“Beaver,” Marna said, choosing a pair of liner socks and another pair of wool ones.
“You think?” Abbie pulled off her shirt and was wringing it out.
Marna laughed as she unbuttoned her pants and pushed them over her hips. “For sure, there’s beaver up here.”
“Funny girl,” Sommer said and waited until Marna had stopped jumping into her pants before she asked. “But gaillardia?”
“That takes about a week to kick in,” Marna panted as she zipped up the closure. “When we get down again, Abbie and I need to run by the doc in the box and ask them for some antibiotics before it could kick in with its full effect.”
“A week, you’re sure?” Abbie asked.
“If you’re worried about it, Abbie,” Sommer said, “we don’t have to go all the way up. We can sleep out tonight and walk back down in the morning.” Sommer grinned. “I live in the woods; we can camp in my backyard like we’re ten-year-olds.”
Marna caught Abbie’s gaze. “How much water did you swallow?”
“I dunno, maybe a pint? I have to pee already, that’s for sure.” Abbie said, looking toward the tree line.
“Cold coochie, that’s why you need to pee,” Marna said, “not from swallowing stream water.”
Sommer held out her hand. “Here, give me that shirt. Go find a tree.”
“Are you kidding? Everything is wet. My panties are sopping. If I slide them down my thighs they’ll roll up into a cigar, and I’ll have to deal with that on top of everything else.”
“She’s right though,” Marna said as she struggled into a dry pair of underwear, “panties always roll when they’re wet. Then you end up walking along with panty wads.”
“The dreaded panty wads,” Sommer said. “Abbie, we’re not walking with you in wet clothes. You’ll catch your death. The air is thin and getting colder with nightfall. Just take a second to dry off and change, then pee behind a tree. We’ll throw up a line when we get the fire set up, and you’ll both have dry clothes by morning.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gabriel
Thursday Morning
Last night, after he got home, Gabriel watched the videos from the Mourning Notes feed again and again.
The woman in the video was so appealing to him.
She had a softness to her face and her expression. Her clothes had an old-fashioned, flowing feel, though maybe the softness of her face was a filter, and the clothes were chosen as part of her character’s wardrobe.
Sommer Hayes—that name was too bright and sunny to be “Mourning Notes.”
Sommer was the kind of name that belonged with the enchanted witch’s cottage of his childhood imagination.
Gabe had decided not to visit Sommer without Whiskey, thinking he might catch the woman before she left for work. Of course, perhaps she didn’t work, or worked from home. If she worked someplace else, she kept unusual hours.
This morning, after Reaper dropped Whiskey back at his house, Gabriel walked her up to the graveyard.
Whiskey sniffed the stop sign and sat to look up at Gabriel.
No howling. Not the smallest whimper.
Together they moved up the road to the white picket gate, then up the cobblestone walk to Sommer’s porch.
The floorboards were painted eggplant, and the porch roof was painted blue.
Haint blue, the word came to mind, and Gabriel couldn’t remember why. If he thought about it, he’d look it up later.
As he lifted the old-fashioned brass doorknocker and tapped three times, Gabriel saw a line of white grains across her threshold, and he bent to look at it, thinking it was maybe bug or rodent repellent, but as he got closer, he thought it was probably salt.
