Page 29 of Monster Among the Roses (Fairy Tale Quartet 1)

The sun hadn’t risen yet, but it was thinking about it. Shapes and shadows were beginning to become distinct. When I reached the end of the drive, I could make out someone there, stretching and pulling her leg back so far that her toe was nearly touching the center of her spine.

“Isobel?” I asked, just to make certain it was her.

She yelped and dropped her foot, before gasping. “Oh. You’re here.” Then she glanced around me. “Wait, did you walk?”

“Yeah.” I approached her, suddenly not so tired anymore. “Have you been waiting long? I’m not late, am I?”

“No…no. You’re five minutes early, actually.” I swear I heard embarrassment in her voice before she cleared her throat. “I decided to meet you out here in case you didn’t know how to get to the running trail.”

“Oh,” I said before laughing. “You’re right. I would’ve had no idea how to get back there.”

She nodded. “Then follow me.”

I did. We walked behind the house and under a couple large trees, past a few outbuildings and onto a narrow gravel path lined with trees. But she continued to walk, so I figured we hadn’t reached the “trail” yet. I hadn’t seen the lake she’d mentioned either.

Crickets chirped around us, an owl hooted overhead, and gravel crunched under our feet. For as warm as the days were, it was still chilly this early in the day. I swiped my hands up and down my arms, wishing for about the fiftieth time in the past hour and a half since I left home that I’d brought a jacket with me. Isobel was smart; she wore a long-sleeved running hoodie.

“How far do you walk to get here every day?” she asked, breaking the silence.

I shrugged. “Oh…not that far.”

“Couldn’t be that close,” she argued. “Most of the houses out here, for a good five-mile stretch, belong to the…”

Rich, she didn’t finish.

“I live near Pestle.” Pestle had been the name of the shoe factory I’d worked at that had gone out of business. But it had been well-known enough for people to still call that part of town Pestle.

She made an audible gasp. “But that’s in the middle of town. God almighty, Shaw, you must walk over an hour just to get here every day.”

“Barely over an hour,” I said, as my body clanged out of control over the fact she’d used my first name for the first time. I liked how she said Shaw. It sounded good on her tongue, coming from her mouth. Sweet. Genuine. Intimate.

Isobel stopped walking and turned to face me. “Why in the world would you want to run after walking over an hour to get here?”

I faltered, not sure how to answer that without lying or giving away the truth. “I just…yeah. I don’t know.”

A spot started to itch directly behind my ear. I ripped off my hat to scratch it, then slammed the hat back on, feeling even more exposed by Isobel’s penetrating stare. So I cleared my throat and started walking up the path without her.

“I checked out all these books from the library this weekend about building bookcases, but the most useful tips I found were actually on Pinterest. And what do you think of this…a hidden passage bookshelf door?”

When she didn’t answer soon enough, I rushed to argue my point, because seriously, nothing on earth could be cooler than a hidden passage bookshelf door. Right? “I don’t know where that doorway on the south wall in the library leads, but that would be an awesome place to put a bookshelf door. Don’t you think?”

“I…” Catching up to me, Isobel shook her head. “Yeah. Sure. That would be okay.”

r /> My abrupt change in subject might’ve thrown her or she just wasn’t as enthused about the idea as I was, but her indifferent answer made me rush to add, “Of course, we don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

“No, I do. The idea sounds fun.”

“But…?” I pressed, my stomach churning with unease. It was pathetic how much I wanted her to love all my ideas.

She merely shook her head. “No buts. I like the idea. I’m just worried about how difficult it’s going to be for you to make.”

“Ugh. That’s the last thing you should even think about. The how is for me to worry about, and besides,” I threw her what I hoped was a contagious grin, “the bigger the challenge the better the adventure, right?”

I shrugged off my backpack and dropped it to the ground, then flipped my ball cap around so I was wearing it backward, before I started to jog. We’d just reached the edge of the lake, and this looked like the point where I had to guess she began her morning run.

“Hey,” she called after me, cupping her hands around her mouth. “You’re going counterclockwise. I always run clockwise around the lake.”

I laughed and turned to run backwards so I could face her while I kept going. “Adjust to change, Isobel. Adjust to change.”

---