Chapter Sixteen
The only thing worse than doing the walk of shame was doing it in cold, sopping wet clothes. Rob gritted his teeth and walked fast, willing to risk the chafing if it meant less of a chance he’d be spotted in the dim light of very early morning.
He’d been tempted to gather up the wet laundry and sprint across the campground in his boxer briefs, and he might have done it if he wasn’t one of the owners.
After all the work he’d put into the social media accounts, he’d be the laughingstock of the family if the campground went viral because one of the owners was running around in his underwear.
After making sure he hummed as he went into the house—a habit he’d gotten into so Stella would know it was him and not bother barking or getting out of bed—Rob stripped out of the wet clothes and took a fast, hot shower.
As much as he’d like to stretch out and go back to sleep, he got dressed and crept out of the house.
Luckily, he only had to worry about the main bathhouse this morning.
They locked the one on the hill when nobody was staying in the cabins because people would just ride in from the ATV trails, use that bathhouse rather than the one in the store so they didn’t feel obligated to buy something, and then leave.
They got tired of the bathhouse on the hill being muddy and devoid of toilet paper, even when there were no campers staying up there, so they’d padlocked it.
Because there were only two transient sites rented during this week, he made quick work of cleaning and restocking, but Brian was up and making breakfast when he got back to the house.
After giving Stella a quick tousle, Rob poured himself a coffee and sat at the table to drink the much-needed caffeine. “Can you not kill my eggs today? Over easy would be great.”
Brian snorted. “I gave up on over easy years ago. The yolks always break when I flip them.”
“You could practice instead of just giving up.”
Brian set the carton of eggs on the counter with enough force to make Rob wince. They might have to eat a lot of eggs this morning if he broke them. “You’re in a pretty piss-poor mood for somebody who had sex last night.”
“I did not have sex last night, actually, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Okay. The mood makes more sense now.” Brian cocked his head. “But you were out all night.”
“Yeah. We hung out, but it didn’t feel like the right time, with the storm and all.”
When his brother stared at him for a long moment, Rob just stared back until Brian shrugged and turned back to the stove. He didn’t have to justify his decisions to anybody, and he had no regrets about not surrendering to his desire for Hannah.
He refilled his coffee cup just as the toaster popped, and he buttered the toast while Brian finished the eggs.
When they sat, he saw that his brother had made an effort with the eggs. Sure, one of the yolks had broken, but they were in the ballpark of over easy. “This looks good. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
They ate in silence for a while, the only sound in the house the rattle and chomp of Stella working her way through her bowl of kibble.
The quiet didn’t bother Rob, except for the fact he could tell by the sighing and shifting that his brother had something on his mind.
And when Brian hesitated to voice his thoughts, they were usually heavy.
“Spit it out,” Rob finally said.
“Is it serious?”
Rob sighed and set his fork across his empty plate. There was no sense in pretending he didn’t know what Brian was asking. “I mean, I’m falling for her. That’s not a secret.”
“Definitely not a secret.” Brian shrugged. “From us, anyway. Have you told her you’re falling for her?”
“Of course not.”
“Don’t you think you should?”
“Nope.” Of course he knew he should, but he wasn’t going to. Hannah had taken off for three months so she could figure her life out with no pressure. He wasn’t going to pile an entirely different kind of pressure on top of her.
“It seems like she’s pretty into you. Has she said anything?”
He shrugged. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious we’re into each other. I didn’t sleep on the folded down dinette, if you know what I mean. But it’s not going anywhere, so there’s no sense in bringing feelings into the mix.”
“Seems like the feelings are already mixed in.”
“For me, sure. But as long as I keep those feelings to myself, they’re my problem and not hers. And maybe I should put a little more distance between us.” He wasn’t sure how he’d manage that, but just the fact he was having this conversation with his brother was a sign he was already in too deep.
Brian scoffed, pushing back his chair and picking up his plate. “Why are you so sure she’d see you catching feelings as a problem?”
“She’s got plans that don’t include New Hampshire and my plans sure as hell don’t include California, so catching feelings? A problem.”
“Hannah strikes me as the kind of person who’d like to work the problem together.
” He tossed Stella a toast crust and shrugged.
