Page 34 of Silver Linings

After a few minutes, though, he was satisfied that he had enough images to work with, so he put his phone back in his pocket and turned toward Sidney.

“Do you need to rest some more, or should we start back?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I mean, I hope I don’t trip again because I’d hate to land on this hand, but I didn’t mess up my knees or anything.”

As if to prove her point, she started moving across the oak grove toward the spot where they’d emerged from the woods. Ben shouldered his pack and followed, brain going a mile a minute.

Who would have come all the way out here just to scrawl those symbols on the trunk of that ancient oak? They weren’t new and sharp, but neither were they blurred with age, telling him that whoever had done it, they must have come to the oak grove within the last couple of years.

Sidney had said that this spot wasn’t completely unknown to locals…or even to hikers who knew what they were looking for…which meant the pool of possible culprits was just large enough that they’d probably have a difficult time discovering who was responsible for making those marks.

If it even mattered at all. It didn’t seem too far-fetched for him to believe that someone who was a modern-day pagan had learned about the grove and had decided to make the trek so they could pay homage to the spirit of the forest. Those carefully carved symbols probably had nothing to do with the shimmering white horse that was supposed to haunt these woods.

On the other hand, they just might turn out to be the one clue they’d been looking for.

Chapter Eleven

My hand ached more than I wanted to admit, but I kept doggedly on, knowing the only thing that would make things better would be to get home so I could attend to it properly. Ben’s makeshift first aid had helped, of course, and yet I knew I needed to really clean out the wound, pack it with some Neosporin, bandage it up, and hope for the best.

Those symbols we’d found bothered me more than I wanted to admit. I knew I’d never seen them before, but that didn’t mean much. The last time I’d hiked out to the oak grove had been when I came home the summer after I graduated from Humboldt State before I left to attend vet school at UC Davis. That had been almost three years ago now, giving a person plenty of time to visit the grove and scratch their runes…or whatever those things were…into the trees.

At least Ben had gotten some pretty good shots of them, so with any luck, he might be able to figure out what the odd symbols were and what they meant. With his training in archaeology, he was much better suited to that kind of research than I was.

“How’re you doing up there?” he asked, concern clear in his voice.

I’d told him that I hadn’t hurt anything except my hand when I tripped and fell, which had been about fifty-percent true. As I’d gone down, I’d taken some of the force of the fall on one knee, but I hadn’t torn my jeans or gotten cut. No, I’d probably have some bruises, and I knew it would be stiff tomorrow, although I wasn’t so incapacitated that I couldn’t get back to the trailhead without noticeably limping.

Good thing, because I wouldn’t put it past Ben to offer to carry me, or at the very least, provide an arm for me to lean on.

But because it had been impossible for me to ignore the way my body had thrilled at his touch as he tended my wounded hand, I knew more physical contact probably wasn’t a very good idea right then. While it was impossible to ignore the way I was attracted to him, I told myself there wasn’t any point in trying to pursue something more than our current casual acquaintance, not when he would be going back to Southern California sometime during the next couple of days.

“I’m fine,” I said. My knee might have had a different opinion of the situation, but luckily, it couldn’t talk.

My reply must have been short enough for Ben to realize that I didn’t want to waste any energy on chitchat, because we were both silent after that as we wound our way through the woods, pausing every once in a while to catch our breath and drink some water. Even though I wasn’t moving as fast as I normally would, we still made good time since we were taking the most direct route back to the trailhead rather than meandering this way and that in order to get photos of the local flora and fauna.

It was probably around eleven-thirty by the time we reached the end of the trail, where my Subaru — well, my mother’s Subaru — was waiting for me. At school, I’d had an e-bike to get around and used Uber when the weather wasn’t cooperating, so the Subaru was the only car I currently had.

If this had been a normal day, I would have been able to get to work by noon without any trouble. After that hike, though, I knew I needed to shower and change my clothes — and get my hand bandaged up properly — so I was glad I’d shifted the opening time to one o’clock.

Ben walked me over to the car and waited until I’d climbed in — and did my best to hold back a wince as I had to bend my knee to get past the steering wheel.

“I’ll check on those symbols after I get all the photos downloaded onto my laptop,” he told me as I fastened my seatbelt. “And I’ll let you know what I find. We should also get together at some point to figure out what we need our posters and flyers to say.”

Right. After what we’d discovered in the oak grove, our plan to start a public information campaign to save the forest from Northwest Pacific had almost slipped my mind. But while the symbols we’d found were intriguing, it was probably more important to at least get some flyers put together so we could hang them up in various spots around town.

“Tonight after I get off work?” I asked. “I can throw together a pot of spaghetti or something.”

That didn’t sound too much like a formal invitation to dinner, so I hoped he’d realize I’d made the suggestion so we could get right down to work after we’d eaten. Also, while I would never wow anyone with my cooking skills, in this case, I didn’t even need to try, since I’d found packets of frozen spaghetti sauce and stew and chili in the freezer when I came back to Silver Hollow. My grandmother was an excellent cook, and she’d always believed in making big batches of stuff and storing the leftovers so they’d be there at the end of a long day when she wasn’t in the mood to put together anything too elaborate.

“Sounds good,” Ben said. “Six o’clock okay?”

Since the shop closed at five-thirty, that would give me just enough time to go home and put everything together. On the other hand, an earlier start meant we’d probably wrap things up that much sooner, and after our long hike this morning — and banging my hand on that tree trunk — I thought getting to bed early was probably a good idea.

“Yes, that works,” I replied. “See you then.”

He nodded and stepped away from the car, and I shut the door and started the engine. A quick wave as I backed out, and then I was on my way home.

I really hoped I hadn’t made a mistake by inviting him over for dinner.

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