Page 52 of Silver Linings

Good thing they’d chosen a large pine tree to lean against while they tried to get some sleep, or they probably would have toppled right over.

Sidney must have realized that something about their surroundings had abruptly changed, because she opened her eyes and looked around them in shock.

“What just happened?”

“Everything disappeared as soon as the sun came up.”

Those big gray eyes widened even further. “How is that possible?”

He grinned, figuring that was the only real response he could make. “How is any of this possible?”

Her mouth twitched. “Okay, you have a point.”

Wincing a little, she placed her hands against the bare earth and pushed herself upward. Ben thought getting up was probably a good idea, especially since they no longer had the moss to cushion them.

“Do you think that’s what happened?” she asked. “That maybe my mother and grandmother were investigating the circle, and then the sun came up and it took them away?”

“Possibly,” Ben replied. “Do you know what time of day they disappeared?”

“No,” Sidney said, and her lips thinned a little — in frustration, he thought. “I was at UC Davis when it all happened, so the only thing I have to go on is what’s in the police report. People reported my mother missing when she didn’t show up to open the pet store at ten like she always did, and so a sheriff’s deputy went to the house to check on things the next day — they had some sort of excuse about having to wait twenty-four hours or whatever. Anyway, the deputy said the front door wasn’t locked, but that wasn’t so strange. Plenty of people around here don’t lock their doors.”

No, probably not. Silver Hollow was just that kind of town.

“Nothing was missing from the house?”

“Not that the deputy could tell.” Sidney paused there, her brows drawing together as she seemed to work on gathering all the details about the situation that she could. “But when I got here, I found a note waiting for me inside my grandmother’s latest journal. She’d always told me to look there if something strange happened.”

And having two women disappear into thin air could definitely be counted as “strange.”

“What did the note say?”

“Only that she and my mother were going into the woods to find out where all the creatures were coming from,” Sidney replied. “She said they wanted to clear up the mystery, and that the women of our family had been dealing with this long enough.”

While Ben could understand their motivations, they hadn’t achieved what they’d set out to accomplish. No, they’d only created another mystery to add to the original one.

“But nothing about when they actually went into the forest.”

Frustrated, Sidney shook her head. “Nothing at all. But if they’d known about this circle and knew that it only appeared after sunset, then they must have set out late in the afternoon.”

“And they never told you about it?”

“No.” She paused there and crossed her arms. Something about her looked small and forlorn right then, and he wished he could reach out to embrace her and offer her whatever comfort he could.

But even though she’d allowed him to touch her shoulder — and even though she’d slept with her head pillowed on him for half the night — he wasn’t sure whether she would be all right with that sort of intimacy.

Better to leave it alone for now. At least he could comfort himself that she appeared to have let go of most of her anger about the way he’d hidden so many things from her. That had to be a promising development, right?

“They took their backpacks with them, though,” she added.

“I thought you said the deputies didn’t notice anything missing from the house.”

Now the corners of her mouth turned upward slightly, and Ben was glad to see that hint of humor in her expression, which had been deadly serious just a moment earlier.

“Well, they didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, because all the valuables were still there — the electronics and the jewelry and my grandmother’s silver service for twelve. But I knew that my mother and grandmother always kept their packs hanging on the hooks in the mudroom, since they never knew for sure when they’d get the impulse to go wandering.” Sidney stopped there, sadness creeping across her delicate features once again. “Or at least, when my grandmother did. My mother worked at the pet shop five and a half days a week, so she didn’t have as much free time. It still sounded as if they went out together after work in the summer, or on Sundays.”

“If they had their backpacks, then they would have had some supplies with them, right?” Ben asked then. Maybe it was a very small reason for hope, but better than nothing.

“Yes,” Sidney replied immediately. “Water and protein bars and trail mix and dried fruit, first aid kits, that kind of stuff. Still, it’s not the sort of thing that would keep them alive for three months.”

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