Then everyone took turns attempting their version of the clearly beloved man’s laugh.
Raven smiled even when the conversation ceased to involve her and moved on to other topics. The fact they weren’t silently eating anymore felt like a victory.
Once lunch was over, the group headed outdoors again, and Raven was left to continue decluttering.
She filled the kitchen sink with soapy water and set to cleaning the dirt on the newly emptied shelves. Amid this work, sometime later, a commotion in the cabin slipped past her headphones during the quiet part of a song.
Initially, Raven thought Chestnut the squirrel was on the loose again, but she left the storage room and followed the raised voices to the kitchen and found Silas and Halo with mops and towels, sopping up a very wet floor.
“What happened?” Raven asked, horrified at the scene.
Silas straightened from his stooped position and pinned her with heated eyes. “You left the tap running.”
It was an absurd accusation—she knew how to work a tap.
“How?” she asked.
“The faucet doesn’t stay closed on its own,” he said, pointing to a little plastic contraption she’d totally removed when filling up the sink earlier. “We keep it in place with that.”
“I-I didn’t know.”
“Okay, now you do,” Halo said. “So don’t just stand there, help!”
And she did, with the air thick with what Raven assumed was their wish for her to spontaneously combust.
ChapterFour
On day two of purgatory,Silas arrived at Mountaintop with a plan. One that would see Raven preoccupied for the rest of the week.
Yesterday he’d managed to forget she was even around. She’d been too busy cleaning and organizing the storage room to meddle or be anyone’s shadow. It had been perfect, of course, until the Great Flood.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” she said to the entire team when she arrived, presenting them with store-bought cookies.
This seemed to satisfy Bodie and Doc, who dug into the baked goods, but Halo didn’t relax her frown.
It really wasn’t Raven’s fault. She couldn’t have known about their DIY plumbing fix, but Silas had done enough absolution and couldn’t stand doing anymore. If Raven had just signed the papers and gotten out of town two days ago, the whole mess would’ve been avoided.
“I made you a list,” Silas said to her once all the morning pleasantries had been spoken. “It’s the different things that need to get done around the cabin.”
“So, chores,” she said.
“Tasks, chores, whatever you want to call them,” he said, handing her a scrap of paper with words he’d scribbled down while eating breakfast earlier that morning.
“Finish organizing the storage room,” she read aloud. “Answer customer service emails. Dust surfaces inside cabin. And clean interior and exterior of shuttle van… I can do that.”
Each task was deceptively simple; she’d have no time to lurk or pry.
And as Silas predicted, he didn’t see Raven all day except during lunchtime, where she showcased the two nails she’d broken finishing up the storage room.
“This one,” she said, lifting her left pinky with a now-jagged nail, “hurts like a bitch.”
Raven spent the next day answering customer service emails. A straightforward endeavor, sure. However, Mountaintop’s inbox had been neglected for months, and the boxy desktop they used in the office was so old it took thirty seconds to load each page.
Throughout the day, he’d enter the cabin to greet his waiting students and find Raven frustrated.
“Come on, come on. Don’t freeze on me again, baby,” she said on one of those occasions, hitting the side of the wheezing computer.
It took her a full day and a half to complete that job.
