“So what’s wrong with the radio?” David asked, sitting down at the table across from her.
“I don’t know. Mariah had it in her pack when she fell. When I tried to use it, I noticed the housing was cracked.”
“Would you like me to take a look at it and see if I can fix it?” David asked cautiously.
Jenna looked at him skeptically. “Do you know anything about radios? This one is a pretty complex piece of equipment.”
Parker had been washing the breakfast dishes and listening to the conversation. He laughed.
“David, they’ve been here for almost a month. Don’t you think it’s time to let Jenna in on your little secret?” He stifled a grin.
“What secret?” Jenna looked from David to Parker and back to David.
“I’m … smart,” David confessed.
“Yeah, he’s smart; smart enough to start college at the age of twelve, graduate at fourteen on a double major and get a Master’s in computer technology when he was fifteen,” Parker said while looking at David. “And what’s your doctorate in?”
“Egyptology,” David answered quietly.
Jenna focused back on David. Without saying a word, she handed him the radio. He felt all the seams and then pried off the back cover at a slight indentation, and set the broken casing aside.
“Would it be okay to run the generator for a short time? I really need more light,” David asked.
While Jenna started the gennie and ran an extension cord to the table and connected a lamp, David went upstairs for his personal repair kit. He set a box on the table and opened it to reveal a number of very small tools, including a collapsible magnifying glass which he plugged into the power strip. He pressed a button on the circular magnifier, and illuminated the now enlarged circuitry. Using the thinnest screwdriver Jenna had ever seen, David delicately probed the device.
“Here’s the problem,” he mumbled more to himself than anyone else. He looked up at Jenna. “One of the circuit boards has been cracked. These things are designed to take quite a beating—she must have fallen really hard.”
“Hard enough to kill her,” Jenna replied quietly. “Do you think you can fix it?”
“Fix it? No. Bypass it—maybe.” He removed a single miniature screw and gently lifted out the circuit board, leaving it attached and dangling. After digging around in his kit, he sat back, frustrated. “I’m going to need some things from my dad’s workshop.”
“How are the girls with guns?” Parker asked Jenna.
“Decent. Helen is showing promise with a rifle,” she answered. “Why?”
“Because David is not going alone, that’s our rule, remember? We’ve been attacked by wolves more than once and someone needs to always be on alert,” Parker explained.
“Then I’ll go.” Jenna stood and reached for her boots and jacket. Parker turned her toward him.
“Be careful,” he said gently.
The snow had lifted some, and left them with a welcomed fifty feet of visibility. David led the way, breaking the trail as Jenna followed, the shotgun slung over her shoulder and her service pistol on her hip.
Inside the cold house, David made sure the front door was closed securely behind them and then led the way to his father’s massive study and work area.
“What did your father do?” Jenna asked, looking around at the various silent computers along one wall and the workbenches on the other side. Blueprints were pinned to yet another wall and a pegboard filled with neatly coiled wires hung over an isolated workbench.
“He was an electrical engineer; he could design and build anything electrical and he often did, just for the fun of it,” David replied as he opened drawer after drawer in a bank of file cabinets. He stopped and flipped through some files and brought one out. He scanned the contents quickly and stuck the file in his pack. Then he took different coils of wire off the wall and put those in his pack too. At his father’s desk, he unplugged two small hand-held radios and their chargers and dropped those into the pack. He quickly grabbed various other items and finished filling his pack.
“What are these prints for?” she asked, looking at a set of blueprints pinned to a wall.
David looked them over. “I think those are the preliminary drawings for the private cell tower he was going to build for us; never got to it though.” He picked up a few more things and slipped them in his pocket.
“I think that’s it. Let’s go.” He turned and walked back to the front room with Jenna silently following.
“Before we go back, David, can I ask you a couple of questions?” Jenna asked, her breath coming out in small puffs.
“Sure, I guess.”
“First, just how smart are you?” she grinned.
“My IQ is 185; is that what you wanted to know?” David said, frowning in embarrassment.
“Wow,” she said nodding. “And your PhD is in Egyptology?”
“My doctorate is. A PhD is basically a doctor of philosophy, philosophy being the love of wisdom, and that would be of whatever your doctorate is in. Anything else?”
Jenna hesitated. “Can you tell me a little about Parker?”
“You like him, don’t you?” David stated more than asked and smiled.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Normally, I would tell you to ask him, but I can tell you he’s a great guy. He’s been my friend, my only friend, and has stayed by me, without question, while I dealt with my dad dying. And when winter hit early, he understood that I really didn’t want to move back to the city, and he offered for me to stay with him. Not many would do that. I know there are a lot of years between us, but I really do consider Parker my best friend.”
“There are a lot of years between you? I don’t understand. How old is Parker?” she asked, confused.
“I think he’ll be twentynine in a few months,” David responded, realizing he just stepped into a delicate situation.
“Then how old are you?” Jenna asked, furrowing her brow.
