2: 2

After I moved out of the ancestral home, Leslie stopped answering his phone.

That night, I went back to the kennel.

I pushed the door open and all eighteen old dogs crowded around me, some licking my hands, some nosing at my legs.

I set up the cot and lay down with Boss in my arms.

Grandma came into my dreams again, wearing that look of exasperation, like she wanted to shake some sense into me.

"Miranda, you foolish child, why can't you look a little harder?"

My nose stung. "Grandma, there's nothing in the kennel."

She rapped my head with her pipe. "That head of yours is dumber than a dog. Boss, take her."

I woke with a jolt.

At some point Boss had wriggled out of my arms. Now he stood beside the cot, staring straight at me.

He caught the hem of my pants in his teeth and tugged me out into the yard, stopping at the stone trough where the dog food went.

Was he hungry? I picked up the bag of kibble. "Hang on, I'll pour it."

But Boss didn't eat.

He lowered his head and bit down hard on the rim of the trough.

The stone was too hard. His old teeth nearly cracked, and all he left was a shallow tooth mark.

I didn't think anything of it, until the beam of my flashlight swept across it and I froze.

Along the edge of that tooth mark, a faint gold sheen showed through.

My hands started shaking.

I dug out a rusty little knife and scraped away the black paint in a few spots on the outer wall of the trough.

Under every one of them, gold glinted.

I sank down and sat flat on the ground.

The trough was gold.

Hundreds of pounds of it, solid gold. No wonder it was so heavy.

There were beads set into the outer side too. I scraped off the black paint and looked at them by the light.

Green and glowing, round and full, jade of the finest grade.

The other old dogs woke too, tugging at my pants, circling around the yard.

The water vat in the corner, which I'd always taken for an ordinary earthenware crock.

I walked over and tapped it. The sound rang clear and high.

Hands trembling, I snapped a photo and sent it to Joe Gray, an antique dealer I'd known back in the day.

Joe fired back instantly: "Holy hell, where'd you shoot this? Looks Song dynasty. Send me the base, let me see!"

I photographed the bottom too.

Joe's voice message practically detonated. "Miranda! This is a genuine damn Song imperial kiln piece! Where did you get it?"

I didn't answer him.

I turned instead to the fine-line painting hanging on the wall. It showed lotus flowers, the signature blurred, and I'd always figured it was a print.

I pulled it down and studied it close under the light. The grain of the paper, the layering of the ink. Ming dynasty.

I walked to the gate and looked up at the two battered wooden doors.

The knocker was black and grimy. I'd assumed Grandma had forged the iron ring herself and coated it with black paint to keep off the rust.

I scraped off a patch with the knife, and the greenish sheen of bronze showed through.

The patterning on the ring was elaborate and precise. A beast-mask motif. A cloud-and-thunder pattern.

It was ancient bronze, Shang or Zhou.

Grandma's treasures had never been hidden in the shop, and never in the ancestral home.

They were all here, in this drafty, falling-apart kennel.

The eighteen old dogs were gathered around my feet, Boss tilting his head up at me, the faint flashlight glow reflected in his cloudy old eyes.

I crouched down and pulled them into my arms, and the tears came all at once.

Grandma had handled more antiques in her life than anyone could count, yet she'd left the very best of them here, in a kennel no one would spare a second glance.

She'd known how my uncles would treat me once she was gone.

So she'd said nothing, and buried a mountain of gold among broken bricks and rotting tiles.

She'd been certain I would understand what she'd done, and why.

My two uncles had schemed down to the last detail, fighting over the estate.

Not once, even in their dreams, did they imagine the real treasure was sitting in the kennel they looked down on.

3: 3

I sat in the kennel until dawn.

All eighteen of the old dogs woke up, and I walked them and fed them as each one needed.

I went down the line pouring kibble from the sack, but my eyes kept drifting to the things sitting out in the yard.

The Song-dynasty water vat, the Ming painting, the Shang-Zhou door knocker.

And that solid-gold stone trough, hundreds of pounds of it.

Any single piece was worth more than the ancestral home and the antique shop combined.

But how was I supposed to move them?

If my two uncles ever found out, they'd never stop coming around to make trouble.

I'd already paid the price for yesterday, over that jade pendant.

And the trough was too heavy. There was no way I could move it on my own.

I needed a plan that covered every angle.

I dug the half-bucket of black paint out of the toolbox in the corner and painted over the gold face I'd scraped bare the day before.

Then I pulled out my phone and called Leslie.

It took until the third ring before he picked up, still fuming. "What? It's the weekend. The county records office is closed."

"Leslie, could you come out to the kennel?"

"What's worth going out to that run-down kennel for?" He flared up at once. "Miranda, do you think I only said all that yesterday because I was angry?"

"Just come. I have something to show you. If you still want a divorce after you've seen it, I won't stop you."

The line went quiet for a moment, then he hung up.

Around noon, Leslie came.

He stood in the kennel gateway, shadows under his eyes, clearly having slept badly.

When he saw me, he pressed his lips together.

"What am I supposed to be looking at? Done? Are we getting divorced or not?"

I walked over, took his hand, and pulled him into the yard.

"Leslie, crouch down."

Grudgingly, he crouched in front of the stone trough.

