and he raised his hands as if surrendering, though obviously he was not. “I’m just saying. You Goodnights have a track record as eccentric meddlers.”
I folded my arms, calmly, like we were just shooting the breeze. “You know, Phin told me about the ghost rumors in town. That it’s some old story that resurfaced because your construction crew found a skull in the ground. I don’t see how that could reasonably be Aunt Hyacinth’s fault.”
His snort wasn’t quite as rude as yesterday’s. “Nothing about your family is reasonable.”
“You don’t even know us,” I said, determined not to lose my temper today.
“I know there isn’t any reason for you to be here other than morbid curiosity.”
Despite everything, that made me laugh. “Jeez, McCulloch. Isn’t that enough? I can’t be the only one with an addiction to the Discovery Channel. It’s like a forensic detective show in my backyard.”
He seemed surprised by my laugh, and I had to admit, I hadn’t exactly been Little Miss Sunshine up to that point. After a considering pause, as if searching for artifice, he said, almost with humor, “My backyard, actually.”
“Fine. I’m trespassing.” I dropped my arms and refilled the dogs’ bowl before capping the water bottle. “If you’re going to run us off, can I at least get a look at the cool stuff first?”
“You swear you’re just here to satisfy your curiosity?” he asked, still skeptical.
I drew an X over my chest and raised my right hand, careful what I said, because oaths have consequences. “My motives are pure.”
If I was lying to anyone, it was to myself. I wanted nothing to do with ghost hunting or rumors of haunting, but the apparition, its reaching hand and gasping mouth, was never far from my thoughts. It had only moved to the corner of my mind, where the morning sun couldn’t reach.
Ben seemed satisfied, and he stepped back to let me pass. As I did—ignoring the tingle where my shoulder brushed his—I added, for the hell of it, “But I can’t promise my sister won’t get a wild hair and decide to experiment with raising the dead.”
His brows shot back down; they were extremely expressive, really. “You aren’t nearly as funny as you think you are.”
“Who’s joking?” I said as I headed toward the dig site and the uncovered grave by the river.
8
ben and I made our way toward the bottom of the hill, where I could see Phin and Mark talking. I was almost more worried about missing something interesting than anything Phin might be saying. After all, I’d just suggested she might raise the dead. Clearly the Goodnight way was rubbing off on me.
The site below consisted of a six-foot-square hole that had been partitioned off into smaller squares. A couple of people were on their hands and knees around the trench, combing through it with small trowels and brushes. Beside that, a handful of students sifted through a pile of dirt that the bulldozer had scraped up; literally sifted, each using a box frame with a wire screen across the bottom, like a sieve.
We had almost reached the cleared area when the sound of an engine made us both stop and turn. A pickup had pulled in behind the SUV my sister had left in the middle of the gravel road, and if I were a whimsical person, I would say the truck gave a throaty diesel grunt of irritation as it backed up and cut across the grass.
It parked near the other trucks, where the ranch hands sat on the tailgates, some of them smoking, some watching the dig, nobody working. A sandy-haired man got out; he was dressed in the cowboy uniform—jeans, twill shirt, sleeves rolled up, T-shirt visible at the neck. His skin was tanned and weathered, making it hard to guess his age, but he seemed old enough to be Ben’s dad. So curiosity kept me where I was.
Truck Guy strode up to Ben, looking harried. “Got a call that the fence needs repair out in the north quarter. If the bone folks are going to be digging here the rest of the day, I’ll take these guys”—he nodded to the idlers by their trucks—“and get to work on it. No sense in their standing around here doing nothing.”
Ben nodded, all businesslike. “Go on. The professor said they’d be done today, but I don’t know what time. Fence has got to be fixed, and it’ll take you an hour to get over there anyway.”
The man, arms akimbo, glared