‘That’s not what I meant,’ he answered. ‘Though I do think we need them. It’s only responsible of us.’
Megan didn’t stay to chat as she walked towards the end of the large display to stand by her father and Sasha, who insisted on reading each and every plaque that hung by the reproductions. The two were taking the scholarly approach, while Kat forced Vincent to play with her in the kiddie area. The last she saw of her mother was as Beatrice headed towards the gift shop with her father’s credit card.
‘Tyrannosaurus Rex was named in 1905 by US palaeontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn. It means “tyrant lizard king”,’ Sasha said, reading the information plaque. ‘Living in the late Cretaceous period, sixty-five to eighty-five million years ago, this meat eater was a fierce predator.’
‘Interesting,’ Megan lied, forcing herself to look towards the plaque and not to where she’d left Ryan.
‘. . . humid, semi-tropical environment,’ Sasha was still reading. ‘Until recently, they were thought to be the biggest carnivorous dinosaur.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Megan mumbled distractedly, chancing a quick peek to the side. Ryan was coming towards her.
‘Giganotosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus are bigger.’ Sasha made a small thoughtful noise, as if she found it to be utterly fascinating information.
‘You don’t say.’ Megan was barely paying attention. She felt Ryan next to her and forced herself to listen to her sister.
‘Their serrated cone-shaped teeth are continually replaced.’ Sasha ran her finger beneath the words as Douglas leant over to read silently along. ‘Their arms are only about three feet long with two fingers on each hand.’
Megan turned abruptly to Ryan and said under her breath, ‘OK, you win. I can’t take the info-junkies. Let’s go somewhere and talk.’
As she walked away from her father and Sasha, the two of them didn’t seem to notice the abrupt departure as they became engrossed in their discussion of what they’d just read. Megan knew she could only stand so much academic dialogue on dinosaurs. That’s all the two brainiacs had talked about the entire drive to the museum. Stegosaurus this and Zuniceratops that. It was as annoying as watching two people speak Ancient Egyptian and having no way of beginning to translate them.
‘Is something wrong?’ Ryan asked.
‘Why would something be wrong?’ Megan grumbled. She stopped at a display unit set in the middle of the room. Two reproductions of vicious-looking beasts gnawing on larger small-headed creatures were surrounded by what looked to be ground-up car tyres. She picked up a piece of the black thick rubber only to toss it back down in disinterest.
‘Dinosaurs not your thing?’ he asked.
‘They’ve been dead a little too long. I like concentrating on the present mysteries, not ones scientists have been trying to solve since the dawn of time.’ Megan shrugged, turning her back on the creatures to look about in slight boredom. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate the things; they just don’t hold my interest for hours on end, especially when they’re giant toy models and not the real thing.’
‘There are some old bones over there.’ Ryan pointed across the room to glass displays.
‘We got plenty of old bones in the forensic lab back home.’ Megan gave a small laugh. ‘And those I get to touch, if I want to.’
‘I’d offer to break the glass and get you one, but something tells me you wouldn’t think twice about having me arrested.’ His sheepish grin reminded her of the look he gave her when he’d been trying to ask her out on a date to her parents’ house.
‘Tell me something. That night at the big museumrobbery crime scene . . .’ Megan paused, frowning.
‘What about it?’
She’d been about to ask about the photo he took of her at the crime scene, but thought better of it. ‘Did you actually think you were suave asking me on a date to my parents’ house?’
‘Well, I . . .’
‘I mean, it’s a little sad, don’t you think? Asking a girl out to hang with the old folks?’
‘I like to think of it as gentlemanly,’ he said. ‘Chaperones and all that.’
‘Do I look like the type that needs a chaperone? I can more than handle myself.’
‘Oh, don’t I know it.’ His look said it all. ‘You more than proved you can handle yourself in the alleyway outside your parents’ building. And in the bathtub. And –’
‘Ah!’ Megan punched his arm. ‘That is real gentlemanly of you.’
