Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
At that, Riggs shocked the breath out of me when he came right to me, wrapped his hand around the back of my head and bent to kiss my forehead.
As fast as that happened, he did the same to Ledger.
Then he vanished into the murky alcove staircase.
I looked to his son who was staring after his dad.
Then I went to his son and touched his shoulder.
He looked up at me.
“Finish your sandwich?”
He nodded.
“Wanna see a haunted cabin?”
He smiled, not entirely committed to it, but it was there.
“Sure,” he replied.
“Righty ho, let’s go so we can be back before your grandmother gets here.”
He nodded and led the way.
I followed.
TEN
Keep Going
Nadia
It was late-ish, and I was in the reading nook with a cup of tea and a book I wasn’t reading because I was thinking about Abigail Riggs, Ledger’s grandmother and Rigg’s mom.
She was not what I expected, not any of the things that could be.
She wasn’t broken down by having an abusive husband who didn’t leave her alone even after she left their marriage. She wasn’t a hardened, bitter woman who endured the same. She also wasn’t a no-nonsense, outdoorsy type who looked like she could chop her own wood and definitely tended her own garden and canned her own tomatoes.
No, she was trim, though not slim, and wore nice jeans and a stark-white blouse that had some embroidery in it and looked part-prairie, part-southwest. Her jeans had a cool, thin, tooled belt with a lovely silver buckle threaded through the loops.
And silver, for Abigail, was a theme, since she had a lot of it around her neck, her wrists, on her fingers and at her ears.
She was also very pretty, with great skin that did not say she had a thirty-eight-year-old son and nine-year-old grandson.
And she was a redhead. It wasn’t flaming and brazen, or strawberry and demure, but auburn and probably dyed, but it didn’t look it, and I suspected it had been her natural color before time took it away.
She was also quiet, and looked at me in a thoughtful and kind way that told me on his drive to the hospital, Riggs had shared a few things, and although he and I being in the Friend Zone was one of them (because she didn’t look me over), I knew other things were shared besides.
She was grateful I’d stepped up for Ledger, and before she took Ledger with her, she asked if I might want to get a coffee with her someday soon.
I agreed.
We exchanged numbers.
And that was that.
It made me wonder what Riggs’s sister was like, because with a dad like he described, and the good-time, rough and ready, big-truck driving, part-time biker guy vibe Riggs gave off, Abigail Riggs was a surprise, so I wondered if the sister was the same.
This was on my mind when I heard it.
A noise coming from outside like two stones being cracked together.
I sat motionless, my eyes aimed at the hall to the back door. A door I could not see from where I sat.
I’d lit the fairy lights and the lanterns out there (when I’d found the AC remotes, I discovered the lanterns had remotes too). Same with the front lanterns, which were now also lit. I lit them all every night, because they were pretty, but also because they cut away the dark that pressed at the windows when night fell, something I wasn’t yet used to.
The sound came again. It was louder, though didn’t seem closer.
What it did seem like, was it was coming from the south side, or the trail that led to stables that had been burned to the ground fifteen years ago.
Okay, ghosts did not exist.
But I’d seen a variety of wildlife, in fact, a lot of it. Rabbits, squirrels, deer, even what I suspected was an elk. They were all over the place, and clearly not used to, nor overly fussed by, me taking over Weaver Cabin, because they didn’t shy away when I wasn’t outside, and even when I was out on the pier.
A deer, or an elk, could easily dislodge a stone with one of their hooves.
Couldn’t they?
The sound came again, three times, in quick succession, and those noises sounded like they were getting closer.
For the second time that day, my heart rate spiked, and my mouth went dry while that prickling sensation covered my skin before I heard a strange, whispering noise I couldn’t place at all, and it faded into the distance.
And as I sat there for an unknown amount of time listening hard, I jumped nearly out of my skin when a sharp rap sounded on the screen door.
I set the book aside, got up and moved just enough so I could look down the hall.
I saw Riggs standing at the back door.
When he spied me, he held up a bottle of wine identical to the one he’d had last night, and called, “This time, a thank you gift.”