Chapter Fourteen #2
“History, but with a focus on historical true crime events.” She smiled wryly. “Which is why it’s so amusing to me that I ended up in a campground run by people who think one of the campers is a serial killer.”
“Not is,” he protested. “Could be. There’s a difference.”
“True. So Improbable Causes is a podcast like every other true crime podcast, except in our case, all of the crimes happened before 1918.” Except for the one that had changed everything—or had the potential to, anyway.
“Why 1918?”
She shrugged. “Because we—my friend Erika and I—started the podcast in 2018 and one hundred years sounded like a good cutoff. I do most of the research and the heavy factual lifting and she does the color commentary and brings the entertainment vibe.”
“I’ll have to give it a listen.”
Hannah imagined Rob falling asleep to the sound of her voice in his ears and cleared her throat. “But what about you? You’ve never told me what you did before you decided to buy a campground with your brothers.”
He sighed. “I had jobs, not a career, I guess. In my heart, photography’s my career, but I don’t know if you can call it that if it doesn’t pay the bills, you know?
But all of us did our time with the various family businesses, so I’ve done landscaping and building.
Some bartending. I took a few photography classes at the community college, and I’ve sold some of my pictures over the years, but I was actually working for Brian—plowing snow, mostly—when we made the decision to buy this place. ”
“Do you still have a place there or is this your year-round home now?”
“I shared an apartment with a friend of mine, but right around the time we closed on the campground, he and his girlfriend were talking about living together. Since we’d already talked about me and Brian being up here pretty much full-time, it made more sense to put my stuff in Danny’s basement and let my buddy and his girlfriend have the apartment. ”
“You’ll live here all winter, then?”
“That’s the plan, I guess.” He shrugged.
“We’ve talked about maybe leaving the cabins open year-round for snowmobiling, but we have to shut the water off to the bathhouses and we only have the one heated bathroom in the store, so if we do, it won’t be for a couple of years.
But if I stay, I can keep an eye on things. ”
“Brian won’t stay here?”
“I doubt it. He’s got a lot of contracts for snow removal, and he also owns his house.
It’s not far from my parents and he loves the place, so selling it didn’t make sense for him.
During the summer he did some commercial mowing, but he gave up those jobs for this so he’ll probably spend winters at home, hoping for a lot of snow, and summers up here. ”
“The first year or two, I guess it’s best to be fluid,” she said. “It takes a while to learn a business, but it’s got to be easier when there are four of you.”
He laughed. “In some ways, yes. In other ways, it can be a challenge. But it feels good to be able to contribute with my photographs, and to be growing the online presence. Thank you for that.”
“I think you’ve done a lot more for this place than grow the social media presence,” she said. “But I can see how bringing a skill that’s uniquely yours—that none of your brothers can do as well—is important. I’m glad I’m able to help.”
“We need to take that walk soon,” he said. “To find that foundation. Or to look for it, at least. I’ll have to check the forecast because we’re supposed to get some rain, I guess. And probably a weekday, but not one when deliveries are scheduled. And Brian will have to be around.”
She laughed as he tried to figure it out, scowling the entire time. He was gorgeous when he smiled, but he was also gorgeous when he was serious—when his eyes got intense and his brow furrowed slightly.
“Why don’t we play it by ear,” she suggested. “When the time presents itself, I’ll probably be available since I’m not exactly juggling a heavy schedule over here.”
“Okay. I just didn’t want you thinking I forgot or anything, or that I don’t want to do it.”
“I won’t let you forget.” She held up the book in her lap. “And speaking of forgetting, I finished the book and amnesia? Really?”
“Oh!” Rob leaned forward in his chair. “But do you think the amnesia was real?”
“You think she was faking it?”
“No, like...” He thought about it for a few seconds. “After I read it, I was talking to my mom about it and she has a theory that the author couldn’t make the plot work and added the amnesia, like an afterthought.”
“Interesting. When I was thinking about the story, there were a lot of things that seemed inconsistent with amnesia, so I thought maybe the character was faking.” She growled in frustration.
“It was such a good book, but I hate that in the domestic suspense genre, ambiguous endings are okay. Sometimes I guess they want us to draw our own conclusions, but other times I think the author wrote themselves into a corner and the ambiguity is meant to disguise a lack of ending.”
Two hours later, when Stella wandered into Hannah’s site, the two-person book club was in full swing. They’d even moved their chairs closer together until their legs were touching so they could flip through the book and find passages to back up their arguments.
When Stella nudged Rob’s thigh, he looked at his watch and realized how much time had passed. “I think this dog is trying to tell me Brian’s cursing my name right now. But let me know if you read the other one, okay?”
“Oh, I will,” Hannah said as she gave Stella a good all-over scratch.
In fact, Rob and the dog weren’t even out of sight before she had the app open, checking to see if she had a strong enough signal to download the book he’d recommended without walking up to the overflow lot.
If not, she’d make the walk because this was definitely her kind of book club.