She keeps coming to Sunday dinners at my mom’s house with her brother, and we sneak kisses upstairs, in the backyard, in the kitchen when no one’s looking.
Another huge, old tree is murdered in the forest, and we hike out to visit its remains, but there are no more clues. On the way back, we hit on the idea of installing camera traps: remote cameras triggered by motion. We usually use them for wildlife, but they’d work for this, too.
I order them, a Byzantine process since this is the Forest Service we’re talking about. June keeps applying for jobs, getting rejections. She has a couple of phone interviews and one video interview, but none of them go anywhere.
Secretly, I’m relieved. I know she likes journalism and I know that she feels meaningless and adrift without her career, but I’m greedy and I’m selfish and I want her to stay.
We still don’t tell Silas. We go on dates to other towns, even a weekend away in West Virginia, and neither of us tells a single soul where we’re really going or who we’re going with. Each of my brothers individually makes a different that’s very interesting face when I tell them that I’m going alone to a bed and breakfast for a weekend to study a particular kind of pinecone, but I don’t care.
June’s mine, at least for now.Chapter Twenty-OneJuneFrom: [email protected]
Subject: Telephone interview, 10/2Dear Ms. Flynn,
We recently received your application for our Metro Editor position, and we think that you may be a good fit. Are you available for a telephone interview this coming Tuesday, October 2?
Regards,
Edmund Sanderson
Editor-in-Chief, Bluff City Herald-TrumpetI blink at my inbox, mouth half-open around a straw as I stare at my phone. In front of me, my laptop is open and displaying about a dozen various gifs from Parks and Recreation, mostly of Ron Swanson making grumpy faces. It’s for a listicle that I’m half-heartedly writing at the Mountain Grind, Sprucevale’s premier and only coffee shop.
Yes, I’m checking my email on my phone while my computer is in front of me. Habits are weird sometimes.
I wasn’t expecting to ever hear from the Trumpet-Herald. According to my job application tracking spreadsheet, I applied for this position over a month ago and I’m not quite qualified — they wanted two years of editorial work plus five reporting, and I’ve only got the five reporting.
But here they are, inviting me to a phone interview for what’s by far the best job I’ve applied for. There’s a part of me that suspects Silas is behind this, somehow, just to make me feel better, but regardless of that I put my drink down, open the email on my computer, and type a response that’s a more professional version of hell yes, let’s do this.
I proofread the email twice, then hit send. I take another long pull from my iced raspberry mocha, already wondering if I should have laid off the caffeine before five p.m.
I completely, utterly, and decisively ignore the fact that this job is in South Dakota. I’ll worry about that when and if it becomes an issue, because right now all I’ve got is a phone interview. I’m not even quite qualified for the job, so it’s pretty unlikely it’ll ever get past that point, and at the very least, every phone interview is good practice for the next phone interview.
Quietly, I’ve been applying for every position I can find at any small-town paper that’s two hours or less from Sprucevale. There aren’t very many, and they’re either far below where my pay grade should be or they’re far above it.
I’m just about to re-start my listicle, Thirteen Times Ron Swanson Really Felt All Our Feels, when a prickle on the back of my neck tells me to look up.
Levi is standing in the middle of the Mountain Grind, hands in his pockets, looking up at the chalkboard menu posted over the coffee bar. My heart flips. My stomach knots. I bite the inside of my lip to keep myself from smiling too much, because this place is Gossip Central.
After a moment, he glances over and nods, that quiet smile at the corner of his eyes, and as he steps forward to order his drink, I swear I’m just as nervous as the day his truck pulled up behind mine in that thunderstorm.
I pretend to work. I don’t. I scroll aimlessly through pictures while secretly watching Levi: ordering, waiting, getting a napkin, sprinkling something atop his drink and then putting the lid back on.
Then, at last, he walks over, and I try not to act like a schoolgirl.
“I didn’t know I’d run into you here,” he says by way of introduction.
It’s true. I didn’t tell him I was coming here.
“Ta da,” I say. “I had to get out of my parents’ house before they drove me actually insane.”