Beach Day

40: Kepler Exits The Bathroom

They're still giggling and getting along like the old friends they are by the time they stumble through the door of the motel room.

Her aunt is sitting on the rightmost bed with Tiff's laptop open on her lap. There's an odd look on her face— one of concern, one of worry.

Whoops! Tiff hopes her aunt didn't read any of her documents. That would be embarrassing.

"What the hell happened to you two?" she asks, breathless.

Tiff isn't sure if she genuinely wants to know. She looks to Matt for an answer and the two of them immediately start laughing again. "That's a complicated answer."

"Tiff, what happened to your arm?"

"The bone creature!"

"Don't worry, Aunt Esther," Matt says, like he's trying to sound responsible and respectable, "I patched her up."

"Well, thank you, Matt, but I'm not sure— You kids look like shit." She sets the laptop to the side, close to Kepler, and swings her legs over the edge of the bed. She doesn't stand. "What happened?"

"Long story short, the four of us— Andy, Drew, Matt, and I— were out in the woods and the bone creature attacked— the bone creature being, of course, a construct made of bones and black goo. So Drew took Andy home and Matt and I stayed to fight and get some information. We— I should wait until Drew gets back to get into all of what I found and learned, or—" She remembers the feeling of sitting with Drew at the docks and stammers, "Maybe— Maybe we should leave him out of it. I don't want to ruin his trip more than I already have, and— And— So it's— We found the lost chapel and got some information there and then came back."

Her aunt raises her eyebrows. "Well, if you don't want Drew to know..."

"He already knows."

"Then what's the point of trying to keep him out of it if he wants to be involved, Tiff? That seems a little hypocritical."

"Peepaw killed the mystery lady," she blurts.

"Excuse me?"

"I could be wrong! The stuff I saw could have been biased! But— but I saw a guy who looked just like him but younger kill the mystery lady, and..." Tiff swallows, breathes. "But, from what I've heard..."

Matt frowns, takes a seat at the table, all joy gone from his deflated corpse. He props his head up by one hand at the forehead. "No, yeah. That was definitely Peepaw we saw."

"Right! Shit! I forgot you saw that, too!"

"Yeah, I saw. Damn windows." He sighs, leans back into the chair. "It's going to take a moment for all of that to sink in."

Esther sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose. "Both of you take a moment, then."

"With all due respect, Auntie, I don't know if we have to do that. We could just keep on going."

"No, no— I'm going mom-mode. Matt, take a moment and dry off. Tiff, take a shower. We'll regroup in twenty minutes and exchange everything we've learned—"

"Do we have a corkboard?" Tiff blurts. "It might go easier if we have a corkboard."

"No, Tiff, we do not have a corkboard. We don't need one." She breathes in, lets it out. "I'm going to— Oh, shoot, Drew has the car."

Almost reading her mind (her aunt was just about to suggest dinner and Tiff knows it), Tiff recalls, "We have leftovers."

"Only because someone won't finish her dinner."