Chapter Eighty-Three

If Lila had a stopwatch timing her, she was sure that she would’ve broken her personal best in sprinting. Asher was a little bit ahead of her, given the length of his strides far surpassed hers, though it seemed that he had no destination in mind.

After half a minute or so of sustained running, Asher slowed his pace. Lila quickly caught up, pressing a hand to her side, as if to mend the searing stitch that had stolen her remaining breath.

Asher’s expression looked entirely shell-shocked, and she could almost see the thoughts reeling through his mind via the jitteriness of his eyes. He closed them and sank to the ground, clutching his head.

“That… was so fucking scary,” he mumbled after a beat. Lila crouched next to him, tenderly touching his shoulder. His arm twitched underneath her hand but swiftly relaxed.

“Yeah,” Lila agreed quietly. She hadn’t taken stock of their surroundings just yet, but now that they had a moment to spare, she cast her eyes around. They were near the entrance to the secondary road that she’d observed earlier.

“How’d Gabriel get in without us noticing?” Asher whispered. “Did he show up on the CCTV?”

“I dunno,” Lila replied gravely. “I wasn’t paying attention. The cat… kinda distracted me.”

“And me,” Asher sighed. He curled his hands into fists, briefly knocking them onto his skull before looking at Lila.

“You look spooked,” he observed.

“Funny that,” Lila responded tonelessly, “I am pretty spooked.”

“I… guess that’s it,” Asher said after another pause. “I don’t think we’re going to get back into Marlene’s cottage anytime soon. Or ever.”

“I think we were pretty thorough,” Lila noted earnestly. “And we took pictures along the way. I’m sure we’ll be able to find more details once we get these bad boys printed.”

“Probably.”

They fell silent again, with Lila trying to clear the mess in her mind. She glanced behind her, back towards the cottage, in case Gabriel emerged. It didn’t seem like he had, but he might’ve whilst they were running over here.

“I need to take a walk,” Asher admitted, his eyes resting on Lila’s face. “If you want, you can go back and hang out in the rumpus room.”

“No, sir,” Lila replied shortly, shaking her head. “I need one too. My head’s in shambles.”

“Glad I’m not the only one.”

With a long-suffering exhale, Asher stood up, offering his hand to Lila. Her heart jolted for a moment as she stared at it, forgetting for just a second the situation she was in.

“T-Thanks,” she stammered, accepting his warm hand in her own ice-cold one, defrosting it in an instant. He pulled her up, a faint rosiness on his cheeks, before letting go just as quickly. He looked away, down the cobblestoned path, clearing his throat.

“We, uh, can take that walk down here. Like you’d mentioned,” he suggested, gesturing vaguely towards the road.

“Let’s,” Lila smiled. “Maybe we’ll find out where it leads.”

“I’m also pretty happy to not find out more things,” Asher replied, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. “Dunno if my head has enough memory storage for that.”

“I’ll put an order in for an upgrade,” Lila remarked. Asher snorted and they set off down the path, the crisp winter air beginning to feel refreshing, rather than punishing.

The barren, gnarled trees lining the road would certainly be picturesque in any other season besides winter. The satisfying clack of their footfalls against the rounded and weathered cobblestones transported Lila not just away from the worker’s cottage, but the modern-day altogether. She could almost see herself, dressed in a finely embroidered, floor-length afternoon dress, parasol swinging on one arm, with a hand pressing down an extravagant, feathered hat to prevent the wind from tossing it behind her. Of course, in that scenario, her hands would be adorned with frilly white glo-

Lila stopped walking entirely, horror overtaking her entire being. Forget a sinking stomach – her insides were plummeting straight down to the Earth’s core, boiling up during its descent with embarrassment, shame, and, most importantly, fear.

“What’s wrong?” Asher’s voice snapped her own back into her throat and she stared up at him, her eyes brimming with tears.

“Y-You didn’t, by any chance, happen to wear gloves?” Her whisper was more reminiscent of a tremor. “At all?”

