Page 9 of Lion's Share
“‘Eight-thirty,’” he echoed, and headed for the door.
And, like a chickenshit, I only smiled and sat there while he left.
But he was back again the next morning, right on time. Even though I’d told him he didn’t need to bring anything, he had a container of gorgeous strawberries in one hand and gave them to me while wearing a slightly sheepish expression.
“These looked too good to pass up,” he said, and I only smiled.
“You went past the farmer’s market.”
“It was right on the way.”
Every Wednesday morning in July through September, the far western end of Main Street was shut down so we could have our farmers’ market. People came from miles around to sell their wares, and I could see why he hadn’t wanted to walk past those strawberries. They looked and smelled absolutely heavenly.
“I think I can make room for them on the table,” I said with a grin. “Do you want coffee, or maybe some fruit juice?”
“Coffee, please,” he replied.
Since it had just finished perking in the old-fashioned cowboy pot on the stovetop a few minutes earlier, it was hot and fresh. I got a mug out of the cupboard and set it down on the counter, then filled it up. Ben and I had spent enough time together by now that I knew he liked to drink it black, so I didn’t have to ask whether he wanted any milk or sugar.
He thanked me, then blew on the surface of the French roast to try to cool it down a little. An amused glint entered his hazel eyes, and he said, “So…have you peeked?”
“Peeked?” I said, my tone all innocence.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
I allowed myself a chuckle before saying, “No, I haven’t even opened my laptop this morning. I had a feeling that if I checked my email, I’d be too tempted to go to the web portal and see if our cameras recorded anything good.”
Ben laughed outright at my comment, as I’d thought he might. But I wasn’t exaggerating — I truly had been worried that I wouldn’t be able to resist temptation and would start poking around in all the footage the cameras had caught the night before.
“And with that in mind,” I said, heading over to the big six-burner stove and the bowl of pancake batter that waited on the counter next to it, “I think I should get our breakfast ready.”
Luckily, pancakes didn’t take too long to make. While I was busy at the stove, Ben washed and hulled the strawberries and put them in a bowl I asked him to fetch from the cupboard. Within ten minutes, we were sitting down at the table at the far end of the kitchen, the one next to the big window that overlooked the backyard. At that time of year, all the flowers were in full bloom, cheerful splashes of red and pink and purple, white and yellow and orange. My grandmother hadn’t wanted the garden to be formal, and that was why there didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to the color scheme. It was beautiful, though, especially with all that color blazing away with the dark backdrop of the forest only a few hundred yards in the distance.
For a minute or two, Ben and I were both quiet as we spread butter on our pancakes and poured syrup, and spooned up some strawberries from the little bowls where I’d served them. As I was getting ready this morning, I’d thought about making bacon as well but had decided that would seem as if I was trying too hard. The meal was supposed to be a simple one, just a chance to get some food in our stomachs before we sat down to look at the footage.
Which might contain absolutely nothing of any interest, I reminded myself. There was always the chance that our vandal might have taken the night off or had simply decided to go to work in a section of the forest not surveilled by our trail cams. It was a big place, after all, covering thousands of acres, and although so far it seemed as if the portal only appeared where there was enough open space to accommodate it, that was more a theory of ours than an established fact.
“Great pancakes,” Ben said after he paused to drink some more coffee.
“I can’t take credit,” I replied. “They’re my grandmother’s recipe.”
A few amused crinkles showed around his eyes. “Maybe you used her recipe,” he said, “but you’re the one who made them.”
All right, he had a point there. And it wasn’t as if I was a terrible cook or anything close to it. Not too inspired, but if you gave me a recipe, I usually could follow it and produce a decent result as long as it wasn’t too complicated.
Needless to say, Julia Child’s beef bourguignon recipe probably wasn’t in my future.
For just a second, the background hum of the refrigerator faded out. The clocks on the stove and microwave went dark before they started flashing the dreaded “12:00.”
“There it goes again,” I said.
Ben’s brows drew together. “Did it flicker last night?”
“Really briefly, as I was getting ready for bed,” I replied. “But that time, the power interruption wasn’t long enough to mess with the clocks the way it just did now.”
For a second or two, he didn’t say anything. Still frowning slightly, he said, “We should probably be trying to track the outages — you know, see if everyone’s experiencing them at the same time or whether all these little glitches are occurring in completely random locations around town.”
“What would that prove?” I asked.
