Chapter 38
38
For two more days, the snow fell. By the time it stopped, it had just crested the bottom of the window frame in Maura’s bedroom. It was a good thing that Lachlan had brought so much wood in before the blizzard really got going. No one had to wade through the chest-high snow to dig out more firewood.
Lachlan spent much of that time trying to decipher Professor Reed’s notebooks, while Maura and Pinky played backgammon by the woodstove. Pinky took a lot of naps, too. Every once in a while he’d take Newman out for a pee, and they’d both come back covered in snow. Spending this much time with Pinky really made it clear that he was feeling his age.
Lachlan and Maura whispered about it at night. Then laughed sadly at the fact that they were whispering. “He couldn’t hear us right now even if we spoke in our regular voices. You have to be within five feet of his right ear for him to really hear you,” Maura said.
“Do you think it’s safe for him to live here by himself?”
“Do you think anyone would be safe if they tried to pry him away?” Maura shook her head, her soft hair tickling his neck. They were spooning—his very favorite activity, especially when he was the big spoon. “I’m sure he’d rather die here in his boots than go anywhere else.”
Lachlan didn’t argue. What would be the point?
“I am worried about him, though,” she went on. “He keeps leaving the back burner on. If I hadn’t caught it the last time, we probably would be out of propane by now. Without propane, he’d have to cook everything on the woodstove. The refrigerator is both electric and propane, but the more he uses the generator, the lower his fuel gets. When I pointed this out, he told me he often stops using the fridge in the winter and just stores everything in the back porch where it’s just above freezing. I said, what about the freezer and all your fish and meat? He said he can survive on what he canned this summer. He has jars and jars of canned salmon, so he’s probably right.” She gave a long sigh. “Maybe I’m just worried for nothing. He’s been here longer than I’ve been alive, after all.”
Privately, he thought she was right to worry. Survival here depended on one very important thing—knowledge. Which Pinky had in abundance, if he remembered it. If his cognitive abilities declined enough, he wouldn’t remember to do the things required for survival here. Like bring in enough firewood to make it through a blizzard.
“Listen, it’s normal to worry. But I promise I’ll check in on him as often as I can. I’m sure a lot of people will.” A knot formed in his stomach as he said that. He was assuming that Maura was going to leave. And that hurt so much it was hard to think about.
Should he tell her how he felt about her? That was the question he’d been wrestling with for days now. She was dealing with so much that he didn’t want to complicate her life. He also didn’t want to make it harder for her to leave. He didn’t want to interfere with their friendship. So many factors weighed on the side of not telling her.
On the other hand, he didn’t like keeping secrets. Every time they made love, every time he moved inside her, he felt like a liar. This isn’t just casual for me. I love you. The things I feel for you are like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
But those were just words. He wanted to prove his love. She made him feel like a Medieval knight ready to kill a dragon and win his lady’s favor.
To his knowledge, there was only one dragon causing her trouble, and the closest he’d come to “killing” it was making SS trip on an icy boardwalk. And that was as close as he would come, because he drew the line at actual killing.
“That means so much to me,” Maura was saying softly. “You have no idea. That’s one of the reasons it’s hard for me to think about leaving. I’d worry so much about Pinky.”
Great. Now he’d removed an obstacle to her departure. You really are a genius, aren’t you? He told himself sarcastically.
But then her hand was making its way around his body in search of his cock, and he decided to stop worrying about the future and enjoy the hell out of this current moment.
They made love a lot while the snow fell. Every time Pinky would doze off on the couch, they’d sneak into the bedroom and dive under the covers. They became experts at the silent orgasm, even though they knew Pinky probably wouldn’t overhear. It seemed like the polite thing to do.
Then they would make a blanket fort of the covers and talk. Lachlan shared what he was learning from Dr. Reed’s notebooks.
“He wrote pages and pages of notes about the Wind Valley wolves. Did you know the Ahtna considered wolves to be especially powerful? It was taboo to kill them. If you did, you’d go hungry. The Ahtna believed that all beings, including plants and animals, were part of one society, and you had to respect the rules. Wolves were not to be touched. He got very interested in the Ahtna, too, by the way.”
“Well, they’re very interesting, so why not? I read about them in the book I got for the school. Did you know that in the winter, they lived in wooden houses that were built partly underground?”
“To take advantage of the earth’s thermal insulation?”
“Exactly. My students found that fascinating.” She sighed. “Can you believe I miss my brand-new students that I barely got to know before all hell broke loose?”
They talked and talked…about why Maura had become a teacher. About their top-five favorite road snacks. About the most embarrassing thing that had happened to them in high school. About what it was like to be a twin. And, in Maura’s case, what it was like to be born into a family that didn’t quite understand you.
“I don’t think I’m hard to understand,” she murmured. “Do you?”
“No, but I am a genius,” he boasted.
