Page 56 of Wood Riddance
He lifted one shoulder, his attention still trained on the sky ahead of us. “But it could be. This region is growing and changing. Our town could too. Imagine if the inn was open again. And imagine if we brought back some of the town festivals. Our area has incredible camping, hiking, and fishing already. I’m not saying I could do it all myself, but there is major potential here.”
He wasn’t wrong. There were a handful of vacation rentals in the Lovewell area—some of which my brother Henri owned—and they were always in demand.
“Your dad supported this?” I asked tentatively, watching his face to see how he’d react to the subject of his father.
“Yes. If I agreed to come back and work for him, he said he would invest.” His mouth turned down and his shoulders slumped just a fraction. “Obviously, that’s not happening anymore.”
I nodded, ignoring the way his reaction to the mention of his dad and his derailed plans tugged at my heartstrings. “Where does this leave your dream now?”
“It’s dead. Mostly.” He pressed his lips together and sat a little straighter. “But I’ve still got Marge. She’s the best gal a guy could ask for. As long as I can keep her, I won’t give up on the dream completely.”
“I admire your passion,” I said, hoping the whirring of the engine muffled my offhanded compliment. “And I think you should still go for it. You know, ‘dare mighty things.’”
His head snapped toward me, and a grin spread across his face. “And win glorious triumphs?” he asked, completing the quote. “Are you okay? Altitude sickness setting in?”
I looked out the window and ignored him as heat crept into my cheeks. Damn Finn Hebert and those damn sunglasses and forearms and flying skills. “It’s a good idea. I can at least admit that. This is clearly your passion. Don’t give up because things haven’t worked out the way you planned.”
I kept my eyes on the horizon, worried I’d crossed some invisible line. Up here, without the weight of all the problems I’d left behind on the ground, I was struggling to hate him.
“Okay, She-Ra, enough daydreaming about me. Get the camera.”
Silently, I snagged the camera bag from behind my seat and attached the massive lens, as he had shown me, while he decreased our altitude. Once we were where he wanted us to be, I snapped photo after photo.
“Atta girl. For a newbie, you’re handling this well.”
Still holding the camera aloft, I cocked one brow and turned to him. “Trust me, I have plenty of experience with big equipment.”
Chapter17
Finn
Site 211 was full of surprises. From the air, it looked like a small clearing, with a few buildings and dirt roads. But once we’d set foot on land? It was a completely different story.
The windows of the bunkhouse were broken, and there were several cases of beer from the ’90s stacked up neatly inside.
The cookhouse had clearly been home to several bears over the years. Most of the appliances had been pulled out of the walls and overturned, and there was debris scattered everywhere.
“I can’t believe this place,” Adele said when we stepped into the shop located at the edge of the bumpy, unpaved road.
It was nothing more than an enormous pole barn filled with junk. Naturally, the lights were out. We had located the massive diesel generators in a shed behind the cookhouse, but they were long out of fuel. Luckily, there was enough sunlight that, with the aid of a flashlight and the camera flash, we could get a sense of the place and what it contained.
Adele was in heaven, inspecting every inch of the large building while I took measurements and photos elsewhere.
After an hour, I found her still poking around, shining her flashlight and headlamp at each and every tool and gear in the place, mentally cataloging all the equipment. I spent a moment admiring the view of her bent over, ass in the air, looking at the engine of an old car she had discovered under a tarp.
I was so busy smiling like an idiot that I missed the first crack of thunder.
“What was that?” She stood ramrod straight and pushed her hair out of her face.
Side by side, we shuffled along the dirt floor to the front of the building, where we’d left the old garage door open.
Dark clouds had settled along the horizon.
I scrambled for the sat phone I’d clipped to my belt and pulled up my weather app. “Shit,” I said, rubbing my beard as a massive storm formed on the doppler.
“What’s going on?” she asked as we stepped out of the building.
“This storm was supposed to head north to Canada. Should have missed us entirely,” I explained, tilting the screen, where a large blob of orange and red and green was moving almost directly over our location.
