“Don’t worry about staying, Ellen,” he said with a smug smile. “I’ve got everything under control out here.”

I nodded, smiled back with my teeth clenched, and drove my Buick down the road. But I didn’t go back to Joliet.

I parked my car behind an abandoned grain silo half a mile away, turned off the headlights, and waited for the sun to go completely down.

At midnight, the farm was pitch black. The only sound was the wind howling through the dry cornfields. I walked back down the gravel road, carrying a heavy, rusted sledgehammer I had taken from my own father’s garage years ago.

My hands were shaking so badly I could barely grip the wooden handle. My chest turned cold with fear, but the anger was stronger. I walked into the dark milking barn, turned on a small flashlight, and stood over that fresh square of concrete.

I raised the sledgehammer over my head and brought it down with everything I had.

The sound of metal hitting concrete was deafening in the empty barn. Sparks flew, and a web of white cracks appeared in the gray surface. I swung again. And again. On the fifth swing, the concrete crumbled completely, revealing a hollow space beneath the dirt.

I dropped the hammer, my muscles burning, and reached into the dust. My fingers wrapped around the familiar, scratchy metal handle of an old green tea tin. It was the exact tin our grandmother had kept on her kitchen window sill for as long as I could remember.

My heart was pounding in my throat as I pulled the tin out of the ground. I wiped the gray dust off the rusted lid with my sleeve and pried it open.

It was empty.

There were no gold coins. No sparkling metal. Just a single piece of lined notebook paper, folded into a neat square. I opened it, my eyes straining in the dim light of my flashlight.

Written in Michael’s sloppy, arrogant print were the words: “Better luck next time, cousin. Early bird gets the worm.”

I sat down heavily on the dirt floor of the barn, the empty green tin rolling away into the shadows. I felt a wave of hot, stinging humiliation wash over me. Michael had found the gold. He had beaten me to it, dug it up, and then he had poured fresh concrete over the empty hole just to leave a cruel joke for me to find.