She swatted his arm. “Real geniuses don’t say they’re geniuses. Like billionaires.”
“Hmm. Maybe that’s why I’ve never said that I’m a billionaire.” He laughed at her double-take.
“Wait…what? Please don’t be a billionaire. I can handle you being a genius, but billionaire is where I draw the line.”
“You’re so picky. What’s wrong with billionaires?”
“You know what they say. Behind every great fortune is a crime. The idea of one person hoarding so much wealth bothers me. They always want more. Just ask Andrea Reed. She could tell you.”
Lachlan raised himself onto one elbow. “What do you mean?”
“She’s the daughter of a billionaire.”
“Damnit, that’s right. Bear said she came from oil money.”
“Yup, but she was the black sheep of the family. She ran off with her college professor at the age of eighteen. He was nothing but a nerdy scientist, after all,” she teased.
He tickled her to get revenge, and they spent the next few breathless moments rolling around in each other’s arms.
“When did you learn all this?” he asked, when they were done with their sex-wrestling.
“After I called her, I did another search. That was right before we got to the airport in Fairbanks, remember? All this running, it blends together. I guess I forgot to mention it.”
“Did you catch the name of the company her family owned?”
Maura shook her head. “I don’t remember. Something generic and corporate. Initials, maybe.”
“It wasn’t TNG, was it? Andrea’s maiden name was Garth. Maybe the G is for Garth?”
She screwed up her face. “No, of course I would have remembered that. But it could be a subsidiary of TNG, or vice versa. I’d ask Charlie to look into it, but I haven’t had a peep of a signal since the storm hit.”
Lachlan sighed and went quiet for a moment, following a rabbit hole of speculation. “I wonder if her family bankrolled their trip out here.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’m sure it wasn’t cheap, flying all his research equipment into Wind Valley, not to mention everything they’d need to survive for a winter. I’ve been wondering about the Apache helicopter that picked them up. A billionaire could probably pull a few strings and get the use of one. Unless…” Now the wheels were really turning. “Unless he was doing research on behalf of the military.”
“Okay, now you’re really going out on a limb. I haven’t seen anything in the sketches that looks military. No camouflage or army tents.”
“That’s true. Dr. Reed’s field notes haven’t mentioned it either.” There went that idea. But he was onto something, he just knew it. Every brilliant discovery involved a few wrong turns along the way.
He sat upright in bed, oblivious to the cold air outside their blanket fort. “Theory time. This might be like throwing darts, so bear with me.”
She sat up too, a blanket wrapped around her shoulder. “Okay, hit me, so long as these darts are only metaphorical.”
“Professor gets a wild hair to do research in the wilderness. Wife doesn’t want to die, so she goes to her family to request financial assistance on their quest. She lets the cat out of the bag and tells them that her husband is researching something that might revolutionize the energy industry. She promises them the inside track on whatever he’s doing.”
Maura was nodding along. “I can buy that. Here’s another scenario. They went to Wind Valley on their own, but she got fed up with her situation and called her family for help when she wanted to leave. Remember that phone call that Bear overheard?”
“That makes sense too.” He was less sure about what came next. “But I think they both wanted to leave. They were getting sick and so were the kids.”
“Okay, so was Dr. Reed warning us to stay away from Wind Valley because we might get sick there, like they did? I don’t know. That didn’t sound like what he was saying. And what about the other people he said were calling? And the fact that Andrea Reed isn’t picking up her voicemail messages?”
Good point. He thought about it, trying to make all the bits and pieces of information fit together. “I’ve noticed that Dr. Reed’s notebooks were written in a strange way. The formulas make sense, but there’s always one crucial piece of information left out. His design would be almost impossible to replicate based only on what’s in these journals. At first I thought that was due to his cognitive difficulties. But now I wonder if he did it deliberately.”
“Because he didn’t trust anyone.”
“Right. Not even his own wife. If her family had provided the funding, he might have been afraid she’d tell them too much.” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve been wondering why he left these boxes here. Maybe he wanted to keep them away from Andrea.”
“Their relationship was already cracking,” Maura said thoughtfully. “I wonder how long it took them to get divorced?”
Lachlan continued with his theory. “Let’s just say, for the sake of argument and throwing a dart, that Dr. Reed and Andrea were at odds over his research by the time they left.”
Maura nodded along. “Yes! He didn’t want a big oil corporation claiming his discovery, so he just abandoned it. Tossed it to the wolves, so to speak.”
“That’s my theory. The question I still can’t answer is, did his device work or not?”
“Here’s another question. Was it his device that gave everyone that tremor? Did it affect the wildlife too? Are they still being affected? If this energy experiment is the problem, why is it only now that the moose and wolves are acting strangely? Why not for the last ten years?”
He was nodding along—these were all very valid questions. And one more— “Exactly what did they leave behind in Wind Valley?”