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In the days following our special date, Chance and I spent most of our time plowing through Harry's files. Jim and Tom were reading the rest of his journals, and we were all getting exasperated by finding nothing.
Chance was in the kitchen cooking a batch of his venison stew, when I walked back into the room. "That was Roy."
"Is there news on the case?"
"No. I really don't know why he bothered to call to tell us he hasn't learned anything new."
"Looks like all of us are coming up empty." Chance dried his hands on a towel. "Want a cup of tea?"
"Sure."
He poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot and fixed a mug of tea for me. "Let's sit down," he said. "We need to talk."
Fudge. I thought things had been going really well between Chance and I. Sure, we had the extra stress of my kidnapping and the BFFam thing to deal with, but it had been really nice the past couple of days. I had been a little upset that he'd made the decision and signed the lease for the cryptid museum without my input, but I was glad we committed to the project even if I couldn't see how we could put any time into it for the next several months.
"Everly, you with me?" he asked.
"Sorry. I was thinking."
"I know, so let me address your insecurities right up front. I'm not breaking up with you. In fact, it's kind of the opposite. We haven't really talked much about how this is going to work when I start traveling again next month."
"I'll miss you," I said not sure what else I could say.
"You know that I crammed a lot of hunts into the next couple of months because of having to take so much time off with my ankle. That was before we were involved like we are now."
"I know, Chance. We'll be OK. We'll talk or text, and you'll come home when you can."
"I'm really hoping we can have some of this stuff sorted out with the lab before I leave, but right now it looks like that might still be hanging over our heads in the new year."
He took me to the office and we went over his calendar together. It looked like he'd be lucky to have a day off in January or February let alone a chance to travel back to Wilkins' Gap. It sucked. I'd miss him terribly, but there really wasn't an option.
"I know it's going to be hard, but what can we do?" I asked.
"I'm happy you asked that question. See these hunts marked in pink on the calendar?"
There was one pink week in January and two in February. I nodded.
"I want you to come with me. Those are all with customer's I've hunted with before. It'll be a good chance for you to get involved in the business."
"You want me to go on some of your hunts?" I thought maybe he was going to ask me to take care of his house while he was gone or something like that.
"I want us to be together as much as we can. Once we get you trained up and do more cryptid hunting together, I'm thinking we might be able to offer some his and hers packages. That would certainly be a novelty that no one else is doing."
I reminded him that it could be that no one else was doing it because there was zero demand, but he said he'd been doing some research, and he thought it was a viable business idea.
"Will you be OK here by yourself?"
"I'll be fine. There's always people around at the cafe. I won't be alone."
"But when you're here it's kind of remote. I don't think I'll be comfortable with you staying here alone unless we get this thing with the lab resolved."
Chance seemed hurt when I said I didn't plan to stay at his place when he was gone. "I thought you were feeling like this was home?"
"It is, when you're here."
"I've got a few other things up my sleeve. Just think about all this, will you. And ask me if you start imagining things like me dating while I'm traveling. I promise you that won't happen. I'm committed to us."
I knew I'd be busy working on the museum while Chance was away. We hoped to open in summer, but we had a lot of planning to do before the actual work could even begin Decisions would be harder with Chance gone so much, but he chose the place without me, so I figured if I had to make a decision without him along the way, we'd be OK.
"I'm not sure how I'm going to leave you if all of this is still up in the air in January."
"Maybe you can find some sticks and use the forest telegraph to hire bigfoot to babysit me while you're gone."
"Great idea.