Page 36 of Silver Linings

And I figured it couldn’t hurt to have an expert take a look at what we’d found. There was always the possibility that those symbols didn’t mean much of anything, that someone was playing at being pagan and had scratched a bunch of runes into the tree in a sort of faux ritual without having any real idea of what they were doing.

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“Then I’ll send an email tomorrow morning.” Ben paused there, and a wry smile touched his mouth. “I’ll just have to hope he hasn’t heard of me.”

Well, I could see why he’d made that remark. No doubt most people in academia would think Ben Sanders was a raging crackpot.

He wasn’t, though. He’d been touched by the strangeness that lurked in the corners of our world, had encountered something very few people ever did, and the experience had changed him, had made him want to learn more.

If a bunch of scholars were too narrow-minded to realize that, it was their loss.

About all I could do was smile in return, then return to my plate of spaghetti.

“How’s your hand doing?” he asked.

“It’s okay. A little sore, but I cleaned it out really well and put Neosporin on it before I applied the bandage, so I don’t think it’s going to give me any trouble.”

He seemed satisfied by that response — although, once we were done eating, he insisted on taking the dirty plates into the kitchen and rinsing them off and putting them in the dishwasher. I could tell he wanted to keep me from getting the bandage wet, and since it had been a long time since I was able to sit and relax while someone else did the cleanup, I didn’t protest too loudly.

Afterward, we headed into the living room, where he’d set down the satchel he’d brought with him. He opened it and pulled out his laptop, then put it on the coffee table.

“These are just mockups,” he said, as he popped open a couple of files in Photoshop. “But I wanted to play with some of the pictures we took this morning.”

For mockups, they looked pretty damn good. My favorite was one that featured the spotted owl he’d captured on camera as it looked at him, wide-eyed. Underneath, in a large, easily readable font it said, Don’t take away my home!

The others were in a similar vein, all of them spotlighting different woodland animals and making pleas to protect their habitats.

“I think they’ll all work,” I told him. “It’ll be good to have different designs with the same message. That way, you’re getting the point across without being too repetitive.”

“Is there someplace in town where I can print these up?” he asked as he minimized the Photoshop window we’d just been looking at.

“The stationery store,” I said promptly. “They have private mailboxes there and a color printer and copier. Just take in the files on a thumb drive, and you’ll be set.”

“How modern,” he remarked, and I chuckled.

“Even Silver Hollow has entered the twenty-first century,” I replied before adding, “Well, mostly.”

“I think it’s good that it’s not all the way there,” he told me. “It wouldn’t be so charming if it didn’t feel as if some part of it is still stuck in the past.”

Maybe it looked that way to an outsider. I only knew that the internet could be slow and poky here and that it was annoying to have to drive to Eureka to get the particular brand of cheese I preferred.

Then again, Silver Hollow wouldn’t be the same if someone parked a Costco on the edge of town…not that we even had the population to support one.

“I suppose I can see that,” I said lightly.

He seemed to realize he shouldn’t pursue that line of conversation, because he said, “It looks like we’ve got that part of our plan of attack pretty well sorted out. Putting together a brochure is going to take more time, but I should be able to work on that tomorrow.”

“If it even turns out that we need it at all,” I replied. “The flyers are eye-catching, and something people don’t have to stop and take a lot of time to read. So maybe we should see how those work before we move on to something else.”

“You have a point.” He reached over and closed the laptop, as if he understood that there wasn’t any point in looking at the flyers again, not when I’d already said they all looked great. “Then I’ll take these over to the stationery store tomorrow. How many of each flyer should I get printed up?”

He’d made five different versions, and our downtown area wasn’t exactly what you could call large. “Maybe four of each? You can bring them by the shop when they’re ready, and I’ll make sure they get posted in prominent spots.”

For a moment, it looked as if he intended to say something else — possibly to offer to be the person to put up the flyers — and then he seemed to realize that it was better if I was the one to handle the task since I knew Silver Hollow’s downtown so much better than he did.

“All right,” he said. “Then I suppose that’s about it for now.”

Something in his tone was almost reluctant. I guessed he was thinking that he’d believed our little project would take longer…and would provide more reasons for us to be together.

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