“And why on earth would you do that?” I ask dryly.
“Or, at least, most of the records for the land that’s now National Forest, since it wasn’t established until 1936. When the Silverton Lumber Company went out of business in the 80s, they donated all their old documents to the Historical Society, who’ve been working on digitizing them.”
She says this like it’s a piece of fun trivia.
“You went through all that trouble for something that’s not your problem?” I ask her, keeping my voice low.
“Give me a map and a couple of days, and I’ll have a good idea of which areas haven’t been logged since the 1820s,” she says.
“June,” I say, and the front door opens.
Silas steps out. He looks left, then right, like he’s looking for someone else, and then he comes over to where June and I are standing.
I don’t move, but I’d be lying if I said that knot didn’t tighten in my gut.
“How many times can a child play Parcheesi?” he asks, his voice low.
“Dozens,” I say. “Hundreds.”
He looks over his shoulder, like he’s checking that Rusty hasn’t followed him out.
“She has to be cheating, right? She kicked my ass four times in a row.”
“I can’t be that hard,” June says.
“You wanna play me? Bring it,” Silas says.
“I meant cheating can’t be that hard, pea brain.”
“If she’s cheating, I didn’t catch her,” I offer.
“Can you even cheat at Parcheesi?” Silas asks.
“You can cheat at anything,” says June.
Silas takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, lets it out slowly, opens them again.
“What are you two doing out here?” he asks, changing the subject.
“Talking,” June says, and at the exact same time I say, “Also hiding from Rusty.”
We look at each other.
“Should I be defending my sister’s virtue?” Silas says, with a grin that’s definitely intended to annoy June.
“Silas, why on earth do you think I’ve got any virtue left for you to defend?” June asks, sounding faux-astonished. “Didn’t I ever tell you about my orgy phase?”
“No,” says Silas, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes.
“Oh, it was during college,” June says brightly. “For a while I was dating this guy who just could not get off unless there were at least—”
“Okay, I’m sorry,” Silas says, eyes still closed.
“—seven people of any gender in the same room, and at least three of them had to be—"
“So sorry,” he says.
“—you know, doing it with their hands or mouths or butts or whatever—”
June helpfully demonstrates this by making a ring with her left thumb and pointer finger, then poking her right pointer finger through repeatedly.
“Okay.”
“—And since we were dating, usually I was in there doing, I don’t know, like five people at once—"
“Okay.”
“—Sometimes more, it’s so hard to keep track, there’s just so many holes—”
“You win!” Silas says, holding up both hands. “Okay. You win, I’m sorry, I’m going to go lose at Parcheesi a million more times.”
He’s already walking back across the porch, and just as he opens the door, June calls out, “Orgy!” and Silas flips her off, then disappears.
“Dick,” she mutters under her breath, then looks up at me. I’m still trying not to laugh. “Sorry about him,” she says.
“I think you handled that perfectly,” I say.
“He’s always been a total pain in the ass about the guys I date but this whole Brett thing made him extra bonkers,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I don’t know where he gets it from. I mean, my dad is a perfectly reasonable human being about the men in my life, and then here comes Silas to get all caveman about it.”
I’ve got an inkling, but I don’t say anything. If Silas ever wants to share, that’s his prerogative.
“And I’ve never actually been to an orgy, just for the record,” she says, looking up at me.
I swear her cheeks turn faintly pink, but it could be my imagination. A trick of the light. Anything.
“Really?” I deadpan, and June grins, looks away.
“I did get invited to one once,” she says. “I think it was just out of politeness, though.”
That sends a hitch through my train of thought, a quick ripple. I could tell she was joking before, just to get Silas’s goat, but the admission that she was invited is… different.
Different in that, for a split second, I can’t help but imagine her naked, gasping, her cheeks flushed, her eyes unfocused.
One split second, I swear. Then it’s gone.
“Do orgies normally extend invitations out of politeness?” I ask.
“That I don’t know,” June says. “I did consider going. Briefly. It would have been a good story. Anyway, logging records.”
“You’re changing the subject from orgies to logging records?” I say. “That’s quite a switch.”
“I’m pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel of my knowledge about orgies,” she says. “Unless you’ve got something to share.”
“Can’t say I do,” I admit. “But we don’t have to talk about logging records either, because we’re not working together, the end.”