11/01/2024 NotAWriMo, BANSHEE BEACH: 1710/52164.

And so it begins. This is going to jump around ferociously, by the way: I have whole sections that go [write this later]. Well… it’s later.

Earl knew his stuff; and what he didn’t know, his wife had picked up for him. Between the two of them, and their apparently endless supply of kids, we had the coach unpacked and hidden away in no time. And I mean unpacked, and I definitely mean us. I didn’t wait for somebody to help with my bags, and neither did David and Patricia. I even grabbed Lucas’s for him, since he had gravitated towards helping get the horses back all the way down to just a little crazy.

His frown got bigger and bigger as we all worked, especially when Lucas noticed how we were all just a little frantic about it. “Y’all were looking in the wrong places,” he murmured to me as we pushed the coach the rest of the way into the barn. “The broomers landed twenty minutes ago, but you kept looking up, instead of south.”

“And what does that tell you, Lucas?”“That I was looking in the wrong place. You gotta take it seriously when the locals do something you don’t expect, Tom. They always know the area better than you. That’s why they’re the locals.”