As self-driven orgasms went, it wasn’t too bad.
Feeling far more relaxed and in charge of herself, she washed her hair, finished her shower, and brushed her teeth. In the second bedroom, she could hear Emily’s steady breathing and wondered if she was asleep or just lying there. She didn’t turn on the light to find out, navigating her way from touch, the memory of how the room was laid out, and the dim illumination of a street light coming in through the window blinds. As she crawled into bed, settling on the narrow mattress, she pulled the covers up to her neck and allowed the lassitude provided by her shower and orgasm to take her away, drifting easily into sleep that lasted until the morning, when the weak winter sunshine falling across her eyelids finally woke her up.
A quick glance sideways revealed that Emily was already up, the bed neatly made, her belongings removed from the bedroom. Stretching, Lana could still feel a pleasant warmth in her lower belly and, suddenly energetic, flipped back the covers. She brushed her hair, using the mirror over the dresser, and then got dressed in thermals, both pants and shirt under a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. She pulled on a pair of thick, wool socks and padded out to the kitchen, where Michelle was working on the laptop.
“Where’s Emily?”
“Renting the snowshoes,” Michelle said. “Then she’s stopping by the hardware store to pick up a few things. She also said she’d bring back breakfast.”
“Wonderful,” Lana said as she took a seat at the table, regarding Michelle steadily. “You look better.”
Michelle lifted her reddish eyebrows. “Was I sick?”
“Sullen. Ever since we went over to the island. What’s up with that?”
Michelle made a face, indicating what, Lana wasn’t sure. “I had a bad moment there when I saw what was left of the well,” she admitted. “I suppose I was expecting something that looked like the one in Grand-Pré.”
“That one was restored,” Lana said. “And honestly, I don’t even know if it was the actual well or just something they built to look like it, like they did the church.”
“Well, it’s in the right location,” Michelle said. “That’s how I found the tree.”
“Then that shows you’re on the right track,” Lana said, encouragingly. “You can trust in your research. Don’t give up on yourself.”
“You really are the nicest person. I wish—” Michelle stopped and looked away.
Lana was intrigued. “You wish what?”
Michelle lifted her head, offering a smile that Lana recognized as forced. “Nothing,” she said, and changed the subject. “Do you think the constable will be any longer?”
“I have no idea when she left,” Lana pointed out. She was about to say more when she heard the sound of a car outside. “That’s probably her now.”
Emily entered a few minutes later, bearing a cardboard tray with three cups and a big white paper bag, devoid of any logo but smelling wonderfully greasy.
“There are no fast-food places around here,” she announced as she deposited her burden on the table. “I had to go to the restaurant. Luckily, they were open and have a breakfast menu.”
“That’ll work,” Michelle said, tearing into the bag.
“Well, I see someone got their appetite back,” Emily said to Lana as they sat down at the table. The three of them shared the ham-and-egg breakfast sandwiches on English muffins, with the hash-brown patties on the side.
“Everything looks better in the morning,” Lana responded. “Did you get the snowshoes?”
“They’re in the car, along with rope and shovels and anything else we might need.” Emily directed a pointed look at Michelle. “This is it, you know. If we don’t find anything at the well, we’re packing it in and going home.”
“Then you can leave me here, because I’m not giving up,” Michelle responded.
Lana cleared her throat. “Uh, me, either.”
Emily’s expression altered as she turned to Lana, surprise and disillusionment in her light eyes. “Really?”
Lana shrugged, feeling a little abashed. “I’ve come this far,” she explained weakly.
“Besides, we’re going to find something at the well,” Michelle said firmly. “Either the cross itself or a clue about where we have to go next.”
“Fine,” Emily said, but she didn’t sound happy.
“I know you have to get back to work,” Lana said, putting her hand on Emily’s and squeezing her fingers. “Listen, if we don’t find anything, we’ll all go back to Kennetcook. Michelle and I can regroup at my place, come up with a more logical plan.” She glanced at Michelle. “All right?”
