Food was harder. They had no money and no income. But Emily quietly started bringing groceries, insisting they were research expenses when the Carters tried to refuse.
She would not let them go hungry while they protected something this important.
On the eighth day, Silas was sweeping the floor—something he did every morning now, trying to keep their tiny space orderly—when the broom snagged on something.
“Addie,” he called. “Come here.”
She crossed the room and crouched beside him.
One floorboard sat slightly higher than the others, as though it had been pried up and replaced many times over the years. Silas took a screwdriver from the small toolkit he still kept in the Honda and carefully worked the board loose.
Beneath it was a cavity about six inches deep running along the width of the structure.
And inside that cavity sat a metal box.
“Oh my God,” Adeline breathed.
Silas lifted it out carefully. It was heavy, made of iron, about the size of a briefcase, its lid sealed by a simple rusted lock. They carried it outside into the better light.
Emily, who had been measuring the exterior wall, took one look at their faces and came running.
“What is it?”
“We found it under the floor,” Silas said.
Using the screwdriver, he worked gently at the rusted latch until at last it gave with a grinding snap.
Inside, protected from the damp by iron and by more than a century and a half of darkness, were items that had been waiting one hundred seventy-seven years to be found.
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