Page 14 of Omega’s Fold

“Thank you. I have some work to do.”

He nods, satisfied, and disappears down the hall. I hear his feet on the boards.

I close the door, stand with my back to it, and breathe out.

The bed is still behind me. The quilt still folded at the corner. The paperback still on the nightstand. She liked people. She would not mind.

I sit back down on the bed and I pull the laptop out of the suitcase.

I open it on my knees and press the power button and watch it wake up. I have emails to answer. I have a client call scheduled for tomorrow morning that I need to move. I have the project file for the waterfront building open, and a redline from an engineer I was supposed to look at last night.

I forgot to ask for the Wi-Fi password, but it would not surprise me entirely if they haven’t got one and I can just connect directly.

No networks found.

I click the little icon and refresh again. A clean, empty list. Not a locked neighbor’s network I might finesse. Not a weak signal I might improve by walking toward a window. Nothing. Wyatt Briggs doesn’t have damned Wi-Fi.

Who doesn’t have Wi-Fi in this day and age?

I reach for my cellphone and check for the signal. I’d had to call Sun from the landline because the signal was poor but maybe I was in the wrong place.

Maybe there’s a sweet spot.

I take my phone with me and walk the length of the house with it held up at different heights like a dowsing rod, but I already know what I’m seeing.

I trot up and down the hallway, then outside onto the porch.

I stalk the yard until a voice at my elbow says, “We don’t have internet. Or much signal.”

I look down. Matthew is beside me. He has followed me out. His face is pitched a little apologetically, as if this is information he has had to break to other visitors and knows the reaction.

“Not at all?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

He trails off.

I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t. “And the cell service is...”

“Up the ridge’s better,” he offers. “You can drive up if you want to. Or walk. Walking’s nice.” He considers. “The ridge is pretty. You can see the road from up there. And the highway.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

I lower the phone and put it back in my pocket. I’m going to have to use the landline again to call work and tell them I’m not going to have my presentation ready for tomorrow. Or at least, I’m not going to be able to deliver it.

The yard is quiet. The cattle in the middle pasture are lowing and the dog has come out from under the porch and is sitting in a patch of sun with its tongue hanging out. Somewhere behind the barn, a gate rattles.

And underneath all of it, low and constant and mechanical, I hear the pumps.

I did not notice them before. I was too occupied with trying to talk to Wyatt.

But now I have stood for a full minute in the middle of a yard that is otherwise quiet.

I know that sound. It is the low, sustained, mechanical hum of industrial dewatering. I’ve heard its rhythm on multiple sites in my life. I turn my head toward it.

The ranch sits in a shallow bowl of land and the view out beyond the far pasture lifts up to the ridge Matthew mentioned.