“But what the hell do I know? I thought I was happily married and then—bam—Kelly doesn’t actually love me, there’s somebody else and she’s divorcing me. Maybe I’m not great at reading people.”
“That was a her problem, not a you problem,” Rob said firmly.
It wasn’t the first time Brian had been told that, but it didn’t always stick.
He’d been blindsided and spent a lot of time wondering what he’d missed and what he’d done wrong.
To say Rob wasn’t a fan of his former sister-in-law would be an understatement.
Once they’d cleaned up and gone to the store to do some paperwork—Wednesday had become the best day for it because there was little activity in the campground to distract them—Rob’s thoughts kept wandering back to Hannah.
They always did, but waking up that morning in her bed had taken it to a new level.
She still hadn’t found that foundation, and he’d promised he’d take her out there.
He saved the spreadsheet he was ignoring and pulled up the group calendar that tracked the four brothers and their campground reservations as well as deliveries and accounts payable. It was hectic, visually, but necessary.
When he muttered under his breath, it caught Brian’s attention. “What are you looking for?”
Rob scrolled to a likely day and then pulled up the weather forecast on his phone. “A good day for me to be gone for a good chunk of it. Hannah still wants to look for that foundation and even with the rain we’ve had, it should be drying up out there.”
“So you’re going to put distance between you by spending the day walking around the woods with her?”
“I told her I would. And putting distance between us is one of those things that sounds like the right thing to do in theory, but might not be so easy to actually do.”
“I could go out there with her.”
Rob scowled, not liking the idea of his brother spending the day with Hannah. Not that he was worried about Brian trying to make a move—he would never be disloyal like that and Rob knew that—but because that would be time he didn’t get to spend with her himself.
“I’m going to help her find the thing she’s looking for,” he insisted, and it wasn’t until he noticed Brian staring at him that he realized that could be taken so many ways. “If that foundation is out there, we’ll find it.”
“Bobby, do you remember when we were kids and Dad took us sledding and he said to stay on the packed-down sled tracks or we’d hit a tree and get hurt? And you took your sled off to the fresh snow and you hit a tree and broke your arm?” When Brian paused, Rob nodded. “This feels like that.”
“You’re wearing bug spray, right?”
Hannah snorted at the obvious question, even though she was thoroughly charmed by his concern. “I put on so much bug spray, I think it’s soaked into my DNA. It might be my superpower now.”
“The bug spray that smells pretty and is good for your skin? Or the bug spray that repels bugs?” She leaned closer and he inhaled deeply. Then he coughed and took a step back. “Yep, you’re good.”
“So I looked over the maps and I have a rough idea of the area I covered the first time.”
“We probably don’t want to go that way.”
“There’s a chance I missed it, but it makes more sense to head a little more east and cover new ground.”
“I’m just following you.”
“Unless I fall in a well.”
He chuckled. “It would suck if you fell in a well and you were totally fine until I fell in on top of you.”
“Maybe we’ll walk side by side,” she suggested.
And they did, which made it a lot easier to hold hands.
She had a moment when his fingers first threaded through hers to wonder if she was getting in over her head, but it was a very brief moment.
He squeezed her hand and gave her a smile that erased everything but the pleasure being with him brought.
“I have to ask,” he said when they’d gone maybe an eighth of a mile into the woods. “Do you really think you’re going to find something out there that’ll solve the mystery?”
She laughed. “Hey, it’s only been a century and a half. It’s possible I’ll just stumble over a skeleton with the murder weapon still embedded in a bone. Maybe a confession in an old glass bottle sealed with wax?”
When he gave her a look—complete with hesitant smile—that made it clear he wasn’t quite sure if she was joking or not, she laughed hard, so hard they had to stop for a minute.
He held a branch out of her way when they resumed, which was good since she was wiping tears out of her eyes and might not have seen it.
“Tell me about her.”
“Elizabeth?” Hannah sighed. “She was born Elizabeth Anne Cook, which was not a unique name in colonial New England by any means. She married Elmer Whaley in 1869 at the age of sixteen. In 1872, there’s mention in a congregation member’s diary that she seemed to have gone away without a word to anybody.
Many people have scoured records and personal documents, but she just disappeared from history. ”