anything until they’d stepped off the porch onto the path to the shed.
“Are you finding their behavior odd?”
She nodded thoughtfully, picking her way across the dark yard. He wanted to take her arm but refrained, unsure if their relationship was on that level.
“I did. I was wondering if maybe they’d moved their stuff, although I don’t know when they would have.”
“Me either.” Reid sighed and took three more steps before he said anything. “You know what, we’re not gonna have any lights. I didn’t bring a flashlight, and there is no electricity in the shed.”
“There’s a pole light right outside. We’ll just leave the door open. If we see anything suspicious, we can always go back and grab a flashlight at the barn.”
“You’re right.”
They didn’t say anything more but walked side by side down through the yard, toward the shed.
Earlier at his mother’s house, Reid had noticed the pretty fall evening, the warm breeze that would soon turn chilly with the changing of the seasons, and the smell of a summer full of goodness that had shifted into an autumn of fulfillment.
His favorite time of year really, with all the work of the summer paying off and the food that would feed his family, the town, and the country for a winter. It was always a good feeling to reap a good harvest.
A satisfying feeling.
Even more so with both of his boys and his wife beside him.
There was just something that bonded families together when they worked and played and reaped the rewards together.
Maybe tonight, after the kids went to bed, would be a good time for him to approach the subject with Emerson. They seemed to have gotten along okay at his mom’s house, and she seemed to be softening some toward him.
Maybe.
The walls were still there, but they didn’t feel as high or solid anymore.
He opened the shed door, and it creaked back on its hinges. It stuck a little, and he had to give it a good yank in order to get it open.
“You can go first if you want to, but I’m willing,” he said. It seemed odd to just jump in front of her. After decades of letting women go first, it just wasn’t natural to not give her that consideration, as much as he was pretty sure she wasn’t going to want to walk into the darkness first. He didn’t want her to, either.
Emerson was usually rather cautious, more so than him, and he was kind of surprised that she didn’t tell him to go ahead while she waited in the doorway.
Maybe she was more concerned about the children than he thought she was.
He wasn’t really worried that they were doing anything seriously wrong. He thought they were probably just being ornery.
But Emerson sometimes had better instincts for this than he did. And he also had a tendency to just brush things aside, since he was a kid once too, and he felt like he had turned out okay.
Emerson, having not been a boy, seemed to get a little more worked up about stuff.
He stepped in behind her, and some of the light was blocked, so he moved away from the doorway.
Right away, he saw things that he wasn’t expecting. A dark pile of stuff near the back wall.
It was humped and smooth and nothing like the few tools that he had left in here somewhere. Other than that, the building had been mostly empty.
Nothing moved. That was good. The shed didn’t have any holes, and he really didn’t think there would be any animals making their home in here.
“What’s that?” Emerson asked, pointing to the pile of things.
“I’m not sure,” he said, stepping forward carefully, just in case what looked like a heap of stuff was actually something that was alive but sleeping. He didn’t want to accidentally wake up, say, a porcupine.
Maybe Emerson had the same idea, because she hesitated, seeming to stare intently in the darkness. “You don’t think it’s alive, do you?” she asked softly.
Reid supposed it was his job to walk over and find out. “I don’t think so. Hang on, I’ll check.”
He wasn’t afraid exactly. Whatever it was wasn’t big enough to do any real harm to him.
He moved forward. Emerson moved with him.
It shouldn’t surprise him, since that was the way she always was. Not the kind of shrinking violet who would sit back in the corner, waiting for someone else to do the dirty work. She’d always been willing to jump in.
He pitched his voice low.