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Chapter Nine

I t must have been sheer panic that had made me think it was a good idea to bring Ben back to the house.

But after hearing that Northwest Pacific intended to cut down the very spot where my great-to-the-nth-degree grandmother had first encountered a unicorn, I didn’t know how in the world I could stop them.

If nothing else, Ben Sanders would be a sympathetic ear.

I could tell him about the family history of the place…

carefully edited to remove any mention of the unicorn, of course…

and explain that I hated the idea of that part of the forest being cut down, even though I knew it didn’t have any immediate significance to anyone except me.

Well, and my mother and grandmother, but they weren’t exactly around to explain why clear-cutting in that particular location was a bad idea.

I noticed how Ben looked around with interest as we came inside the house, but was doing his best not to seem too overtly curious.

No doubt his archaeologist’s brain was picking out all the fine details — the stained-glass transom over the front door, the original dark wood molding, the pieces of vintage and modern furniture that gave the house an eclectic vibe without becoming chaotic.

It was probably far too big for me to be living alone there — the house was a smidge over three thousand square feet, and that didn’t count the attic and the basement — but there was no way in the world I would ever give it up.

This was the family home, the place that had been a refuge for my mother and me after my father took off, and I loved every square inch of it, right down to the squeaky floorboard in the upstairs hall and the leaky kitchen faucet.

The same bucket had sat under that faucet the entire time I’d lived there, and as far as I knew, my grandmother had never bothered to get someone out to fix the thing.

Why bother, when all we had to do was empty the bucket every three or four days? The flowerbed outside the kitchen door certainly appreciated the extra moisture.

“Do you want a glass of water or something?” I asked, then realized I probably shouldn’t have tacked on the “or something” to my question. There wasn’t much in the house to drink except water, since I was gone most of the time and had never been a fan of soda or anything with a lot of sugar in it.

“Water’s fine,” Ben replied, which put me a little at ease.

Not much, but a bit.

I fetched a couple of glasses from the cupboard and then poured us some water from the Brita pitcher I always kept in the fridge. Recently, my mother and grandmother had been discussing having a reverse-osmosis system installed, but those plans hadn’t materialized before they disappeared.

“We can sit down in the living room,” I suggested.

“Sure,” Ben replied, still clearly doing his best to be neutrally polite.

Glasses of water in hand, we headed toward the living room, which had always been one of my favorite spaces in the house.

One wall was dominated by a big stone fireplace with built-in bookcases on either side, and stained glass in warm shades of amber and butter yellow and dark green glowed from a small decorative window set between the two large windows that dominated one wall.

At that hour, the sun had mostly disappeared to the west, but the space still had a welcoming, homey feel.

Outside, the landscape wasn’t much more than a dim blur, and yet I liked knowing those trees were out there, keeping watch over the house.

“It’s quite a place,” Ben remarked as he settled himself in one of the armchairs that faced the couch. This room was all about conversation; the sole TV in the house was the one that sat on a small cabinet in the family room, which overlooked the backyard. “How long has it been in your family?”

“I’m the fourth generation, I suppose,” I said. “My great-grandparents bought it after World War 2 sometime.”

“So, they weren’t the original builders.”

I shook my head. “No, they bought it from a family that decided to relocate to Klamath Falls. But it’s been a part of our lives for a long, long time.”

Ben tilted his head in acknowledgment before sipping from the glass of water I’d gotten for him. When he spoke, he sounded almost diffident, as if he wasn’t sure of the reception his question was about to receive.

“So…do you want to talk about Welling Glen? I noticed the way you tensed up the second Victor Maplehurst said that was where Northwest Pacific was planning to clear-cut the forest.”

“Tensed up” was a nice, neutral way of phrasing my reaction to the news.

More like, had every muscle in my body seize in dread.

However, saying that out loud would probably be a bit too dramatic, especially when I couldn’t tell Ben the real reason why that one particular spot was so important to my family.

Or at least, I could only tell him about ten percent of the reason.

“My great-whatever grandmother discovered the spot,” I said.

“It was the place where she would go to give herself a little breathing space. And over the years, it became a place where the family would have picnics and the kids would play. I suppose it just upset me to hear that all those gorgeous old trees were going to be cut down.”

“I can see why that would be upsetting,” Ben replied. “And it seems strange to me that they’d be going after old-growth forest when Victor was making it sound as if they were only going to cut down newer trees that had regrown after the last round of cutting in the area.”

The only thing I could really do in response to that somewhat na?ve comment was shrug. “Since when do companies ever accurately represent their plans, especially when it involves something to do with the environment?”

Ben grinned. “Okay, I see your point. But still, if you want to fight this, then we need to think about the best way to get community support out in front so Northwest Pacific is forced to back down.”

To be honest, I hadn’t thought about trying to fight the process. I was still kind of shell-shocked after hearing what Victor Maplehurst and his lackeys planned to do.

However, sitting back and hoping they were going to have a change of heart probably wasn’t a very good plan.

No, I needed to come up with a way to get everyone else in Silver Hollow to understand what a bad deal this would be for the town.

Sure, in the short term, it might bring in a few dollars in terms of increased traffic for the local businesses — and I was sure Mr. Maplehurst had promised the mayor that a lot of fees for permits and what-have-you would go into the town’s coffers — but decreased forest land wasn’t good for anyone.

Especially in a place that relied on so many tourist dollars. Short-term money wasn’t so great if it resulted in long-term damage to the local economy.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” I said, knowing how dubious I sounded. “Have you?”

“Oh, sure,” he responded cheerfully. “That is, I’ve worked with local leaders when I needed to fend off development that would have ruined archaeological sites and destroyed their history.

It sounds like the people of Silver Hollow are pretty civic-minded already, so I think all we need to do is remind them what a treasure the forests are around here, and reiterate that all kinds of flora and fauna might be destroyed if we allow Northwest Pacific to go in there and do whatever it wants. ”

I hadn’t missed the way Ben had said “we,” as if he counted himself as an honorary member of the community, even though he’d only been here for a couple of days.

However, I didn’t see the point in commenting on that, not when it sounded like he had the kind of experience that was exactly what the town needed right now.

“My grandmother kept records of all the flowers and animals she saw in the woods,” I said…again omitting the important detail that she was mostly writing down an account of all the mythical creatures who came and went in the forest.

But she’d also made notes of the owls and the gray foxes and the mule deer, not to mention sketching whatever flowers and other plants she spied that looked interesting to her.

“The spotted owl is endangered, isn’t it?” I asked next, digging up that piece of trivia from somewhere in my memory banks.

“I’m not sure,” Ben replied. “I think I remember reading about that someplace, but since they’re not native to the locations where I had most of my digs, they weren’t a species I needed to research.”

“Well, it should be easy enough to look up,” I told him. “Let me go grab my laptop.”

I set my glass of water down on a coaster on the coffee table, then hurried off to the ground-floor bedroom that had been used as an office for as long as I could remember.

My grandmother’s big old PC still occupied the place of honor on the desk, but my laptop was charging on a small table off to the side.

After unplugging it from the charger, I returned to the living room, where Ben had remained seated in his chair.

No, I hadn’t really expected to find him poking into things during my absence, and yet it reassured me to see he was being respectful and not acting like a snoop.

“Okay, let’s see what I can find out,” I said as I opened my laptop.

It didn’t take long to discover that the western spotted owl was threatened but not outright endangered. Still, its slightly precarious status might be enough to convince the people of Silver Hollow that our forests should be left undisturbed.

“Better than nothing, but we still might need more than that to convince people who’re uncertain that the woods here are a treasure and should be left completely alone,” Ben remarked, and I was inclined to agree with him.