Her father would be turning in his grave if he knew how close she’d come to tossing out the gift he’d given her right before his death. John Gilbert’s sketch of the house hadn’t been a gift her ten-year-old self could get excited about, not like the horse she’d been asking for forever. Even the frame had been cracked and messily stuck together.

‘Never throw this away, Wendy,’ her father had whispered. ‘You’ll realise one day how valuable it is.’ Of course, he could never have foreseen them losing the property.

How strange to have discovered an identical frame in Vinnies during one of her visits, and in perfect condition. She’d bought it, tossed it in a drawer with the broken one and left it in the garage.

Then one day, propelled by loss, and the nostalgia that comes with age, she’d decided to reframe the sketch. That’s when she’d noticed the cursive writing on the back of the drawing.

‘Are you all right, Aunt Wendy?’

She turned at the light touch on her arm. Cate, her face half hidden in shadow, rested the spade she was carrying against her grandfather’s headstone.

Wendy nodded. ‘I’m fine, sweetheart. I’m worried about you and your husband. You still haven’t told Ethan about this, have you? That’s why we’re doing it while he’s away.’

‘I couldn’t tell him while his family owned the property, Aunt Wendy. What was in the ground would have belonged to them.’

‘And if we do find it, how are you going to explain your sudden riches?’ asked Lewis with a grin.

‘If we don’t find anything I won’t have to worry,’ said Cate.

Wendy smiled. For her it was enough to be back on Buchanan soil, to have the keys to the old house jangling in her coat pocket. But the house could wait. This was what her nephew had worked so hard to organise. Were they about to learn if the information passed down through the generations from Buchanan father to eldest child was fact—or fable?

‘The coordinates written on the back of the sketch point to somewhere in the graveyard, but I don’t know where exactly, it’s not precise,’ said Lewis, starting the metal detector.

Wendy’s smile was indulgent. She hoped for Cate and Lewis’ sake that the story of Herbert Buchanan burying gold somewhere on the property he’d established was true. Her father had certainly believed it; he’d told her about the gold repeatedly during his last days, though her mother had always dismissed them as the tormented ramblings of a dying man.

‘This is creeping me out,’ Cate whispered to her brother, gazing up at the white angel, stark against an inky black sky. ‘Hurry up and get on with it.’

Lewis chuckled. ‘Don’t worry, sis, it won’t take long. I doubt there’s anything here.’