Lila’s question was answered by the sudden, sickly pale colour of Asher’s face and the unsteadiness of his balance as he pressed a distinctly ungloved hand on his mouth. He shook his head, his eyes seeming dazed.

“How many more ways can we bungle this whole operation?” Lila bemoaned as her body lowered into a deep squat, head in her hands.

“I-It was never going to be perfect,” Asher’s reply was strained, laced with palpable mortification.

“No,” Lila conceded, “but what was all that planning for?”

“Hey, hey,” Asher bent down to match her height, gently removing her hands from her face. His face was still pale though his expression had changed to one of concern. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Lila stubbornly replied, resting her forehead on her knees. “What the hell do we say to Marlene?”

“I don’t know,” Asher responded seriously.

“You don’t have any ideas?” Lila bit her lower lip, trying but failing to steady her breathing. She’d messed everything up – they’d gotten so much closer to figuring out Marlene, and now they were as good as caught, done, and busted. “I… don’t either.”

“We can think about it together,” Asher said quietly. She glanced at him and saw his hands were trembling. If Asher had no ideas, what could she think up? How were they going to get out of this?

Lila closed her eyes, trying to envision a plausible scenario for why they would have broken into Marlene’s living quarters. The fact that she was coming up empty was starting to quicken her heartbeat. There was nothing. She raised her head to the sky, as though the heavens would give her an answer. The only thing up there, it seemed, was a particularly grey and gloomy cloud lazily drifting across the sky, shielding them from the sun’s harsh winter rays.

Sympathy softened Asher’s golden-brown eyes as he continued to look at her. “It’s unusual for you to seem so… hopeless,” he observed in an undertone.

A shudder ran through Lila’s spine as she processed Asher’s words. Was it so unusual?

“Seems like I suck at this whole comforting thing,” Asher added gently. “Since usually it’s me freaking out. You’re always… so level-headed. O-Or at least you ground me. And the fact that you’re… well… you seem… I dunno…” he trailed off awkwardly.

Lila slowly took in Asher’s sheepish face. “What?”

“I-It’s just… um… never mind.”

“I’m minding.”

Asher’s eyes twinkled for a moment, as though fighting back the urge to laugh or otherwise respond to Lila’s comment.

“Seriously. Maybe I misspoke. I dunno. I feel silly now,” he settled on saying instead.

“Asher, I’ve freaked out before and you managed to comfort me very well.”

“I don’t think I could repeat that same success so easily,” Asher said simply. “It’s just not within my skill set. A-Anyway, me messing up trying to make you feel better aside, we can’t change the past. Wish we could, but we can’t. So… yeah. We fucked up. But we fucked up as a team, at least. So, team, what now?”

Lila blinked at Asher in astonishment. Somehow, his reaction seemed rather out of character – was it his attempt to push past his usual morose response in circumstances like this?

He seemed to deflate before her. “… please say something.”

“O-Oh,” Lila quickly cleared her throat. If she started talking… maybe something would come to her. “I-I guess… Marlene will have to talk to us about breaking in. It’s not like we deleted footage, or found all the cameras. And now our fingerprints are everywhere they shouldn’t be.”

“No kidding,” Asher replied seriously. “I touched a lot of ducks.”

Lila glanced at him, a small smile tugging at her lips. “Yeah, same. There were a shit ton of ducks. Speaking of, we didn’t get rid of any of the duct tape. And… I doubt we made our presence not known in her place. I tried my best to reset everything properly, but… knowing how neat she is… it’d probably be impossible to get it perfectly right.”

“I sadly agree with all that,” Asher noted glumly.

“So… I guess… we could tell her the truth.”

Asher’s eyes almost fell out of his head and he stood in shock. “Not happening.”

Lila raised her hands in surrender. “It was only a suggestion. We don’t have to. But what would be convincing enough?”

“An earthquake,” Asher replied flatly. “An earthquake shook everything and we went in to check whether anything was broken.”

