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Her giggle was infectious: he giggled too. Or chuckled, more like. Laughed. Or so he told himself. No way was he admitting to having giggled. But giggle or not, he still wasn’t keen on digging buck naked. And no doubt it would be him doing most of the digging. He wasn’t going to stand there and watch while Catherine wielded the spade, especially not with her sore knee. He wasn’t that type of man.
Grinning, he shook his head. “Nope. Not happening, baby girl. You can go out there naked if you want to, but I’m not. I’m putting on some clothes.”
“Chicken.” Catherine squawked at him again, but he didn’t care. On this, he wasn’t budging.
“Then I’m wearing jeans. And underwear.” She emphasised the last word, locking her eyes with his, challenging him. “So what’s it to be?”
She raised her eyebrows questioningly, which amused him. She’d always been jealous of his ability to raise just one eyebrow and no matter how often she’d tried, she’d never mastered the skill.It’s probably one of those genetic things,he’d said, trying to placate her.You know how some people can roll their tongue and some can’t? Like that.She’d pouted then.I can’t roll my tongue either, she’d complained.It’s not fair.He remembered the day well: she’d been four days off her nineteenth birthday. The wordsit’s not fairhad passed her lips a few times that day, including when she’d broken down in his arms and sobbed against his shoulder, wetting his shirt with her tears, crying so hard that the words she’d uttered didn’t even make sense. He didn’t know what had happened, exactly. She never said, and he never pressed. But he knew her home life wasn’t happy. And he knew she needed him to be her rock. So that was what he did.
To annoy her, he raised just the one eyebrow, doing his best to look stern but failing miserably. She crossed her arms over her chest, just under her breasts, her forearms pushing them up, accentuating her cleavage. Her stance was on purpose, he knew. If she wanted to annoy him she would have used her crossed arms to cover her boobs, not to make them look good.
“Hmmmmm?” she asked again.
“Okay,” he conceded. “You can wear jeans. With underwear. But when we get back to the hut they’re coming right back off, understand?”
Her smile was her only answer, but it was the only answer he needed. She’d won. Or at least, she thought she did. He grinned too, despite himself. She probably had.
It didn’t take them long to pull on yesterday’s clothes and the hoodies they’d brought along just in case. Catherine’s was cute—deep green, with Garfield on the front. She caught him looking at it and blushed.
“It was cheap,” she explained, shrugging. “And it’s warm.”
“It’s cute.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, as he tugged his own hoodie down over his belly. “I like it.”
Together, they put on shoes and walked outside, Catherine able to take a lot more of her weight on her sore leg than a few hours ago. The sleep, short though it was, seemed to have done wonders.
“Knee getting better?”
She looked down at it and frowned. “Hopefully.”
She leaned on him as they retraced their footsteps from the night before, out to the huge macrocarpa tree behind the hut. It looked even bigger in the daylight than it had in the glow of the moon, and its sprawling branches cast long shadows across the ground.
“The tree was a lot smaller in my dream,” Catherine muttered. “I don’t even know if it’s the right one.”
Jason spun them around. “Do you see any other trees here?”
“No. But…”
She looked crestfallen.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find it.” He hugged her close, wanting to reassure her, wanting to take away her pain, wanting to give her hope. He didn’t want to make any promises he couldn’t keep, but he wanted her to be happy. “If there’s something buried out here, I promise you we’ll find it. We’ll dig all day if we have to.” There it was: the loophole.If there’s something buried out here. If there’s something to find. If what you saw was somehow real and not just your crazy imagination. If this isn’t just all brought on by stress and curiosity and wishful thinking.He stopped himself. He didn’t want to go down this road of doubting her; she’d been doubted enough, tormented enough, told she was crazy often enough. He wasn’t going to do that to her. He was going to support her, no matter what he thought of it all.
“You wait here.” He disentangled his arm from hers, made sure she was steady on her feet. “I’m going to find a spade. This is a farm—there’s bound to be one around here somewhere. See if you can remember where he dug. Find us the best spot.”
Was she even listening to him? He didn’t think she was. Her eyes were glazed and her breathing was shallow. She seemed to be deep in thought. Or lost in memories, dreamland. But she nodded, so he took that as his cue to leave.
Finding a spade was far easier than he’d expected—there was one in the little lean-to that held the firewood, propped up against the rusted, corrugated iron wall. It had dried dirt crusted over the edge and didn’t look like it had been sharpened in years, but it would do. It would have to.
“Found one!” He waved it above his head as he walked back to the tree but Catherine acted like she hadn’t even heard him. What was up with her? He shook his head in confusion. Hopefully it wouldn’t take long for them to find whatever it was she was looking for; he couldn’t let her go on like this. She was like a zombie. Not walking, not talking. Just staring.
“Hey!”
She turned to him as he approached, perhaps hearing him for the first time, and she tried to smile but it was shaky. Multiple emotions flitted across her face. He recognised uncertainty. Fear. He didn’t know what else. Excitement, maybe? Anticipation?
“Where are we digging?”
She took a few wobbly steps forward, limping badly, leaning heavily on her good leg. He watched as she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, held her hands out in front of her, palms up, as though she was feeling for something. Another step forward. Two left. She stopped again, closed her eyes.
“Here.” Her response was barely more than a whisper, so quiet he hardly heard it. But he didn’t need to. Her whole body shook.
