Page 60 of Silver Linings

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he told her. “To me, this feels more like an amulet that might give you safe passage through the portal…if that’s even what’s happening here at all.”

She looked dubious, brows drawn together and mouth slightly pursed. Then her expression shifted to one of worry.

“If that’s the case, why would my mother leave it behind? Shouldn’t she have been wearing it when she went with my grandmother to investigate the stone circle?”

Both good questions. Unfortunately, Ben didn’t have any real answers to either of them.

Unless….

“It could have simply been a clue,” he said. “Something to help lead you in the right direction. After all, she couldn’t have known that the unicorn would take you to the stone circle at precisely the correct time, could she?”

Sidney glanced away from him and toward the window of his rented room. From up here, you had a good view of the forest, and maybe she was looking at it in the hope that it might provide some answers.

Apparently not, though, because her shoulders slumped. As cheerful as she’d seemed when she first arrived, she now appeared to be the picture of defeat.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “That’s the problem — I don’t really know anything. I suppose I can see why my mother and grandmother would have wanted to protect me, but leaving me totally clueless doesn’t seem like it was the right strategy.”

Ben had to agree with her there. While he was sure that her relatives had only had Sidney’s best interests at heart, it seemed their protectiveness had backfired.

“They might not have known everything, either,” he said. “So I suppose you should try to cut them some slack. If they’d known for sure that walking into the circle would send them to a different plane of existence, do you really think they would have gone inside?”

“Probably not,” she responded. While she still didn’t look entirely cheerful, she also seemed a little less downcast. “And again, we don’t know for sure that’s even what happened.”

“Well, with any luck, we’ll get a few more answers tonight,” Ben said. “For now, I think we should rest up and do what we can to prepare.”

“If we’re going to tromp around in the forest right after dinner,” she said, a faint hint of a smile beginning to touch her mouth, “then we should probably go eat somewhere casual.”

As far as he’d been able to tell, all the restaurants in Silver Hollow seemed fairly casual. Rather than comment on that, however, he only asked, “Any suggestions?”

“Hog Wild,” she replied at once. “It’s a barbecue place, and it’s pretty good. But it’s also not the kind of restaurant where they give you cloth napkins.”

Considering how messy barbecue could get, Ben thought that might be something of an oversight. However, he understood what she was trying to say.

“Sounds like a plan. Meet there at seven-thirty?”

It wasn’t that he wanted to postpone their meal for as long as possible. No, he just wanted it to happen late enough that they could head into the forest immediately afterward.

She seemed to get his meaning, because she nodded, saying, “I’ll see you then. And if I find anything else that seems a little weird, I’ll text you.”

“Well, hopefully not,” he said with a smile, but she only shrugged.

“This is all pretty weird, wouldn’t you say?”

After delivering that remark, she let herself out. For a moment, Ben stood there, looking at the door and wishing he’d been smart enough to come up with some reason to have her stay a while longer.

Since he hadn’t, he went back to his laptop and his notes.

Chapter Nineteen

As much as I disliked going through my mother’s things, I knew I didn’t have much choice. If there was even the slightest chance that her belongings — or those of my grandmother — contained something that might help me and Ben during our foray into the woods tonight, then I needed to look and see what I could find.

My mother’s jewelry box didn’t contain any other mysterious pendants, though, and neither did my grandmother’s. They’d both liked to have some accessories, although they’d never gone wild with them the way some women did, and it didn’t take long to poke around and determine there wasn’t much to be found.

Well, time to see if my grandmother’s file cabinet contained anything of note. Because she’d already signed the house over to my mother — and because it clearly stated in the will that I was to inherit the property and everything it contained — I hadn’t worried too much about what might be in my grandmother’s papers.

Most likely, I’d been so numb since their disappearance that I hadn’t allowed myself to focus on anything except the most top-level stuff, whatever I needed to survive day to day.

Now, though, I had to wonder if possibly my grandmother had hidden some additional notes in her files, something she hadn’t wanted to put in her journals, for whatever reason.

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