It was a dark and stormy night when a small, twelve-year-old Dakota Indian girl was patrolling an out-of-bounds area: Her twenty-three-year-old uncle's room. Her only form of protection from the shadows was an old, worn out flashlight. She gently jumped on the bed and went to the shelf above the headboard.
She had always had her eye on a book her great-grandfather and her youngest uncle had kept generations of secrets in its bindings. She grabbed the book and turned to see her twenty-three-year-old uncle behind her and her great-grandfather in the doorway.
"I just wanted to read it…I didn't want to steal it…" tears started to form in her big chocolate brown eyes.
"Grandpa?" her uncle turned and her grandfather nodded.
"Do you want to hear the mystifying and complex story that started this book?" a blank stare crossed over her face. Her uncle tried to think of an easy way to tell the Gates family story.
"Sit." The little girl jumped up and landed next to her uncle, with the book still tightly held in her hands.
"Serenity, Did you know that my great-grandfather's great grandfather was the stable-boy for the last signer to the Declaration of Independence?" Serenity thought for a moment on how this man related to her and then eyes widened in awe.
"The night Thomas McKean was dying, he ordered the stable boy…"
"Grandpa!" squealed Serenity.
"Yes, Grandpa, to go to the white house and tell president Andrew Jackson a clue to a place where it housed thousands of years of gold and silver and other valuables, but the report was that the president was out that night. Mr. McKean gave grandpa a small slip of paper…"
He motioned for the book and pulled out an ancient piece of paper stating the scribbled words:
The secret lies with Charlotte
Serenity's eyes were large.
"Dad, Ben doesn't need be filling my only granddaughter's head full of that nonsense."
Ben and Serenity looked up to see her grandfather and Ben's father talking sternly to their grandfather.
"But Papa, what if there really was a treasure?" questioned Serenity, standing on the bed.
"Dad, what if it is true?" Ben said with the same curiosity as Serenity, he stood with the book in his hands.
"If it was real, then we could be Catrillionairs!" squealed Serenity, jumping on the bed.
"Did he tell you the rest of the story?" said Serenity's grandfather, glaring at Ben. Serenity jumped to her sitting position on the bed, her full attention for the story.
"Ben, since you started the story, why don't you finish it?" Serenity's eyes darted from her grandfather to her uncle.
"Dad, that will crush all hope—"
"Exactly." Spat his father. Ben tried to fight his way out, but he could not win against an experienced debater.
"Do you really want to hear what happened?" Ben pleaded, not wanting to crush her disintegrating hope. Serenity started to bounce on the bed with impatience. Her uncle sighed and finished the story:
"When the president heard that Mr. McKean was there, he rushed out, but he was too late, for Mr. McKean had passed away in the carriage. Grandfather told the president what he was trying to complete, but he had found that Mr. McKean had told the president the clue hundreds of times, but he had always forgot the last time he had told him, no-one knew what the clue meant, and the treasure wasn't real."
Every spark of joy left Serenity's eyes and body movements.
"There's no treasure?" she squeaked, trying to believe.
"But there is one thing about grandpa," Serenity looked at him with the last piece of hope left inside of her.
"He never listened."