I took out my little knife and scraped a small patch of black paint off the side.

Leslie froze.

He reached out and touched the gold, then rubbed his eyes hard, his voice starting to shake.

"Mira... this is..."

"Gold," I said. "The whole trough."

"And not just the trough. The water vat in the kennel is Song dynasty, the painting on the wall is Ming, and even that chamber pot by the outhouse door is an antique."

Leslie shot to his feet, swept his eyes around the kennel, unable to hide his shock and excitement.

I told him about the dream, and his mouth fell open wider and wider.

"So Grandma..."

I nodded. "Grandma knew my eldest uncle and the others would never let me have any peace, so she left everything to me this way."

Leslie covered his mouth, tears spilling out before he could stop them.

"You idiot. When you handed that jade pendant to Anthony yesterday, do you have any idea how much it hurt me? Your father left that to you!"

"I know." I tugged at the hem of his shirt. "People matter more than things. There was nothing else I could do."

"So what now?" Leslie wiped his face. "These things can't stay here. Sooner or later someone finds them."

We talked it over all afternoon and finally settled on a plan.

We'd say we were renovating the kennel, and haul the pieces out mixed in with the construction debris.

Small things first. The trough was too heavy, so we'd deal with it last.

No time like the present.

That same night I got in touch with a work crew, picking a few who were quick with their hands and kept their mouths shut.

Leslie watched the whole thing.

But we never expected it to go sideways the very next day.

The antiques were buried in the construction debris, just loaded onto the little truck, when a black sedan cut across our path and blocked the way.

The car door opened, and my younger uncle, Frederick James, stepped out.

4: 4

My back went rigid.

"Uncle Frederick. What brings you here?"

His eyes roamed the yard. "Just passing by. Looked lively over here, so I thought I'd come take a look."

"We're doing renovations." I gestured at the wall. "This kennel's falling apart. Roof leaks, walls are cracked."

He made a noncommittal sound and strolled toward the truck, tossing out the words carelessly.

"Renovations can't be cheap. I thought you were broke? Heard you signed the jade pendant over to my older brother to settle a debt. So where's the money coming from?"

And as he said it, he reached out for the tarp covering the truck.

The air snapped tight.

"Uncle Frederick!" Leslie shot out from the side and grabbed his arm. "You showed up right on time. I've been going crazy without enough hands!"

Frederick blinked. "Enough hands for what?"

"Hauling stuff!" Leslie was already dragging him toward the kennel. "We're renovating, so all the junk inside has to come out. Miranda and me, just the two of us? No way we can move it all."

Frederick tugged, unable to break free. "I've got things to do today—"

"How big could it be?" Leslie deliberately raised his voice. "Uncle Frederick, how many years has it been since you came out to see this place? You have no idea how run-down it's gotten. I about killed myself hauling that pile of stone the other day—"

He clamped onto Frederick's arm and marched him past broken bricks and cracked tiles for a good long while.

Every other word out of his mouth was "Uncle Frederick, lend me a hand," until Frederick's face turned green.

Ten minutes later he all but fled.

Leslie and I let out our breath at the same time.

"Nicely done." I gave him a thumbs-up.

Leslie wiped the sweat off his face. "That old fox wasn't passing by. He caught wind of something."

He looked at the tarp on the truck, still rattled.

"We need to hurry. What's left?"

"Just the stone trough. It's too heavy. We'll need a crane."

"I'll call one first thing tomorrow. Get a few extra guys and finish it fast."

That night we didn't drive back into the city. We slept at the kennel.

Boss lay at my feet, the other old dogs ringed around us.

Stroking their heads, I felt something settle in me, and something ache.

The three years Grandma was sick, I quit my job to stay with her at the hospital. I did it gladly.

Her sons couldn't manage to visit once a month.

My cousin never showed her face at all.

Grandma never said a word about it, but she knew exactly how things stood.

Leslie spread a blanket beside me and lay down, then suddenly asked, "Miranda, if they find out about all this stuff, do you think they'll come demanding it back?"

"They schemed over your jade pendant. A fortune this size, you think they'd let it go?"

I paused, then laughed.

"None of it has a name on it. So what if they know it came out of the kennel?"

"Grandma said the kennel goes to me. Everything in it is mine. The will says so."

Leslie nodded. After a while, he said quietly, "Grandma really did... she paved the whole road for you. I misjudged her."

My eyes stung. Grandma raised me. Even if she'd left me nothing, I'd never have blamed her.

Early the next morning, the crane arrived.

I directed the workers to bind up the stone trough and hoist it, bit by bit, toward the truck bed.

The trough had barely cleared the ground when all eighteen of the old dogs erupted into barking at once.

I looked up. The kennel gate was blocked by a car again.

This time it was two.

The doors opened, and Anthony and Frederick walked in one after the other, four or five laborers in camo trailing behind them.

Frederick was smiling, every tooth full of calculation. "Miranda, I went home and thought it over last night. This kennel was your grandmother's, after all. It'd be a shame to throw out everything you clear out of here."

He pointed at the trough hanging in midair.

"That one there looks good to me. Happens I've been needing a stone trough for water lilies."

"You're just going to haul it off as construction junk anyway. Might as well let me take it home. Something to remember her by."

At his words, Leslie and I both sucked in a sharp breath.