Page 29 of 15 Summers Later

You should have told me everything, Ava. How do you think I felt reading about all these things that happened to my own wife? Things I had no idea about, things I should have known from that first night? It is a huge part of what makes you who you are and you never told me anything. I have to wonder if the woman I thought I married ever even existed.

“Would you...want to grab a coffee?” she asked, hoping he couldn’t hear the desperation in her voice. “Leona tells me the food truck over there sells a good blend. The scent has been drifting over us all morning and it does smell delicious.”

He shifted his gaze to the group of food trucks selling everything from homemade empanadas to freshly pressed lemonade.

“I don’t have time. Luis will be looking for me. We still have to finish our grocery shopping and head back to the site. We have a new crew of student volunteers showing up this evening.”

“Okay. Um. Will you be coming through town again soon? We could...meet for lunch or something.”

“I’m not sure. I really don’t have a set schedule yet. I can’t commit to anything.”

At least that wasn’t an outright no. He had suggested they take a break while he was working at the dig. Her following him to Idaho and hounding him to meet up the first chance he had probably didn’t exactly qualify as a break.

“How’s the excavation going?” she asked, desperate to keep talking to him.

His features lit up and a smile even played at his mouth. “Amazing. Better than we expected. It’s a nest of some kind but the fossilized bones don’t really fit the pattern of the usual dinosaurs found in this area. We might be on to something big.”

She was happy for him. He had worked so hard and so long for this opportunity. “I’m so glad it’s working out. You must be thrilled.”

“Yes,” he said, his features still bright. As he looked down at her, her mind filled with memories of all the evenings they would sit together at their small kitchen table with their laptops. She would grade papers or work on her thesis, the work that eventually becameGhost Lake, and he would prep lesson plans or go over research documents.

Sometimes she would look up from the screen to find him watching her with the expression of a man who had been given everything he could ever want.

She wanted to cry, suddenly, and had to fight back the tears.

“How long will you be staying with Leona?” he asked.

She debated how to answer him. Should she tell him how much she had hated even a few nights by herself in the apartment, how the rooms echoed with emptiness?

“Right now my plans are open-ended,” she finally said. “My summer break seemed like a good opportunity to spend some time with Grandma and Madi.”

Of course, Madi currently wasn’t speaking to Ava but she decided not to mention that small detail to Cullen.

“I’ve talked to the Fosters next door about collecting any packages and forwarding mail,” she went on.

He nodded, looking as if he had much more to say. Instead, he looked at his watch.

“I should go.”

“Right. Okay.”

He gazed at her. “Maybe while you’re here in Idaho so close, you could come up to mountains sometime and check out the site. It’s pretty rugged in parts. You’ll need a Jeep or an all-terrain vehicle to get all the way there. You could park down below and I could come get you in the side-by-side.”

Panic fluttered through her. She knew exactly where the site was. About a mile away from the actual Ghost Lake.

She hadn’t been back there since the night she had drugged James Boyle with valerian root and mountain deathcamas Madi had found, on the rare occasions they were allowed out of the camp to bathe in the creek.

That had been the same night she and Madi had crept away through the darkness, braced for the instant when the dogs that had been cruelly trained to attack would be let loose on them.

She forced a smile, trying not to shudder. “Maybe,” she said, hoping her expression didn’t betray her deep reluctance.

“I need to go,” he said again. He hugged her, the gesture awkward and stilted, then he was gone and her heart cracked apart a little more.

There was a time not very long ago when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

They used to try to coordinate their return from their respective campuses.

She usually arrived only moments ahead of him. She eagerly waited until she would hear his key in the lock, for that moment when Cullen would open the door, set down his battered messenger bag beside the comfortably battered armchair and pull her into his arms with a deep, heartfelt sigh.

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