“That would be fine.” Michelle regarded Emily, slyly. “A few days alone with you at home will give me a chance to go over everything we’ve learned so far.”
At that, Emily looked even unhappier and pulled her hand away from Lana’s grip.
She didn’t speak much on the drive to Cheticamp Island, leaving it to Michelle and Lana to provide the conversation. Lana knew she’d disappointed her, but on the other hand, it wasn’t as if they were really involved. At the beginning of something, maybe, but not at a point where Emily could tell Lana what to do in any way. It was Lana’s life, and she was the one who chose how to live it.
Once they arrived at their destination, they spent a hilarious half hour watching Michelle try to navigate with snowshoes. Lana was quite comfortable with them, since she and Sarah had enjoyed hiking in the woods, regardless of season, while Emily also displayed a passing familiarity with wearing them. But they might as well have strapped two couch cushions to Michelle’s feet for all the ability she possessed. Lana was relieved to see the tension leaving Emily’s shoulders, with her even managing a laugh as they pulled Michelle out of yet another snowbank.
“Why can’t I just walk there?” Michelle demanded as Lana brushed the snow off her. “I did it last night.”
“We may have to go deeper into the woods,” Lana said, “depending on what we find. Believe me, snowshoes are better. C’mon, keep trying. You’ll get the hang of it.”
Finally, they made it to the clearing, and Michelle wasted little time in taking the crowbar to the stones. Lana helped her while Emily made a circuit of the area, trying to determine what else, if anything, was around. It looked quite different in the daytime, the sun making sharp shadows on the snow, a whisper of breeze through the trees.
“I don’t believe this is the well,” Lana said after an hour of moving stones to discover only bare ground. They broke for lunch—tuna sandwiches, potato chips, and apples with bottles of juice, pulled out of Emily’s backpack. “I think Emily was right. This is just a pile of rocks.”
“Who would bother stacking all those here? What’s the point?” Michelle demanded, voice tight with disappointment. She’d barely touched the impromptu picnic. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does if you’re planting a garden,” Lana explained with a wry grin. “Nova Scotia was formed by retreating glaciers from the last ice age. As the ice melted, it dropped everything it had picked up on the way down from the north. So anyone who gardens has to pick out a ton of rocks just to plant. And then do it all over again the next spring when other stones migrate to the surface with the frost. I have a similar pile in my backyard, right behind the garage.”
“So you think this might have been a garden at one time?” Michelle asked.
“It would explain why there’s a pile of rocks here,” Emily said. “And from the size of this pile, it wasn’t just a garden, but a whole field.”
Michelle suddenly looked excited again, prompting Emily to exchange one of her looks with Lana, who barely noticed, infected by Michelle’s enthusiasm as she pulled a drawing from her jacket.
“Look,” she said, showing the other two. It was an old etching of a farm, Beauséjour’s, Lana realized, probably not to scale but enough to reveal a rough layout. “The fields are closest to the shore. The actual farm was farther inland.”
Lana looked into the woods. �
��How far, do you think?”
“If we hit ocean, we’ve gone too far.” Emily offered up a sigh, resigned as if she undoubtedly knew her companions were going to pursue this. “One thing with an island. You can’t get lost for very long.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Rather proud that she was adjusting to the contraptions strapped to her feet, Michelle took the lead as they entered the woods, scrunching along the trail that Emily noted was probably an old lane of some kind, which boded well for finding the actual farm.
“Would a lane be detectable after all this time?” she heard Lana ask.
“There’s no way of knowing when this particular plot of land stopped being inhabited,” Emily told her. “People could have been living here for centuries. It would definitely be easier than having to clear away the woods for a new farm.”
“So the well might not actually be there anymore?” Michelle stopped, looking back at them as they caught up to her.