‘What?’ He reached for her hip, drawing her closer. His tone dropped, becoming seductive, like a lover who shared an intimate secret. It was a rare occasion when any man ever used that tone with her. Part of her liked it, but a bigger part of her wanted to run away and hide. ‘I only said I like how you handle yourself.’
Megan’s breath caught. She pulled back, in what she hoped was an artful attempt to end the familiarity of the moment. ‘I wonder what Mom’s buying. She’s been in the gift shop for a long time now.’
‘Megan.’ Ryan tried to stop her, but she didn’t stay to hear what he had to say.
‘So, how is it going between the two of you?’ Kat slid next to Megan on the picnic-table seat. They had pulled over alongside the road on the way home from the museum. Sasha was busy reading the dinosaur encyclopaedia their mother had bought her from the gift shop. Everyone else got a T-shirt and little geodes they could hit with a hammer and break open to see what kind of crystals were formed inside.
‘Do you think Sasha will ever graduate?’ Megan mused, intentionally changing the subject.
‘Because I think you two looked pretty cosy earlier,’ Kat continued.
‘I wonder what her major is going to be.’ The warm day borderlined on the hot side and Megan lifted her arms over her head, trying to draw whatever comfort she could from the cooler breeze. ‘All she does is study.’
‘I think you look good together, too. Both dark and pretty.’ Kat leant her elbow on the table.
Green paint chipped from the top, weathered from years outside in the elements. Trees shaded the area, saving them from the direct sunlight. Small paths wound into the forest that was only metres from the main road. Ryan, Douglas and Vincent had disappeared, their father with a birdwatching chart, Ryan with his camera and Vincent with a bug catcher’s net.
‘Do you think she’s scared to graduate? I know it sounds silly, but I’ve always gotten the impression she’s frightened of starting her life for real so she keeps finding excuses not to leave school, like if she decides on a career she’ll be stuck forever doing the same thing.’ Megan stared at her college-bound sister, watching Sasha twirl a piece of her dark-brown hair as she followed the page with her finger.
‘Ryan is a nice guy,’ Kat said.
‘I don’t understand why she doesn’t just pick a subject and go with it.’
‘He’s smart and just mellow enough to put up with your ways.’
‘She’s got so much going for her.’ Megan refused to look at Kat and refused to acknowledge the whole other conversation her sister was trying to have with her.
‘You need to take it easy on him. Don’t worry, he hasn’t complained. He wouldn’t. But I saw his face when you walked away from him at the museum to join Mom in the gift shop. Whatever you said to him hurt his feelings.’
‘I wonder how Ella’s doing. Have you heard from her?’ Megan turned a pointed look to Kat.
‘You’re not going to talk to me about this, are you?’ Kat sighed heavily, shaking her head in what looked to be a cross between irritation and exasperation.
‘I’m going to go see if Mom needs help with the picnic baskets.’ Megan stood up.
‘You know, Miss Megs, you can’t run from the happy side of life forever,’ Kat yelled after her. ‘It’s going to bite you in the ass someday whether you want it to or not.’
‘How about them Yankees?’ Megan answered, not bothering to turn around.
‘Ornithologists say this area is renowned for its unusual bird species,’ Douglas said, lifting his binoculars and pointing them towards a tree. ‘But I’ll be damned if I’ve seen a single one in these woods. I can hear them, I just can’t see them.’
‘We saw a golden eagle this morning,’ Ryan said. ‘Megan and I.’
‘Did you?’ Douglas lowered the binoculars in excitement. ‘I would have loved to have been there.’
‘I’ll bet you have some luck back at the cabin this evening, when it’s cooler,’ Vincent said. His net rested against the bench he’d found along the path. Douglas moved to sit by his son-in-law. ‘There was a humming-bird feeder on the deck. No hummingbirds, but there was a feeder.’
Douglas chuckled, before turning an expectant look at Ryan. ‘Are you getting some good shots?’
Ryan felt mildly guilty about how he came to be on the trip. He liked both men a lot and found Douglas to be an interesting combination of doting father and distracted scholar. ‘Yeah, I think so. I plan on taking my equipment out with me tomorrow at dawn.’
