Page 7 of Digging Up Love
“It should.” His brother tossed the file on the desk and sank into his chair, broad shoulders hunched. Another contrast. Quentin had his dad’s height, but Hector had his brawn. “He leans into you because he expects a lot of you. Not because he doesn’t care.”
“I know. But you’d think after all my hard work, he’d see my career is worthwhile. Maybe the one worthwhile thing I’ve got.”
Emotion clogged his throat, unwelcome but not unexpected. Hector’s eyebrows tugged up and inward over his brown eyes. Quentin hated being the object of that hangdog expression. He stood, shouldering his messenger bag. “I’m out. See ya Sunday.”
Before he could turn, Hector stood and grabbed his palm, pulling him in for a hug. “Take care, Q.”
CHAPTER 4
ALISHA
Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz. Thwap!
Alisha’s phone vibrated itself off the metal prep table and hit the floor. Whisk in hand, she stooped to retrieve it with a jaw-cracking yawn, exhausted from rising before dawn for the long drive home. Janet Snyder.Jeepers, what now?
“Hello?”
“Hiya, girlie! Glad I caught ya. Ellie told me you were at your sister’s for the weekend.” Alisha didn’t bat an eyelash. Granny and Mrs.Snyder had been best friends for almost sixty years and kept no secrets from each other. “Yeah, I was. Just got back into town.” She blinked blearily at the bowl of flour on the counter. Had she added baking soda yet?
“Oh, so you’re already home, then.” A softscritchcame through the phone, and Alisha imagined the curtain sliding open to reveal Mrs.Snyder’s bulbous nose pressed to the glass pane of her living room window. “Don’t see your car.”
Busybody.She crooked the phone into her shoulder and stood on tiptoes to pull down the cocoa powder. “Not home yet.”
Almost there. Another inch ... and the canister tumbled off the shelf and into the bowl of flour, dumping its contents. Great. “Figured I’d get a jump on the week’s baking so I could take Granny to the store later.” And maybe actually devote the rest of her day off to her cookie business for once. A girl could dream, right?
“Oh, don’t got to worry about that, dear. I had Steve take us both on Saturday. He likes to stay busy, get out of the house every day.” She bet he did. “But that’s neither here nor there. The reason I called is ...” Mrs.Snyder’s voice dropped, and Alisha palmed the phone to see if she’d lost the call, but the connection was intact.
Bringing her cell back to her ear, she said, “Sorry, lost you for a minute.”
Mrs.Snyder tsked. “I said, your granny’s got a situation on her hands. She didn’t want you to know, but you really ought to be in the loop.”
Alisha stopped listening. Blood pulsed in her ears.Granny.Her cancer had relapsed.
No, no, no, no.Her hands shook, and she set the phone on the counter, activating the speaker button on her second try. Blackness crept into the edges of her vision. She never should’ve accepted Simone’s invitation. Granny needed her here, not hundreds of miles away.
Guilt welled up in her chest. All this time, she’d been contemplating deserting her grandparents to start up a bakery in Chicago ... stupid. Selfish.
“Are you listening, Ali? It’s Steve. He dug up a dinosaur.”
If Alisha hadn’t been a panicked mess, she would’ve burst out laughing. Relief cascaded over her, immediate and overwhelming. False alarm. Just the latest in Mrs.S’s absurd snippets of gossip, passed on with all the credibility of a sleepover game of telephone.
She lifted the empty cocoa tub out of the bowl and dusted it off, not even bothered about the new batch she’d have to start. She’d bakea thousand trays of plain brownies, as long as Granny stayed safe and healthy.
But a dinosaur bone ... what in the world? She brushed her hands on her apron, trying to connect the dots. Her grandparents had enlisted Mrs.Snyder’s husband, Steve, to use his backhoe to dig them a pool. He’d planned to break ground this weekend. Another reason her reluctance to leave town hadn’t been all show, but Granny had practically packed her bag for her.
“Are you hearing me, Ali? Steve discovered a real liveT. rexright on your property!”
“Aliveone, huh?” Retreating adrenaline left her on the verge of laughter, but Mrs.S went on, oblivious.
“On Friday, Steve took the tractor over. Your granny and I went on out to supervise, since your granddad’s out of town. Shame, you both abandoning your grandmother on the same weekend. Lucky Steve and I are around to look after her.”
The barb hit its mark, and Alisha rubbed a thumb at her breastbone.
Perhaps sensing her guilt trip had landed, Mrs.S let it lie. “Anyhoo, Steve’s out there digging. And when he’s ’bout finished, up comes this almighty scrape. I run over, waving my arms for him to stop. Lucky he saw me ’fore he shattered the bone. Thought sure we’d uncovered a murder.”
Not a big leap for a woman who spent her afternoons bingeing serial-killer documentaries on Netflix.
“But lo and behold, the bone was bigger than any human had rights to. Anyanimalneither. So your granny just went ahead and made a few calls. See, you might not know this, but our Bobby went to Chicago Northern for his microbiology degree.”