“Does this stay off the record, officer?” David asked, his face going blank.
She hesitated, and then nodded.
“I’m seventeen.”
“Why is that bad?”
“Because I’m an underage orphan.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah—oh.” David frowned.
“David, as far as I’m concerned, you are as old as you need to be, to be on your own. And you’re certainly smart enough. How’s that?” Jenna smiled at him.
“Thanks.” He looked down. “We should be getting back.”
“One last question: do you think Parker likes me?”
David laughed. “Oh, yeah, he likes you.”
Outside, with snowshoes securely attached, they started down the driveway, following their previous tracks. A wolf howled in the distance and David picked up his pace.
“You found a repair manual?” Parker asked.
“Not specifically, but it could give me a good start. Give me a few minutes to read it, okay?”
“A few minutes?” Helen asked. “That book is at least a half-inch thick!”
“Oh, another secret is that David has a photographic memory. I’ve watched him read by looking from one page to the next,” Parker mused. “I suggest we leave him alone for now.”
With the manual read, and everything emptied from the pack and toolkit onto the table, David sat and organized the equipment.
Parker led the girls to one side, away from David when it was obvious they were curious about what he was doing.
“But we—”
“—want to watch.”
“I think it better if we let David concentrate,” Jenna said.
“Why don’t you two take an inventory of what’s left on the food shelves?” Parker sugges
ted.
In the kitchen, Jenna gave Parker a lopsided grin. “Giving the twins a productive chore was a good idea. It will keep them busy for at least an hour.” Her green eyes sparkled. “Got anything I can do?”
Parker’s lips twitched into a slight grin. “I can think of lots of things … but why don’t we haul in wood?” Jenna walked away blushing.
With the wood rack inside refilled, and the porch wood filled, Parker and Jenna approached David.
“So how’s it going?”
“I’m ready to test it,” David replied, grinning.
Jenna tried to keep a neutral face with the conflict of emotions coursing through her. She wanted to get the twins back to their family; she wanted to get back to her life; yet at the same time, she was enjoying the simple life she was experiencing.
David turned the power on.
Voices filled the room and he turned the volume down.
Jenna anxiously reached for the radio.
“Careful! Don’t pick it up or you’ll break all the connections,” David warned. “Sit here and do what you would do, just don’t move it.”
Jenna set one hand on the radio to steady it and pressed the talk button. “Dispatch, this is Jenna Jones, come in.”
No response, yet the voices continued.
She tried again. “Dispatch, come in!” She looked at David with questioning eyes.
“That answers a question I had,” David said. “Those boards are delicate and I could only fix some of it; the other part was too damaged to rewire with what limited spare parts I have. Looks like you can receive but can’t send. I’m sorry.”
“But the manual…”
“The manual is three years old and not for this model. I’ll keep trying, Jenna, I promise,” David said quietly.
“Hey, at least maybe we can get some outside news,” Parker said hopefully.
“Yes, that would be good, except this isn’t that type of radio. We can get weather though, if we can keep it charged,” Jenna conceded. It’s been two months since I’ve been out of touch. They have probably stopped looking for us—if they had looked at all, she thought silently.
“I’m rewiring one of these smaller chargers so it will take your bigger radio,” David said. “So that won’t be a problem.”
“That’s great. Do you have a map? Maybe if I knew where we were, I could locate a tower and that could tell me why I can’t get through.”
Parker grinned. “I knew this might come in handy someday.” He pulled aside the heavy drapes that covered the south window that was now blocked on the outside by the wood on the porch. The drapes also covered the county plat map he and David had been slowly working on piecing together.
“Wow,” Jenna gasped. “Where are we?”
Parker pointed to a small red rectangle in one of the central quadrants.
“And here is Three-Shoes.” He pointed to a green circle. “The map isn’t finished. We started with where we are and have been building outwards. Does this help any?”
“It does tell me we were really lost!” Jenna stated.
“Just because you don’t know where you are, doesn’t mean you’re lost,” David said philosophically. “Where did you start from?”
Jenna’s eyes scanned the map and found a familiar river and followed it west. “Somewhere in this area,” she said, pointing.
“You walked a long distance. No wonder you were so exhausted when you got here,” Parker said, frowning.
“There were times I swear we were walking in circles!”
“Does anyone know what tonight is?” Parker asked the group over breakfast, that was now a small bowl of oatmeal each.
They all looked at him silently.
“No, Parker, what is tonight?” Jenna asked. Her mood had been rock bottom since the radio had been fixed to receive only.
“It’s New Year’s Eve,” David announced.
“And we have a surprise for everyone,” Parker said. “We’ve been saving something special to fix for dinner, and since it will be very difficult to hide once it starts cooking, I thought we should tell you that tonight we’re having … a turkey! It’s a small one we had hidden in the freezer, and we will all be able to eat as much as we want.” He looked at Helen and smiled.
The twin’s expressions told him it was the right thing to do.
