Ruined – Chapter 1
Lennon sat back on her heels and surveyed the damage she’d done to the ground in front of her. She felt a lone bead of sweat run down her spine, and she pressed at her shirt to make it stop. She hated the feeling of sweat rolling along her skin. But the work she liked.
She’d dug small holes at various points on her patch of ground. None of the holes was wide but each was several feet deep. Before she abandoned one, she would look down in to see if she could spot changes in the soil pattern, maybe see layers where dirt had been moved in recent centuries, or even find human bones or pieces of ancient clay. She’d already spent weeks getting a ground penetrating radar specialist out her to mark her spots and then gridding the area with stakes and string. It felt good to finally be digging.
Some people didn’t realize how much of getting your degree was about navigating the bureaucracy. Her last year had involved getting her thesis approved by her committee at school and then getting the town council of Breathless to approve her digging on some of the public lands.
Three years earlier, Lennon had found a good-size piece of pottery while out for a walk on this patch of ground. That’s how long it had taken to get far enough in her degree to propose a thesis, to get that idea approved by the research board, contact the local native tribes, and get them to agree to what she had suspected all along—that the piece of clay pot and the design on it were definitely not theirs. Then, she’d had to get the Breathless town council to write up extensive paperwork, saying it was okay for her to come out and dig up some random test spots.
She’d kept that piece of clay pot to herself. She could have told one of her professors what she’d found. It was an interesting discovery. But being who she was, she’d wanted to do the research herself. She was pursuing a joint anthropology/archeology degree. And handing over the discovery would have meant the dig would fall into the hands of a professor and she’d be lucky if she was even allowed on the student team.
Keeping it to herself had been a gamble. She’d had to both downplay the find enough that no one stole the research from her, but make it clear enough what it was to justify doing the dig.
But here she was—finally!—with her fingers in the soil.
Her back hurt and her gloves were sticking to her hands. She didn’t take them off; the alternative was blisters. Still, if she got lucky, this would possibly become an important dig showing roots of North American human history right in her hometown.
The other possibility was that the piece she had found had traveled some distance from its origination point, and—for whatever reason—gotten lodged in the soil here in Breathless, Georgia. Lennon did not like to entertain that possibility.
The good news for her was that there existed evidence of ancient cultures having migrated through here. They could have come north, through Central America, and passed through this section of Georgia even before the known natives. It was a hotly-contested issue since the vast majority of names of the Native American tribes literally translated to “First People.” But there was a growing body of evidence that others had come through and died out maybe even long before that.
If she already had her doctorate, if she was running her own dig, she would have a bevy of graduate students doing this work for her. Instead, she was on her knees and troweling the dirt herself. To be fair, her thesis was only about the preliminary research to determine whether or not more digging was required. It was still a lot of work.
So far, she’d found nothing. Exactly jack squat. Day three of truly digging and she was out here again, sweating into her uniform of work boots, tank top, and old cargo pants. The pants themselves were lightweight but she’d filled all the pockets until she looked lumpy. The outfit was practical and not much else.
She’d come home every evening, peeled all of her clothing, and stuck it directly in the washer. Then she’d stuck herself directly in the shower. She’d do the same tonight, though home wasn’t even her home.
While her Mama and Daddy lived in town, Lennon couldn’t quite face moving back in and settling into her old room and the old rules. She loved her parents, but they were a bit on the strict side.
Instead, she’d moved in with her cousin. She’d been excited to have a roommate. She and Bailey Ann were nearly a decade apart in age. But as they’d become adults, she’d realized what an amazing person Bailey Ann was. They had lived together for almost two months while Lennon finished up all the paperwork and started her planning phases.
However, over the course of the past several weeks, Bailey Ann had moved out. She’d moved in with her boyfriend, now fiancé, Finn Malloy. Those two had begun dating in high school and broken up in college. But whatever they’d worked out this time was jealousy-inducingly solid. So Lennon now had the house to herself.
She’d once again offered to pay rent, but her cousin refused. She told herself to enjoy having her own home, and at least she tried. It was strange being an adult back in Breathless. Luckily, all her cousins were turning into good friends, even if the youngest Mayfair sister, her best friend Emma Kate, was still at UCLA finishing up her own degree. Lennon and Bailey Ann were establishing a new relationship as adults now. And she was trying to establish one with her older brother Jackson, who also lived in town.
Though none of it had turned out the way she expected, Lennon was still doing her best to enjoy it. Though she was rattling around in a house by herself, it was good not to be in her parents’ home. She would always be her mother’s daughter, but it was harder to be herself at home.
Leaning back over the hole she’d been working on, she stuck the trowel in and widened it. Her lack of finding anything for three days was not discouraging. In any other job, it probably would be, but in this one, she knew she could dig for months and not find what she needed. What she was looking for was likely broken, tiny, and muddy enough to not be seen until she was directly on top of it. So with plenty of enthusiasm still in place, Lennon went back with her little hand shovel, carefully scraping the edges of the hole.
She couldn’t even really dig. If she did, she might break something and damage the very artifacts she was looking for. But twenty minutes later, she heard the first telltale clink.
Her heart soared. She knew that was odd. Who got excited about pot sherds? She and her archeology friends did—the same people who like to explain that they were, in fact “sherds” and not “shards.” That’s who.
Setting the trowel aside, Lennon shone her flashlight into the hole as she leaned over. She couldn’t quite make out what she’d hit. So she reminded herself it could be a lost dog tag, a bottle cap, a scrap of an old wooden sign…anything really.
After a few more minutes of work, she identified it. It was a broken bit of a baked clay pot!
As she smiled and stared at the small piece in her hand like a long-lost lover, she heard a noise off to her right. Turning her head, she spotted a pair of expensive and too-clean-to-be-used hiking boots. When her gaze lifted, following long, lean legs, a cut torso and striking brown eyes, her heart plummeted.
Of course.
Who else would possibly be standing there but Gabriel Zemp?