“Or it might have been used well into the twentieth century,” Lana reminded her reassuringly. “The driveway is still around. So we know some kind of housing was here up until the time the Department of Highways started maintaining the roads in the 40s. They’re responsible for putting in the culverts.” She glanced at Emily. “Are you sure this is federal land now?”
“I couldn’t find any deed of ownership,” Emily said. “Someone might have died without heirs, and the government would have had to claim it after a certain amount of time. And it’s not as if this is all prime real estate. Not a lot of people want to live here.” She looked around at the trees and the snow. “It makes you wonder why the Acadians settled here in the first place.”
“Fishing,” Lana said, promptly. “Up until a few decades ago, it primarily drove the province’s economy. And Cheticamp has a great harbor, protected by this very island. One of their biggest tourist attractions is whale-watching expeditions in the summer.”
“Let’s just hope we come across something recognizable,” Emily said.
Michelle was tired of her unrelenting practicality, but she couldn’t think of a way to get rid of her. Especially now. It was clear something had happened last night between her and Lana. Maybe they finally had that first kiss, she thought grumpily, and promptly tripped over her snowshoes.
“Are you all right?” Lana asked as she and Emily helped her to her feet.
“Yes,” she said tersely. She stopped, staring at the forest around them and, more importantly, at the way the land was contoured. “I think this is it.”
“Really?” Emily looked at all the trees. “What makes you think so?”
Michelle waddled over to a mound in the snow. “Because this is a wall. It’s too straight for nature.” She brushed away the snow and discovered large stones stacked on each other, held together with mortar. “I think this was the house or maybe a barn.”
“Huh,” Emily said. “Of course, it doesn’t mean it was the same one from 1790.”
“No, but I think you were right. It was easier to build on top of a ready-made cellar than dig a new one. See how the ground’s depressed? There was once a foundation here.” Michelle looked at her drawing and pointed to the north. “If so, the well should be over in that direction.”
Emily and Lana exchanged one of those looks that were becoming increasingly annoying to Michelle, but followed as she left the trail and began to cut through the forest. Now that she knew what she was looking at, she could see how the trees had grown up and over what had once been buildings and cleared land.
It took a bit longer than she expected, but when she spotted the hump in the snow, she knew exactly what it was. A swell of excitement rippled through her chest, and as she made her way toward the small rise, she waved the others on. Nearby stood a large tree almost twenty meters high, a majestic English oak, rare in Canada, and probably deliberately planted there at least two hundred years earlier, if its size was any indication.
“Here,” she said, unfastening her snowshoes. “This is it!”
“If you say so,” Emily said doubtfully.
“Give me the crowbar!” Michelle demanded.
“You mean, ‘Please, give me the crowbar’?” But Emily slipped out of the backpack she was wearing and pulled out the iron bar, handing it to Michelle, who wasted no time prying away at the frozen mound of stone.
“Is this part legal?” Michelle heard Lana ask in a low voice from somewhere behind her.
“I have no idea,” Emily admitted. She walked around until she was in view of Michelle, resting her hand on the large trunk of the oak tree. “I’m fuzzy as hell on laws dealing with antiquities and historic sites and people looking for stuff like this. Outside the possible trespassing aspect, which isn’t really applicable here on federal land, so long as she’s not cutting down trees or damaging the environment, I don’t think there’s any rule against digging up a pile of rocks.” She exhaled gustily, a white cloud drifting away. “I’ll find out soon enough if I’m wrong and we’re all arrested.”
“I’m right here, you know,” Michelle said, stabbing at a particularly stubborn bit of stonework. “Are you going to help me or just watch?”
With their assistance, Michelle soon had the collapsed top removed, revealing a dark hole that descended a few hundred feet. Emily used her flashlight, a heavy black truncheon type with a large lens, to look down into it, the bright LED beam flashing over the squared-off rock sides, through a tangle of roots, and glinting off the bottom far below.
“Still has water,” she said thoughtfully. “Must be spring-fed.” She looked at Michelle. “Now what?”
