The Carter Family Series, Book 7, by B. A. Lumin
Mist in the hollows on the fourteenth of November, and a notch in the creek bank that three months of Saturdays have worn into it. Scott has the readings — every hour, on the hour, since July, and not one missed. Nolan has the photographs nobody can argue with. Whisper reads the water at four point one degrees. And the thing this family has known since August still hasn’t been said to anybody outside their own kitchen.
No problem — ask a grown-up to sign up for you and they can pass it along. Here’s a bit of the story while you’re here:
Mist sat in the hollows of the creek bank and did not burn off, because it was the fourteenth of November and the sun had stopped trying. Candi went down the bank at the notch that three months of Saturdays had worn into it, without looking, the way a person goes down her own stairs.
Scott was already at Station Two with the cap off a bottle.
“Gloves,” she said.
“On.” He held both hands up over his shoulder without turning around, yellow to the wrist. “Nine-forty. Station Two. Clear on top, brown underneath. Same as last week.”
Nolan came down behind her with the camera bag against his chest and set it on the flat rock he always set it on. He did everything in the same order every time. In August that had made Candi want to take the camera away from him; by the second week of September she had noticed that his photographs were the only part of the record nobody could argue with, and she had stopped minding.
“Frame first, then the bottle,” Nolan said. “Otherwise the light moves and the two don’t match.”
“I know the order.”
“I know you know it. I say it out loud so I don’t skip it.”
Sensors are up, Whisper said. Not a sound—a small vibration in the bone behind Candi’s ear, where the amethyst studs sat. Water temperature four point one. It has not been above six since the first of the month.