“There will be stuffing and potatoes and gravy, if anyone knows how to make it,” David announced, “and applesauce.”
“I can make gravy,” Jenna said, sheepishly.
“And …” Parker said, “I even hid a bottle of champagne. So we can have that, if I can remember where I put it,” Parker joked.
“That smells really good, Parker,” Lily said, speaking for the two of them. “Helen and I would like to make the event extra special for us and dress up some. Would it be okay for David to take us over to his house and let us look for skirts or dresses?”
The twins looked so hopeful Parker couldn’t turn them down.
“It’s okay with me, but you need to ask David; it’s his house,” he said.
“Thank you!” and they ran up the stairs to talk with David. A few minutes later, the three came down, all wearing smiles.
“Who’s going on guard duty?” Jenna asked.
“Both of us,” Lily said, accepting the two shotguns. She checked the chamber on the first one and handed it to Helen who slung it over her shoulder. Then Lily checked the second gun. David arched his dark eyebrows at Parker and grinned.
They stepped into the three sets of snowshoes and left for David’s house.
“Parker, that was nice to let the girls do that,” Jenna said, following Parker into the kitchen. “Can I ask you something?”
He turned and put his back to the sink and smiled at her. “Sure.”
“Do you like me? Ya know, like in attracted like?”
“Yes, Jenna, I’m attracted to you,” Parker replied, grinning, wondering where the conversation was going.
“Then why haven’t you come on to me?”
“Jenna,” he said softly, “I’ve watched you now for weeks. You’re strong, and smart, and you’re so patient with the twins and with David too, even with me.” He chuckled. “You’re a kind and wonderful person, and I think you’re beautiful. I’m not going to come on to you though. I want you, but I want all of you; so you’ll have to come to me when you want that too.” He gently trailed his fingertips down her cheek and across her chin.
Jenna pressed against him and pulled his head down to meet her lips. She kissed him hard, and when he responded in kind, she backed off and gentled the kiss. When she moved away, Parker kept his arms around her and pulled her closer. He kissed her gently yet passionately, and it left them both breathing heavy.
“They shouldn’t be back for at least a half hour,” Jenna said breathlessly, and looked toward the bedroom.
“A half hour isn’t enough,” Parker said with a knowing smile. “Besides, I want this all up front: no hiding, no sneaking kisses when no one is looking. And after we make love, I want you to stay in my arms and we wake up together in the morning.”
She stared into his kind gray eyes and smiled. “Deal. I’ll have you know though this is going to be a very long afternoon!”
Parker laughed. “The anticipation will make it that much sweeter.”
David led the twins into his parent’s bedroom and opened his mother’s closet.
“My mother was a very casual person and since she died a couple of years ago, most of this stuff is out of date as far as style goes. I hope you can find a few things to your liking anyway.”
“You don’t mind us looking at her things?”
“I’m okay with it, really. Next spring, I’ll be clear
ing everything out anyway, so take what you want,” he replied.
“Thanks, David,” Helen said. “Do you miss her?”
“Sure I do, she was my mother.” Before they could get any more personal, David left the room.
“David, before they come down for dinner, I want to tell you something.” Parker cleared his throat.
“You look nervous,” David said, concerned.
“Jenna is spending tonight with me, and maybe every night. We haven’t decided about that part yet,” Parker blurted out.
David laughed with happiness. “I think that’s great! Personally, I think you two make a perfect couple; maybe a perfect odd couple. You deserve all the happiness you can find.”
The girls, all three of them, came down the stairs at four o’clock. The twins wore long skirts and silk blouses under their sweaters, and Jenna wore full palazzo pants with a silk Hermes scarf around her turtleneck sweater.
Dinner was early. By four-thirty, the table was set and oil lamps were lit. With only the oatmeal early in the day, everyone was very hungry and anxious for the special dinner. And two of them were anticipating the end of the evening.
Sipping his single glass of champagne, Parker focused on Jenna. “So, you do survival training, undercover work, and Search and Rescue for the State Police. What do you do in the summer for fun?”
“More classes,” she said, laughing. “I teach mushroom identification, which is coupled with a warm weather survival class. There are all kinds of edible mushrooms to find. Morels and oysters in the spring; chanterelles and puffballs in the summer; Lion’s Mane, Bluets and honey mushrooms in the fall.” Jenna took another sip from her glass and let the bubbles tickle her nose.
“So you show your students what’s edible?” David asked.
“Also what’s not edible; that can be just as important. While there are certain mushrooms that are poisonous, there are many that only are toxic. Take the honey mushroom, commonly called Stumpy’s because they often grow on stumps; for many, they are delicious, but for some, they cause severe gastro-intestinal distress. Some mushrooms don’t produce any symptoms at all until too late. Some of the more toxic mushrooms, if eaten in sufficient quantities over a period of time, can cause liver failure and eventually death. The biggest problem with those, is they taste good.”
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