A Conard County Courtship. Rachel Lee

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      All of a sudden, Matthew came bouncing into the room. “All done! Daddy says it’s okay so I can come talk to you.”

      She shook herself out of her reverie and summoned a smile. “You were going to show me your book.”

      “Later,” he said decisively. “Daddy says you work with dinosaur bones. Are they really big?”

      She liked his enthusiasm. “Some are huge. As long as this room. The ones I like best are the small ones, though.”

      “Why?” He scooted onto the other end of the couch.

      Why? How to explain that to him. “Everyone loves the big bones,” she said slowly. “And they’re easier to find most of the time. But the little ones are like a secret.”

      That made his eyes shine. “Do you find out the secret?”

      “Sometimes. Has anyone ever showed you a picture of the bones in your foot?”

      He shook his head.

      “Well, there are lots of tiny bones in your foot. Your foot wouldn’t move very well without them. But someone looking at them if they were scattered around might put them together and finally figure out how your foot works.”

      He nodded, looking very intent. “So it’s like a puzzle?”

      “Exactly. Sometimes I make mistakes and put pieces from different puzzles together, and I have to figure out what’s wrong. But when I find enough of the pieces of the same foot puzzle, I know how the dinosaur’s foot worked.”

      “Do you do that all the time?”

      “Once in a while.”

      “I’d like the small pieces, too,” he decided. “More fun. But the big pieces?”

      “More exciting for everyone,” she agreed. “Youngsters like you are always coming to the museum to see the big dinosaurs we’ve managed to put together. It can be wild to stand on the floor and look up, up, up to see the head of the dinosaur. It makes me feel very small and very glad there aren’t any more dinosaurs around.”

      He clapped his hands with delight. “I wanna do that sometime.”

      “I’m sure you can,” Tim remarked, entering the room. “We’ll take a trip and do that.”

      “Goody!” Matthew was satisfied. “Now can I show you my book?”

      “Of course,” Vanessa answered.

      Matthew skipped from the room, and Tim said, “If he’s imposing, let me know.”

      “He’s not.” She had to smile. “His excitement is refreshing. Too bad it’s winter. There’s an escarpment about a hundred miles from here where they’ve been making some incredible finds. Closed until spring, of course.”

      “I feel almost ashamed for not knowing about that dig.”

      She laughed, warming to him. “It’s not making the news like the weather is. Most paleontologists work in obscurity unless something really big or new is discovered, and even then it rarely catches the eye of the mainstream media. You’d need to keep up with journals.”

      “Well, I don’t have a lot of time for that, between work and child. Does a dinosaur fascination last long?”

      She blinked, surprised. “In what way?”

      “I mean, do kids stay interested long enough that summer can get here and I can take him to the dig?”

      She laughed, shrugging. “Some kids stay fascinated for years. Others are in and out of it in a short time. The dig won’t necessarily be all that interesting for him at his age, though. They might have a few things laid out on a table, but unless they’re working on pulling a big piece out of the ground, it might seem dull to him.” She hesitated, then said, “Listen, if it’s okay with you, I can send him some materials from the museum. One of them is a wooden puzzle, where you have to put the pieces of bone together and made a 3-D model. It’s really popular.”

      “Thank you.” His smile grew wide. “I’m sure he’d love that.”

      “Consider it done.”

      How easy it was to talk about her work. But it had always been an easy topic for her. Working in a museum suited her in more ways than one. It certainly helped keep her largely by herself. Yes, she had a few girlfriends, but it wasn’t the kind of closeness that would cause her to grieve if she had to move on.

      Casual relationships. That was all she had, and she was content that way. Sometimes she wondered if she were just an oddity, or if she were broken in some way.

      But at nearly thirty, it hardly seemed to matter. Not when she was content with her life.

      Until that damn house.

      * * *

      Matthew bounced back in with his library book. Tim was curious to see what he’d chosen, so he sat on the far end of the sofa from Vanessa and let the boy sit between them.

      It turned out to be a book of jokes, some of them well beyond the youngster’s comprehension, but he seemed fascinated by all the knock-knock jokes. Tim could have groaned. He knew Matthew’s memory for things that interested him, and he suspected he was going to be treated to knock-knock jokes for months. Or at least until Matthew found a new interest.

      “Maybe it’s time to get Harry Potter,” he said.

      Matthew immediately forgot his joke book. “Really?”

      “Really,” Tim said. He’d vastly prefer listening to summaries of the day’s reading of Harry Potter than a slew of bad jokes.

      “I’ve read Harry Potter,” Vanessa volunteered. “You’re going to love it.”

      Matthew beamed. “I think so. Ms. Macy thought I was too young.” He frowned suddenly. “I don’t think it’s in the school library.”

      “Maybe not,” Tim said. “It’ll be in the public library, and if not, we’ll go to the bookstore and get it.”

      “Why wouldn’t it be in the public library?” Vanessa asked.

      “Some people can’t tell the difference between fiction and reality,” he said. “Surely you remember the uproar back when about kids reading about witches and warlocks?”

      “I didn’t pay much attention. I was too busy reading.”

      He laughed. “Surely the best way to handle it.”

      They endured a few more bad jokes. Tim didn’t mind Matthew reading them. He was, after all, reading. What he dreaded was the possibility that the boy might still find them funny and worth repeating a long time after he’d returned the book.

      “Time to get the rest of dinner going,” he announced. “Matthew, can you set the table?”

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