we will seek my buried inheritance

[self_composed]

Bella fixes French toast for breakfast to salvage stale bread, and, having seen Charlie off to work, hops in her own car and makes for Alice's house. She arrives at nine-thirty, and goes up to the doorbell and rings it.

Comments

[edgeofyourseat]

Hilary answers!

"You must be looking for Laney," she says. "He's in the kitchen, shall I grab him?"

[self_composed]

"Yes please," Bella says. "We have a day trip planned. I might not return him until this evening."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Exciting," says Hilary. "Just a sec."

She turns around and walks back to the kitchen. Very shortly, she's back, trailing an Alice who is wearing a very nice blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and wiping his hands on a tea towel.

"Go on," she says, grabbing the towel away and giving him a gentle shove out the door.

"Hi, Bella," says Alice.

[self_composed]

"Hi! You're dressed uncharacteristically," Bella comments. "Ready to go?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"I was cleaning an oven," he says by way of explanation. "Yep, let's get outta here."

[self_composed]

So he wears nice buttondown shirts to clean ovens.

Well, that makes perfect sense.

"What was the matter with the oven? It was fine for the cake last night," Bella says, waving to Hilary and leading Alice to her car.

[edgeofyourseat]

"It got a little caramel'd."

[self_composed]

Bella chuckles and hops in the car. "Here," she says, handing over the notebook with the map in it as well as a local roadmap. "You're the navigator."

[edgeofyourseat]

"You got it," he says, sliding into the passenger seat and buckling his seatbelt unprompted.

[self_composed]

Bella pulls out of the driveway and makes the first turn according to the general direction they're headed, then awaits instructions.

"Use any more coins so far?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Nope," he says, and also, "Thataway."

[self_composed]

"Me either, but I made some more. Turns out stepping on a Lego is good for a square about two thirds of the time, but the ratio was deteriorating after a while - I guess I started stepping more gingerly or something - so I stopped when I had ten squares, seven triangles."

[edgeofyourseat]

"That is a weird and kind of adorable mental image," Alice comments.

[self_composed]

"What's adorable about me stepping on a Lego seventeen times and swearing under my breath?" laughs Bella.

[edgeofyourseat]

"I dunno," he says. "And I can't write it out and navigate at the same time. Pretty sure you wanna turn up there, by the way."

[self_composed]

"Turn which way?" Bella asks patiently.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Left."

[self_composed]

So it goes.

Eventually they're driving over gravel, and the road comes to a stop. "Are we close, or are we in for a serious hike?" Bella asks, halting at the end of the gravel where it turns into a narrow dirt path.

[edgeofyourseat]

"I dunno, is a mile and a half serious?"

[self_composed]

"It's a little serious. If the terrain's not very friendly I might be looking at yet another pentagon or three by the time we arrive," Bella says with bright trepidation. She parks and gets out of the car.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Hot," says Alice, following.

[self_composed]

Bella makes a laughing noise that sounds vaguely like "sporfle".

"You're still the navigator," she says. "Does this path look good or do we need to veer off it soon?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"We're good for now."

[self_composed]

Walk-walk-walk.

"Since we're moving at like two miles per hour now, I bet you can write too, if you set your mind to it."

[edgeofyourseat]

"You know what, I bet I could," he agrees, and drags his notebook out of the pocket of his jeans. It takes some juggling to manage both notebooks at once, but he gets it settled after a minute.

"Now, what the hell were we talking about, again?"