Chapter 10

"Come here dear, don't be shy." Gladys motioned her forward and gestured to the men, who were identical, how had she missed that? "These are the boys, Jake and Jon.

"Ma liked alliteration." The one on the left held out a huge hand. "Good to meet you, welcome to Winter Haven."

"Thank you, sir." Siana reached out and shook the man's hand. "What do I owe you for bringing my car back?"

"Just Jake is fine." Jake had an affable grin that was echoed by Jon. "It's gonna take a couple of days to work out what got fried. We can just settle up at the end if that works for you."

"Ok, that's fine." Siana swallowed her nerves back again where they kept trying to crawl up her throat. "I'm over at the inn right now and I'll give you my phone number so you can get a hold of me." That meant she had to leave her phone on, which she wasn't wild about doing but she needed her car back, so she was just gonna have to deal with it.

"Sounds good, lemme get paper and a pen and I'll add it to your file." Jack turned and lumbered (that was the only way that Siana could think of how to describe the man's movements.) back inside, leaving them with Jon who just grinned at her and Gladys, seemingly perfectly comfortable in the slightly awkward silence that had fallen.

"Jon's deaf, dear." Gladys remarked conversationally, starting to sign for the other man. "I don't suppose you know sign language?"

"I know a little bit, maybe even enough not to insult people." She'd taken a couple of years of it in college when she'd still been going and the bodega owner on the corner closest to her apartment in Lymburn had been deaf, so she'd had plenty of opportunity to practice. "I wouldn't say I'm fluent by any stretch of the imagination."

Jon turned to her and signed a quick greeting, which she returned carefully, before he returned his attention to Gladys. The two had a rapid-fire conversation that Siana had no hope of following and then Jake walked back out of the house with a piece of paper that looked almost comically small in his huge hand.

"Here, just write your number down here, mine's at the top so you can add it to your contacts." He just looked down at her with that affable smile as Siana added Jake's number to her phone and wrote her number down, trying to make sure that the numbers were clear. She didn't have the best handwriting. "Thanks," Jake said as she handed the paper back. "As soon as I've got an idea of what's going on I'll let you know."

She thanked Jake and Gladys broke from her conversation with Jon and they went back the way they came. All the people had either gone inside or had found other things to do so she didn't feel like a bug under glass anymore. Which was nice, she hadn't particularly enjoyed the feeling. Speaking of feelings, that push and pull feeling was back again and it was strong. She managed to shake it off while she walked along by Gladys' side and watched the woman give her a questioning look out of the corner of her eye.

"Headache, deary?" The older woman stopped and turned to face her. "No surprise there, I have to imagine it's been a very strange couple of days for you."

"I just keep getting this weird feeling, but it's probably just because I'm so unsettled." Siana shook the feeling away again and smiled at Gladys. "Sorry, I'm fine. Just at a loss for what to do until tomorrow."

"Why don't you go to the beach?" Gladys pointed in the direction of where the wind was coming from. "It's a nice day and some fresh sea air will do you good."

"Yeah," Siana looked in the direction of Gladys' finger and inhaled. The sea air, salt and freshness and the undertone of seaweed hitting her in the face. "That's a good idea, thanks Gladys."

Gladys waved and wandered away to do whatever it was that the woman did when she wasn't shepherding Siana around. Which was probably bossing someone around, she seemed like she was good at that. Siana watched her go for a minute before turning away and heading in the indicated direction. It was a straight shot from where she'd been standing to the beach. The dunes that separated the town and the water were middlingly high and covered in beach grass. There was a wooden walkway that wound through the dunes, and she followed it hearing the sound of the crashing waves getting slowly louder and louder as she got closer.

The walkway spat her out on a coarse sand beach. The edges of it were nothing but large rocks and they extended into the water, maybe to keep the waves from getting too large? Either way she walked out onto the sand until she was out of the shadow of the dunes and plopped down onto the sand, wrapping her arms around her knees, and staring out into the sparkling water. The waves were small and loud and the regularity that they hit the shore with was relaxing. Before she knew it, she was flat on her back in the sand staring up at the cloudless blue of the sky.