“And she’d instantly ask Gabriel if his side was affected by the earthquake. Besides, do we get them in Australia?”

Asher didn’t respond as he rubbed his face with both palms. “We… thought she was home. So we let ourselves in-”

“She’s obviously going to know it was locked.”

“Fuck.”

Asher began to pace before Lila and she narrowed her eyes as she continued to contemplate a reasonable explanation for their presence in Marlene’s cottage.

“… Mr Snugglebutt,” Lila said quietly. Asher stopped pacing, staring at her like she’d gone mad.

“What?”

“Oh. That’s right, you wouldn’t have seen it. That’s the cat’s name. Well, I think it is – it was written on a photo or two of him on the photo wall, plus that’s what Gabriel said just now…” she bit her lip as she continued to consider the cat’s relevance to their predicament. “We… could say that we saw him wandering around the property and wanted to see where he went. Then, we got concerned about him ‘cause he was crying inside the cottage.”

“And we went through every room ‘cause we didn’t know where he was?”

“Yeah. And then if she asks Gabriel about it, he can verify that Mr Snugglebutt seemed distressed today.”

“Well, that was our doing.”

“Gabriel doesn’t know that.”

The whistling wind was the only sound for a few moments as Lila watched Asher ruminate over this idea.

“… it’s… not the worst explanation,” he finally said with a heavy sigh. “At least, it’s better than an earthquake. I don’t think we’d be able to think of anything better, to be honest. Not between now and when she comes home, anyway. I’m not telling her that we’re investigating her involvement, if any, in my Mum’s disappearance. No way. That’s a sure-fire way for me to be a target, if she…”

Asher swallowed roughly, unable to finish his sentence. Lila could guess what the rest would have been and decided to continue fleshing out their current plan if confronted by Marlene.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“If she asks why we were clearly not looking for a cat in CCTV footage, we could just say that we were admiring her ducks and got distracted,” she offered tentatively. Asher nodded.

“She’s got so many ducks, I think she’d be ecstatic to know that they were admired by us to the point of distraction,” he said.

“Is that your assessment of her, due to your similarities?”

“We’re not similar.”

“Only joking,” Lila half-lied. He looked at her doubtfully before pursing his lips and saying no more on the topic.

“… you okay?” he asked after a few moments.

She nodded. “I think so.” Then, she shook her head.

“Actually, no,” she admitted. “I… well… I can’t believe we managed to screw it up that badly. And I keep thinking it’s my fault. I didn’t remind you to wear gloves, and I wasn’t paying attention to where things were placed, and then I didn’t see Gabriel come bac-”

“Lila,” Asher interrupted her firmly. “I’m just as at fault as you are.”

“But you rely on me to think about this stuff, for the investigation.”

“I do. That doesn’t mean that I can’t think about wearing gloves, or looking at CCTV, or figuring out where things belong. Or anything else that we messed up. Seriously – we’ll get through this. We’ve got a plan about what to say to her if she asks us about it all. And we’ve got some follow-up things that we have to do. So, we can’t lose hope yet.”

“Follow-up things?”

Asher smiled at Lila, helping her to her feet again. “Gotta get the cameras off to a camera store, don’t we?”

Lila returned his smile, feeling a lot more at ease. He was right. They had a plan, and they had things to do. If they were going to get to the bottom of this, they’d just have to take the losses with the wins. As far as she was concerned, this was the closest they’d gotten to figuring anything out about Marlene and the secrets she was keeping.

“For now,” he said quietly, turning towards the path they had yet to traverse. “Let’s find out where this goes. Calm down a bit.”

“Sounds like a good idea. You are good at this comforting thing,” Lila grinned, stretching her shoulders. He glanced at her before sighing in relief.

“If you think so, then that’s all that matters,” he replied, placing his hands in his pockets. Lila hoisted the bag onto her shoulder and they both continued along the path.

