She goes back to Rosie’s room, replaces all the bikinis, and shuts the drawer. She sits on the floor. She’s short of breath. She has discovered all of Rosie’s secrets. They’re waiting like a time bomb in Ayers’s truck.

A few minutes later, Ayers hears the front door open and then Huck calling out, “Grub! Come and get it!”

Ayers is too keyed up to eat. She wants to get home and read the journals! She’s going to have to hide them somewhere Mick won’t find them or see her reading them.

Huck knocks on the bedroom door and swings it open just as Ayers pulls out the third dresser drawer, so they both see what’s inside at exactly the same time.

Ayers shrieks.

Huck says, “What the hell is that?”

It’s money. The bottom drawer is filled with money.

Cash

He’s having dinner with his mother at the Pullman Bar and Diner when she asks the question he’s been dreading.

“So what’s next for you? Back to the mountains?”

“Trying to get rid of me already?” he says.

“Not at all,” Irene says. “It’s just that I thought this”—she indicates the restaurant and their server, Ryan, whom she seems to be on pretty familiar terms with—“was the stuff of your nightmares. Stuck in Iowa City, eating the early-bird special with your mother.”

“It’s been only five days,” Cash says. “And Milly—”

“Milly is handled,” Irene says. “I don’t mean to make your grandmother sound like a loathsome errand. But I also want you to know that you don’t need to stay here on my account. Surely you have better things to do than listen to me describe my crazy dreams.”

His mother is right. Cash should load Winnie into his truck and return to Denver to clean up what’s left of his life there before he heads to Breckenridge for the remainder of the winter. But what had seemed so appealing before he got Irene’s phone call informing him his father was dead has lost its luster. He received no fewer than ten panicked voicemails from Dylan, the manager of Cash’s Belmar store, asking why there are chains on the door and why no one is answering the phone at the Cherry Creek store. (Cash finally responded: Business went under. I would offer you a reference but I know you’ve been skimming from the register. Sorry, bro, good luck out there.) Cash is two payments behind on his truck so he needs a job right away. But because it’s already January, all of the positions at the ski school have been filled. Cash called his buddy Jay, and he said Cash could sleep on his sofa for a week but that would be all his new girlfriend would tolerate and finding other housing at this point would be tricky, especially with a dog.

“You might want to cool your heels there,” Jay said. “And try coming out in March when everyone else gets cabin fever and leaves.”