Page 104 of Snowed In with her Mountain Men
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Never mind that. We gotyousomething, instead.”
Something else appeared on my desk, as if by magic: a small steel box, rectangular in shape. It clattered heavily, betraying its weight.
“What’s this?”
“This,” Oakley said with a flourish, “is your computer.”
I looked from the silver-colored box to my laptop, which was still open, and pointed. “No,that’smy computer.”
“True.”
“Besides, I don’t need a new computer,” I said. “I love the one I have. Sure, it came from a pawn shop, but that’s part of the reason—”
“This isn’t a new computer Camryn. It’s your old one.”
I squinted down at the box. It didn’t look like anything. My face must’ve looked pretty comical, because all three of them laughed.
“This is a bootable hard drive,” Oakley explained, reaching out to tap the box with one finger. “It contains an exact mirror of your old machine. The one we fished out of the fire when you weren’t paying attention, and brought into town without you knowing it.”
I blinked a few times, unable to comprehend what they were saying. I could only sit there, incredulous.
“H—How did you—”
“Aric,” Jaxon said simply.
“Aric?”
“He’s a friend of ours, from downtown. Very smart guy. A total wizard with electronics.”
I shook my head. “But it was melted!” I exclaimed. “I saw it myself. Last I looked, it was a bubbling pile of plastic.”
“Yeah, Aric wasn’t too happy when we tasked him with it,” said Oakley. “But he owed us one. Maybe even more than one, really.”
I sniffed. “Why?’
“Let’s just say we got him out of some trouble he was in,” explained Jaxon. “Deep trouble.”
“Anyway, we hoped to get it back to you in time to save your book,” Oakley apologized. “But it was very far gone, almost impossible. Aric had to manually extract the drive and rebuild it from scratch, sector by sector. Took him hundreds of hours, or something along those lines.”
“He finished just a few weeks ago,” Ryder added. “Way too late, considering you already published your story. But then Aric told us what else was on the drive.”
Tears filled my eyes. Happy tears.
“My photos…” I murmured.
One by one, they smiled at my growing excitement. Oakley nodded. “Yes.”
Reverently I reached down to rub my father’s bracelet. With everything else gone, it was all I had to remember him.
All, until now.
“He saved everything?” I sobbed. “All of it?”
“It’s all there,” Oakley confirmed. “Dozens of folders containing photographs, dated by year. Separated by—”
“By month,” I breathed. “And by holiday.”