Michelle, peering down into the depths, was beyond excitement at this point. “There,” she said, her voice almost squeaky. “Shine the light there.”
Emily lifted her brows but did as requested, centering the beam on a section of stone some ten feet below them. “Huh,” she said.
Michelle lifted her eyes to meet Lana’s, smiling widely. “It’s a cross,” she said breathlessly. “Carved into the stone.”
“Way down there,” Lana said calmly, but she smiled as well. “How do we get to it?”
“I’ll climb down,” Michelle said immediately.
“Or we could just contact the authorities and have this done properly,” Emily remarked.
“That would take forever,” Michelle said, anger replacing her excitement. “Look, I’m going down. You can help me or not.”
Lana put her hand on Emily’s elbow. “We might as well help her,” she said gently. “Even if we could drag Michelle away from here, she’d just find a way to come back on her own and do it without us. That could be dangerous.”
“Could be? It is dangerous,” Emily argued. “From my experience climbing, I can tell you, the sides of that well don’t look stable at all. See how the roots from the tree have grown through them? A touch could collapse the entire shaft and take her down with it.”
“So we’ll do it carefully,” Michelle responded. “Y’all can bear my weight. Each of you take an arm. I won’t touch the sides at all.”
“That’s ten feet down,” Emily pointed out scornfully. “Even if we laid down and extended our arms, you’re still way too short.”
“But you did bring rope, didn’t you?” Lana said quietly. “I saw it in your backpack.”
Exasperated, Emily frowned at her. “Yes.”
Michelle’s jaw dropped. “How did you know we’d need it?”
“I didn’t. I just happened to have it in my trunk,” Emily said darkly. “Besides, I like to be prepared when I go into the woods, especially since I was pretty sure you’d want to do something stupid, and sure enough, I was right.”
Michelle was already next to the hole, peering down into its depths, almost quivering from her excitement and the need to get down there. Emily hesitated another moment and then began to dig the climbing gear from her backpack—a harness, two coils of rope, and a helmet with attached headlamp.
“I didn’t know you climbed,” Michelle
said conversationally as Emily helped her into the harness and showed her how to fasten it properly.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Emily said flatly as she stuck an Alpina ice ax in one of the harness loops and tightened the helmet on Michelle’s head, switching on the lamp. “Let’s keep it that way.”
Michelle laughed. “Just don’t drop me, all right?” She leaned closer and lowered her voice so that only Emily would hear. “After all, Lana wouldn’t like it.”
Emily’s eyes narrowed. “We’re lucky,” she growled. “There’s a branch growing right over the well that looks strong enough to bear your weight.” She put a finger in Michelle’s face. “I can’t emphasize this enough. Don’t touch the sides as you descend, or it’ll probably collapse and you’ll end up dead.”
“I get it,” Michelle said, sobering at Emily’s warning. “I’ll be careful. I won’t die today.”
“Good, because Lana wouldn’t like that, either.”
Emily turned away and picked up the coil of rope from the ground, tossing one end of it over the branch. After belaying it around the tree trunk, she brought the other end over to Michelle’s vest, winding it through the buckles until it was securely tied. Then she found the second, smaller rope, and after wrapping it around the trunk of a poplar tree, she carried the other end to Michelle and fastened it to the small of her back.
“All right, I’m going to hoist you up,” she explained. “Once you’re high enough, Lana will let you swing forward until you’re directly over the well. When you’re in position, Lana will give me the necessary amount of slack and I’ll lower you down.” Emily tugged a final time on Michelle’s harness to make sure it was secure. “Don’t you do anything at all. Let us do the work.”
“I understand,” Michelle said in her most serious tone. “I’m ready.”
With Lana’s guide rope holding her back, Michelle felt herself lift off the ground as Emily pulled hard on the rope slung across the branch. Michelle’s arms and legs dangled forward at an angle until Emily was satisfied she was high enough.
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