Page 8 of Digging Up Love
Of course Alisha knew that: it was all the Snyders talked about for years after their grandson had gotten into the prestigious program.
“So I advised her to call the university, on account we had the connection, and before we know it, we hear back from the folks atCNU, who say they’re sending someone down to investigate. Can you believe it?”
Shecouldn’tbelieve it, actually. But Mrs.Snyder wasn’t looking for an answer. “So we’ll see you soon!”
“Excuse me?” Had she missed something?
“You sure haven’t heard a word I said, else you’d be halfway here by now. You got a man there with ya?” Innuendo dripped like bacon grease off Mrs.Snyder’s words, and Alisha held the phone away from her ear, gagging.
“At the restaurant? C’mon now, Mrs.S. Just throwing some brownies together, like I said.”
“Mm-hmm.” Mrs.Snyder drew out the sound, and Alisha banged her forehead silently against the walk-in fridge. “Well, get your little heinie back home. This here could be the most exciting thing to happen in Hawksburg ever. Best get here before the scientist does.”
She rubbed her brow, where a headache was fast forming, and not from the fridge. “What scientist?”
“The pro-fe-ssor. From Chicago Northern University?” Mrs.S annunciated each word like an American tourist asking for directions to the Louvre. “Told your grandma he’d drive down this morning to check out the claim. Sounded very professional on the phone, she said.”
Had Granny shared that tidbit, or did Mrs.Snyder have their landline bugged? Chances were fifty-fifty.
Still, she should get home before Mrs.S lost her mind. Alisha tossed the cocoa container and lid into recycling, then washed up the bowl so Hank wouldn’t walk into a mess. The brownies could wait, since technically Monday was her day off.
Her car sat under a dusting of unusual spring snow, so Alisha pulled her sleeve down over her hand to clean off the windows. Once the windshield was snow-free, she hip-bumped against the driver’s side door, lifting the handle at the same time. The door caved openwith a thud, and she stumbled back but quickly righted herself, used to the routine.
After falling into her seat, Alisha cranked up the ignition with a muttered Hail Mary. After a heart-stopping second, the engine turned over. Ignoring Grandpa’s oft-repeated warning to let the car warm up a minute first, she pulled out into the deserted street.
Who had time for that? From the sound of things, Hawksburg would be crawling with news crews any minute now. Alisha giggled, but she did wonder just what kind of bones Steve had dug up. A few years ago, she remembered hearing about a farmer who’d discovered a wooly mammoth in Michigan. Were there mammoths in Illinois? She had absolutely no idea. Probably a rotten deer carcass.
The gossip chain liked to make a mountain out of a molehill, and Granny and Mrs.S were the ringleaders. Nothing else to do in Hawksburg. If she stayed here for almost three-quarters of a century, no doubt she’d get invested in small-town tomfoolery too. But that wouldn’t happen.Couldn’t happen.Besides, Granny’s last checkup went great. And no red flags from Grandpa since the “promotion.”
At the blinking red stoplight leading out of town, she clicked on her blinker needlessly, then rubbed a sleeve against the inside of the windshield to bail out the feeble defrost. Fallow fields stretched to the horizon, an endless brown sea with dirt-clod and cornstalk flotsam and jetsam. She contemplated running the light. But like always, piece of gum working restlessly in her jaw, she waited.
Goody-goody, her inner critic scolded in a singsong voice that sounded a lot like her little sister’s. No traffic in sight, she accelerated, gritting her teeth at the stark reality that returning home hadn’t been the blip she’d expected. Seven years since she’d planned to put Hawksburg in her rearview for good, she remained stuck at its epicenter, rooted like the ancient oak in her grandparents’ front yard.
Fields gave way to pastureland dotted with cows gave way to more fields. Pothole-riddled pavement turned to dirt. The Geo bottomed outin a moon-size crater, and Alisha’s gum hit the back of her throat. She coughed it out and shoved it onto the lid of an empty coffee cup on the passenger seat to focus. Snow was blowing across the road, and she didn’t want to hit a stray deer, or worse yet, a cow.
She passed the Snyders’ well-kept brick farmhouse on the left and pulled into her grandparents’ driveway a quarter mile down. A couple of bare maples and a brown-leafed oak sheltered the two-story white farmhouse. The peeling porch pillars were wrapped in cheery multicolored Christmas lights Granny might take down by Memorial Day, maybe.
A pickup truck sat in the gravel driveway. The paleontologist? Alisha killed the engine with her usual prayer that the Geo wouldn’t sink into its final rest, heaved the door open, then popped the trunk to retrieve her bag.
Schlepping her duffel past the truck, she had to restrain herself from caressing its sleek black side. Though she’d stubbornly resisted most facets of farm life, she wasn’t immune to the purr of a diesel engine and the allure of an extended cab. Nothing quite like a man sitting behind the wheel of a big truck to set her heart aflutter.
But she had a mental picture of the paleontologist, and it didn’t match the sexy pickup. Pushing fifty, craggy faced, with sun-bleached blond hair. Dressed in head-to-toe khaki. A brown leather fedora the hokey cherry on top.
Not like appearances mattered. She would help Granny deal with the situation and send him—or her, she thought, correcting another assumption—on their merry way, hopefully with no hard feelings for a wasted trip. She headed into the house, the sagging porch steps creaking under her feet.
Dropping her duffel at the foot of the staircase, she called out into the quiet house. “Granny?”
No answer.
“Mrs.S?” Surely she’d zoomed over to watch the show as fast as her motorized scooter could carry her the moment she’d finished her illicit phone call.
Still nothing. Must be out back. Alisha clomped down the shotgun hallway in her boots, risking a tongue-lashing from Granny.
Her phone chimed, and she dug it out of her pocket.
Meg:
Home yet?
