"Grandpa, can I make you something to eat?" Ellie said, filling up the back of the coffee maker with water.
"No thank you. Just coffee is fine." He leaned against the counter next to where she was standing. "Are you alright?"
"I think I didn't expect…well, of course I didn't expect this. But I didn't expect for him to…We haven't seen him since last year. He just called my office the other day, tried to come and see me."
"Come and see you or ask you for help with his hair brained scheme?"
"Which do you think?" She sat on the counter. "I don't want to go with him. I don't want to help him with this. But I don't want him to get hurt, either."
"I know exactly how you feel about that."
"Riley came into the kitchen, bringing the pizza box to put into the refrigerator. He stood back up when he was done and looked at Ellie. Patrick looked between the two of them, then started out of the kitchen. He stopped and whispered to Riley.
"You're on very thin ice, pal. With her and with me. Watch it."
Ellie's cheeks burned. Patrick left the kitchen, and Riley took his place leaning against the counter.
"He really doesn't like me, does he?"
"He used to," Ellie said simply.
"Yeah."
There was a silence then. It was more comfortable than Ellie wanted it to be. It had been a long time since she was in a room with Riley, and she didn't like that it didn't feel awkward.
Riley fixed that.
"Ellie…what can I do?"
Ellie played dumb "What do you mean?"
"What can I do to fix…this? To fix us?"
"Are you kidding me? Do you know what you could have done to prevent us from breaking in the first place?"
"I wish I could go back and change that, but I can"t. I still love you. I shouldn't be telling you that, because we haven't seen each other in so long, and we're in the middle of a crisis, but I-"
"I don't have time for this." Ellie slid off the counter and started to walk out. Riley caught her.
"Is there anything?"
Ellie wanted to scream that there wasn't. And then she wanted to whisper that there was. But she didn't have time to do rushed into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and barreled back out with a bowl of lemons in tow. Riley and Ellie looked at one another and then followed him.
Twenty minutes later, Ben was writing down a series of numbers on a legal pad, and Abigail was keeping a blow dryer trained on the back of the Declaration. Riley looked confused.
"That's not a map. Is it? Are those latitudes and longitudes?"
"That's why we need the Silence Dogood letters," Ellie said quietly. It was all making sense now. "That's the key?"
"Yeah," Ben answered. "The key in Silence undetected. Dad, can we have the letters now?"
"Will somebody please explain to me what these magic numbers are?" Riley was getting frustrated. Ellie took a closer look.
"It's an Ottendorf cipher," she said.
"That's right."Patrick smiled at her.
"Oh, OK." Riley still didn't get it. "What's an Ottendorf cipher?"
""They're just codes."
Ellie patted her grandfather's shoulder and then explained. "Each of these three numbers corresponds to a word in a key. Usually a random book or a newspaper article."
"In this case," Ben added, "the Silence Dogood letters. So it's like the page number of the key text, the line on the page, and the letter in that line. So, Dad, where are the letters?"
"Ellie gave Patrick a nervous expression. He started to talk, trying to distract Ben.
"You know, it's just by sheer happenstance that his grandfather..."
"Dad."
"...even found them. They were in an antique desk from the press room..."
"Dad."
"...of The New England Courant. That's a newspaper."
"Dad, where are the letters?"
"I don't have them, son."
"What?"
"I don't have them."
"I told you that it wouldn't do any good for us to come here."
"You knew he didn't have them? And you didn't tell me?" Ben turned on his daughter.
"I tried to tell you. But you don't let me get a sentence out before you-"
"Where are they?" He interrupted Ellie's argument about his interruptions.
"I donated them to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Ellie helped me get the paperwork together."/span/p
Ben looked betrayed and annoyed all at once. "Time to go."
Abigail wasn't moving. She was just staring at the Declaration. The ink had disappeared by now, and it just laid there, unassuming.
"I still can't believe it. All this time no one knew what was on the back."
"The back of what?" Patrick picked up the paper to look at it.
"No!" The rest of them yelled. But it was too late. He had already seen.
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God."
"I know."
"Oh, my God. What have you done? This is... this is the...this is the Declaration of Independence!"
"Yes. And it's very delicate." Abigail took it from him gingerly and began to roll it up.
"You stole it?"
"Dad, I can explain, but I don't have time. It was necessary. And you saw the cipher."
"And that will lead to another clue, and that will lead to another clue! There is no treasure. I wasted 35 years of my life. And now you've destroyed yours! And you've destroyed Ellie's. And you pulled me into all this!"
Ben's resolute expression was back.
"Well, we can't have that."
