Page 8 of Lion's Share
Whereas I….
But no, I wasn’t about to go there. Yes, my mother and grandmother were still gone, but at least I knew they were safe…supposedly. And sure, my father had taken off when I was just a kid, but again, I’d been raised by two loving, supportive women who’d done everything to make sure I didn’t suffer too much from his absence. Even with them currently stuck in another dimension, I still had the people of Silver Hollow to look out for me. Quite a few of my childhood friends had moved away, looking for more opportunities in Sacramento or San Francisco or up in Oregon and Washington State, but new friends — like Jasmine Perez, the town librarian, and Hope Hayakawa, the local veterinarian — had moved in. It was all good.
Well, mostly.
“Sure,” I said, since I didn’t see much point in arguing possibilities with Ben, not before we hadn’t gotten any definitive information from the grad student who’d be here the next day. Besides, right then I was more interested in tracking down the person who’d decided to scatter Ogham letters all over the forest like someone had spilled ancient Irish alphabet soup.
The trip to the grove was a hike of about forty-five minutes. Once we arrived, Ben and I wandered around, checking to see if there were any fresh carvings here, but we couldn’t find anything.
No ATV tracks, either, which was a relief. Something about this grove felt sacred to me, and I would have hated to see the grass between the trees torn up by some jerk out joyriding in his Polaris, or whatever he was driving.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”
Daylight was fading when we finally emerged from the forest well after seven o’clock, but we’d mounted all the cameras in what we hoped were the most likely spots, and had also done our best to make sure they were well concealed within the foliage so no one would see them unless they were looking really hard.
Our pizza was well earned, that was for sure.
Although I itched to get everything set up on my laptop, I knew we needed to eat something before the food started to get cold. Ben opened a bottle of wine, and we both practically inhaled our first slices of pepperoni pizza before we got down to business.
I’d purposely splurged for the fancier trail cameras, the kind that had both SD cards you could remove to survey the data they contained and also a web portal where I could access the footage directly. It just made sense to do that, or otherwise the two of us would have spent hours tromping around the forest to retrieve all those data cards.
Although I wasn’t a complete idiot when it came to computer stuff, I also had to acknowledge that Ben was way better at this kind of thing than I was. While I munched on a piece of pizza, I watched him set up my accounts with the two different manufacturers, entering the serial numbers for all the cameras so the correct footage would be sent to the correct account.
Once that was done, he got another slice of pizza for himself and took a sip from his glass of chianti.
“You should be up and running,” he said. “Just remember to check every morning and download anything that looks pertinent, because your accounts don’t have unlimited storage.”
I didn’t think that would be a problem, not when I tended to be an early riser and didn’t have to be at the shop until a little before ten in the morning…except on Tuesdays, of course, when I would have even more time to work with.
“Part of me wants to look at it now,” I replied, and he grinned.
“I doubt there’s much to see yet,” he said. “Whoever’s been carving those letters, I have a feeling they must wait until it’s dark before they break out their carving tools.”
He was probably right. Still, I couldn’t help being a little tingly with anticipation. We had so many different mysteries swirling around us that I thought it would be nice to solve at least one.
“True,” I said. A sudden notion popped into my head, and I decided to go with it before the rational side of my brain came up with a bunch of reasons as to why it wouldn’t be very smart. “Want to come over for a viewing party tomorrow morning? I can make pancakes. Maybe eight-thirty?”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I thought of how cringey they sounded, how borderline desperate. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take them back.
Ben, however, didn’t seem to find anything too odd about my request. “That’s a great idea,” he said. “Need me to bring anything?”
“No, I’ve got everything here,” I replied. “It’s not like we’ll be having a champagne brunch or anything. But I figured you want to see that footage just as much as I do.”
He nodded. “Definitely. Of course, we both have to remember that we might not see anything at all except some run-of-the-mill wildlife.”
Or a unicorn…or a griffin, I thought, although they’d been pretty thin on the ground lately.
“Well, if nothing else, it’ll let us know whether our setup is working,” I said, taking care to keep my tone light. “So there’ll still be some value in having a look, even if we don’t see anything that tells us about our mysterious woodcarver.”
“True.” Ben swallowed the last half inch or so of wine in his glass, then set it down on a coaster on the coffee table. I’d brought my laptop into the living room so we could work there, figuring that location would be a lot more convenient than the first-floor bedroom I used as my office. “Then I guess I’ll be heading home.”
I detected the faintest upward inflection at the end of that comment, almost as if he was asking whether he had any reason to stay.
There should have been. There should have been a thousand reasons, all beginning and ending with a kiss.
But I was too much of a chickenshit. Right now, Ben seemed okay with staying just friends, and I was worried that if I gathered enough courage to take that step and things didn’t work out, then he’d head back down to Southern California…and someone else I cared about would be out of my life.
“Okay,” I said, knowing I sounded way too cheery. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning at eight-thirty.”
