How does it feel?

2. A short time prior

Callie

I slid my hands over the sun-warmed leather with an influx of small prayers.

The old truck gurgled and shook at my attempted coaxing. I heaved out a sudden breath of relief, sliding down in the seat a few relaxed inches. I wouldn’t ruin my record. No late days, no call offs.

I was doing a good job.

The tires crackled haphazardly over the stray twigs that littered the
gravel of my driveway as I pulled out of the winding trail and headed away from my beautiful cottage.

Okay, maybe calling it a cottage was a
stretch . . . and maybe so was calling it beautiful, but cabin made me think of some old hunting shack in the middle of nowhere. My house was much, much cuter.

I’d bought it two years ago for a steal from a pot bellied widower with a bald head and a penchant for pulling too many whitetails that he didn’t have tags for. Was he trying to bribe me? Possibly. It was rumored I was dating the game warden, and in a small town like this, the folks would do anything to get a leg up, especially when it came to deer tags.

I almost couldn’t blame them, except that tagging was set up specifically to help control the wildlife population, and when people took it upon themselves to judge what numbers were okay to kill, the rehabilitation efforts and statistics always got skewed and caused problems.

It didn’t matter because Cliff and I weren’t dating anyway . . . and also, Paul the potbelly had died a few days after I had bought the house. My grip on the leather steering wheel tightened at the thought of Cliff, the handsome game warden, but I quickly brushed it away. In truth, we had never even been on a date, and we never would.

When the state had hired me as the park’s environmental scientist, Cliff was one of the only kind faces to greet me. The small hole-in-the-wall town did not take kindly to a stuck-up fancy-pants scientist ruffling around in their business ( I actually heard this one with my own ears at the Sizzler in Mulberry), coming to their beloved town and ordering them to stop pulling out their milkweed and tightening the parks hunting regulations.

Being the only woman to work the parks besides Cecelia at the wildlife rehab center, most of the men didn’t take me seriously, and the ones that did were accused of having an affair with me. I guess that’s small towns for you.

Though I can’t remember my town having the same mentality, I was practically a child when I left.

At twenty-nine years old, with no children, no husband, bright blonde hair to my waist, and a decent enough figure (you try hiking these hills all
day), the women of the town seemed to think I had a secret vendetta to steal their out-of-shape, misogynistic, hillbilly husbands or take all the available wrangler-wearing, dip-chewing men. It was actually kind of flattering if I thought about it. Until two years went by and I still had to think about it. Then it grew less flattering and more . . . lonely.

I debated stopping at the local gas station for coffee but decided against it. I really didn’t want to risk the truck not starting up again. The coffee wasn’t very good anyway, even for gas station coffee, and if I had to sit and listen to the locals talk anymore about Crazy Earl, the town drunk, and his quest for Sasquatch, I was going to quit my job and move.

Thankfully I was usually with Cliff when we stopped, and he would quiet them up a bit. He hated Crazy Earl. I’d never formally met the town drunk, but I’d heard enough stories to write a book.

I mentally made a note to check the woods behind the gas station for Amanita muscaria. They were poisonous mushrooms that, if eaten in small enough quantities, might not kill you, but made you act crazy . . . like Crazy Earl. He was always in the woods out back of the old gas station. I was just about to turn around to inspect my hunch when a long-necked bundle of brown feathers shot out across the road in front of me.