she was on the
Patriot
when it disappeared. We read about that one, remember? The ship that was on its way to New York and never arrived?” She had leaned in closer and kept reading. “It says Theodosia lost her son to malaria when he was ten. The age you are now,” she had said, giving Liv’s hand a squeeze. “No wonder she looks so sad.”
    Liv wasn’t sure she saw despair in her expression. Despite the faint smile on her face, the woman’s eyes were hard, almost distrustful. As if she watched the artist as carefully as he watched her. But there had been another quality to her dark gaze.
    Haunted, Liv had decided. The young woman had looked haunted.
    â€œIt says she was headed to New York to see her father after years apart. Apparently they were extremely close.”
    â€œWhat about her mom?” Liv had asked.
    â€œIt says she died when Theodosia was a girl.”
    â€œShe doesn’t look very old.”
    â€œShe wasn’t,” Liza had said. “She was just twenty-nine when she boarded the
Patriot
.”
    â€œAnd no one knows what happened to her?”
    â€œNo one knows what happened to any of them. Their ship was never found.”
    Never found
. The news had crackled under Liv’s skin like a rash, begging to be scratched.
    Stopping in the gift shop on their way out, her mother had bought them a chart of the Outer Banks, a smaller version of the enormous map they’d lingered over in the exhibit. Back home before her father had returned from the college, they’d sat in Liv’s room and made marks on the map with colored pencils, charting where the
Patriot
might have foundered, and where Theodosia had allegedly been spotted in the years following the ship’s disappearance. Then they’d hung the chart beside Liv’s bed and admired it for a long time before Liv had stored it safely in her bookshelf, hiding the evidence of their excursion.
    Liv had been so sure they’d sailed through their day of delicious deceit, until after dinner, when she was dressing for bed. Her father’s voice growing downstairs, the