retorted. “Or the next? What if he hadn’t come back at all?”
Why did Maddie get the feeling that Tyler wasn’t talking about Aiden anymore?
Skye tossed her mane of brown-and-lavender-striped hair. “Then he would’ve been stupid—”
“Survival camping.”
Skye and Tyler, who were glaring at each other across the table, spun toward Aiden.
“What’s that?” Skye blurted.
“You go into the woods with nothing more than you can carry in a backpack,” Aiden explained. “You find your own water. Food. Make a shelter to sleep in.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “That’s crazy.”
“The faculty board thought so, too.” Aiden grinned. “But I still got an A.”
“It sounds like one of those shows on TV,” Tyler said. “I saw one episode where a guy climbed into a hollow tree and it was full of wasps. He got stung, like, a thousand times.”
Aiden shrugged. “I didn’t have to worry about bugs. It was February.”
He’d gone camping. In February. On purpose.
“Where did you sleep?” Justin unexpectedly joined the conversation. Maddie grabbed onto the back of a chair for support.
“I made a snow cave. Snow is actually a great insulator.” Aiden dropped his voice a notch. “That’s why you don’t see bears putting on sweaters before they go into hibernation.”
Skye giggled.
Giggled.
Justin had spoken up, Skye was acting seventeen instead of twenty-seven and Tyler was actually looking at Aiden instead of his cell phone.
And Maddie? She was a little in awe—and a whole lot of envious—at how effortlessly Aiden had connected with the three teenagers.
“You’re supposed to write an outline and do research and stuff.” Tyler tossed an accusing look at Maddie, as if she were the one who’d written the guidelines for their senior presentation.
Aiden laughed. “You don’t think I did some research before I ventured into the woods when it was only ten degrees outside?”
Tyler crossed his arms, covering his interest with a skeptical look. “They really let you talk about camping?”
“I didn’t just talk,” Aiden said. “I brought in my backpack and showed them how I made it through the weekend with the supplies I’d packed. Like Maddie said, the whole idea behind the senior presentation is to learn more about something that interests you...and in the process maybe learn something about yourself.”
At least someone remembered what Maddie had said during their study session the previous week. She just hadn’t expected it to be Aiden.
An alarm chirped, and Tyler reached for his backpack. “I gotta go,” he mumbled.
“Hold on a second.” Maddie decided it was time to take control of the conversation again. “Does anyone have any questions before our next meeting?”
She was greeted with silence.
“All right... I’ll see you at six thirty this Friday.”
They all grabbed their things and bolted for the door.
Everyone except Aiden. He raised the hand that wasn’t in the cast.
“I have a question. How do we find my sister?”
Maddie gripped the back of the chair again to counteract the unexpected weakness in her knees.
“But I...when you didn’t show up on Saturday, I thought you’d changed your mind.” The words came out in a rush, and the light in Aiden’s eyes disappeared as swiftly as the sun on a winter afternoon.
“No one in my family had a reason to come into town that day,” he said after a moment.
And Aiden couldn’t drive.
Maddie realized how difficult it must be for such an independent man to rely on others—even his own family—for help. Which made the fact that Aiden had returned to the library to enlist hers a little scary.
“Anna had to finish up an order tonight and get it ready for shipment, so I hitched a ride with her,” Aiden continued. “Bracelets...not ice cream, just in case you were wondering.”
Maddie didn’t know Anna Leighton very well—she’d been several years ahead of Maddie in school—but it was common knowledge the young widow had converted the second floor of The Happy Cow, her family-owned ice-cream shop, into a combination studio and boutique where she designed and sold a unique line of nature-inspired jewelry.
It was also common knowledge that Liam Kane had proposed to Anna a few weeks ago.
Maddie had overheard a group of women talking about how excited Sunni Mason was that two of her adopted sons had found love.
“Only one more to go,” one of them had said.
“I have a feeling Sunni will have a long wait with Aiden,” came her friend’s laughing response. “I’m not sure there’s a woman fast enough to catch that boy. Not that they haven’t tried, mind you.”
Maddie was used to people speaking freely in front of her. She was a permanent fixture in the library—like her desk or a lamp—and everyone seemed to forget she was there.
Still, Maddie didn’t want to analyze too closely why the details of that whispered conversation had been stored away, when so many others had slipped from her mind.
“Can you post this on your community message board?” Aiden dipped his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “I had to come up with a legitimate excuse for turning down Anna’s rocky road sundae.”
Maddie glanced down at the flier. The top half gave detailed information about River Quest, and underneath the dotted line was a registration form for those adventurous enough to sign up.
Suddenly, Aiden’s words sank in. “Your family doesn’t know you’re looking for your sister?”
Something dark flashed in Aiden’s eyes. “They know I promised I would...they just don’t know I started yet.”
* * *
Aiden was relieved when Maddie didn’t press him further and ask why. Not when he wasn’t sure of the answer himself.
All Aiden knew was that he couldn’t fail and disappoint his family. Just once, he wanted to be the hero who swooped in and saved people from trouble instead of the one causing it.
Maddie pulled her chair out from the table. “I...I’ll need some basic background information from you, and we can go from there.”
“Now?”
Aiden’s