‘I think he meant are you getting some good shots in with Megan.’ Vincent laughed.
Douglas snorted. ‘Out of all my daughters, boy, you sure did pick the spitfire.’
Both men didn’t bother to contain their merriment, as they laughed harder.
‘I suppose she can be a handful,’ Ryan admitted reluctantly.
‘Try two fistfuls,’ Douglas corrected. ‘Megan has always been strong willed and law abiding.’ He made a soft noise of amusement. ‘She used to throw the biggest tantrums if she saw me speeding in the car, or if I rolled past a stop sign. Got to the point I made sure to put her right behind the driver’s seat so she couldn’t see what I was doing.’
Ryan laughed. He noticed Megan always took the seat right behind her dad in the rental. Seeing movement out of the corner of his eyes, he instantly lifted his camera and waited.
‘You got something?’ Douglas asked, standing.
‘Bird. Up there.’ Ryan adjusted the zoom on his lens until he could focus on the small animal on a tree. It was high up, but the camera lens afforded him a good look at it.
‘What does it look like?’ Douglas asked, only to add, ‘Vincent, get the chart.’
‘Red face, yellow and black body,’ Ryan said, taking a picture.
‘I don’t see it,’ Douglas looked through his binoculars, angling them back and forth to follow the direction Ryan’s camera had pointed. ‘Ah, there it is.’
‘Tanager, maybe,’ Vincent said. The paper chart he held rustled in the wind as the bird took to flight.
‘Let’s see if we can find it again.’ Douglas led the way deeper into the trees, away from the picnic area.
After a minute of quiet hiking along the worn forest trail, Douglas stopped. ‘Look there. I think it’s old gravestones.’
‘What are they doing in the forest?’ Vincent asked. ‘There is nothing around here.’
‘Might have been an old settlement near by at one time or a farmstead. I’ve run across these old sunken graveyards a time or two in Kansas as a kid.’ Ryan walked into the trees, kneeling by a weathered stone. He ran his fingers over the top, shivering at the idea of how long the site could have remained untouched. The carvings were faded, the names long ago erased from history. There were only about a dozen gravesites, at least from what he could tell of the sunken markers. Some of them were overgrown with plant life and covered with years of fallen leaves.
‘I should go get Kat,’ Vincent said. ‘She would want to see this.’
‘Yeah, let’s go get something to eat and we’ll bring the girls back after,’ Douglas said. ‘Ryan, you coming?’
‘Just a second, I want to get a few shots. You two go ahead.’
‘Where’s Ryan?’ Kat asked, drawing Megan’s attention up from the plastic bag filled with roast beef on wholegrain sandwiches.
‘We found graves in the woods,’ Vincent began.
‘What?’ Megan stood in instant concern, her brain humming to life as she automatically switched to detective mode. ‘How old are they? You didn’t touch anything, did you? The police will need the crime scene exactly like it was left so they can search for clues. Kat, quick, give me your cell phone. I’m going to try and call the local police department. Mom, I’m going to need some string, or rope to make a barrier. What? What is so funny?’ Megan arched a brow at her father.
‘It’s an old sunken graveyard,’ Douglas said. ‘I doubt the police will be very interested.’
‘Ha! You should have seen your face, Megan.’ Sasha pointed and laughed, as if she’d been in on the joke when clearly she hadn’t.
‘Oh, neat, I want to go see.’ Kat began walking towards the forest.
‘Hold it right there,’ Beatrice ordered. ‘Let’s eat before the bugs get it.’
‘OK,’ Kat mumbled, kicking at the dirt.
‘Megan, go find Ryan and tell him to come get something to eat,’ Beatrice ordered.
‘Just down the trail,’ Vincent said. ‘On the right side. You can’t miss it.’
‘Kat can go,’ Megan said. Her sister wanted to anyway.
‘No,’ Beatrice ordered. ‘I told you to go. Kat will get distracted and we will never see them again.’