The road stretched far before them, with nothing of real interest that they could see from the beginning of their journey. The road began to wind around the property, the still, quiet air only adding to Lila’s perception that this was a rather disused road. Through the sparse tree branches, she could glimpse the workers’ cottage and Asher’s house.

“Where does this lead?” Lila queried, the breath rising before her in a small cloud.

“No idea,” Asher replied, frowning as though it bothered him.

“Does it connect to any main roads?”

Asher shrugged. “Again, I’ve never gone down this way. I expect that for it to be functional, it would.”

“It seems pretty well maintained, at least,” Lila observed, looking towards her feet. “I mean, despite it being ol-”

As though the cobblestones had been listening to her and were particularly vicious, Lila found herself falling head-first onto the road. She squeezed her eyes shut, thrusting her hands out to brace herself. But her body didn’t connect with the floor.

“Easy there,” Asher’s voice whispered in her ear, his sturdy arms wrapping around her waist. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

Instantly, her face turned bright red, the warmth of his arm nowhere near as warm as her face. Tingles shot through her sides, emanating from where he was still touching her, goosebumps shooting up her neck. She shuddered for a moment and he let go. She stepped away from him, her eyes nervously darting to his face, holding her left arm with her right.

“Sorry,” he said, his own face flushed. “Are you alright?”

“Y-Yeah,” she faltered. “T-Thanks. I would’ve fallen.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied, jamming his hands into his pockets again with slightly more force than necessary. “I, uh, didn’t mean to touch you without your consent.”

“You were helping,” she insisted, praying that this conversation would be over, lest she forget the rush his hands gave her. “It’s fine.”

“It’s ‘fine’ or fine?”

“Asher.”

“Sorry.”

She smiled at him, though her stomach felt as though it was auditioning for Cirque du Soleil. He seemed incredibly unsure of himself, though he strode forwards down the road without another word. Lila followed, a tiny part of her wishing that he hadn’t let go.

“I-” Asher began, but Lila cut him off.

“If you’re about to try and apologise again, please don’t. Then I’ll actually think it’s harassment.”

Asher fell silent, and Lila tried a laugh to indicate that she was joking – but it was far more of a strangled gasp than a laugh. He seemed to understand, though, as he smiled at her.

“Noted.”

They leisurely continued down the road, this time Lila being far more wary of any wayward stones that were going to cause her embarrassment.

Asher filled the silence with some light banter regarding their studies and their sporting matches, among other things, which Lila joined in with relish. She was grateful for his swift change to topics other than his touching of her. Though the feeling of his touch was fading, her body begged for more.

Eventually, the conversation lulled, and Asher began humming to himself. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him, a blush forming on her cheeks as she considered the fact that this road, with its cobblestones and secluded nature, was rather romantic. It’d probably be a nice road to walk down whilst holding hands…

‘Calm down,’ she willed to herself, clasping her hands tightly together to prevent their wandering to Asher’s, both of which swung gently by his side. ‘Time to talk about something else.’

“Did you end up finishing that book I lent you?” Lila asked softly, preferring to look at the road than at him for now. Asher enthusiastically replied, diving into the intricacies of the plot points that he found most intriguing. His zest was infectious, and Lila felt relaxed discussing the book further with him, now wanting to look nowhere else but at his beaming face. At one point, she engaged in a debate with Asher about the way he interpreted the motives of the main character and the impact of such on the plot as a whole.

They ended up walking quite far along the path as it curved around long-forgotten property lines and structures. Now that they were both physically and conversationally distant from the Marlene situation, she felt suitably distracted enough to fully enjoy the stroll with Asher. She stretched her arms above her head as Asher tutted, disagreeing further with a point she’d made.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Asher said hurriedly after seeing the look she gave him. “I just don’t think you’re reading into it with all the facts.”

Lila snorted. “I think you’re reading into it without thinking about the human condition.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Clearly, the story is about the human condition,” Lila replied shortly, giving him a disbelieving look. “You need that lens when looking at the actions and reactions of people around Sven. He’s morally grey, and the driving force behind that is what makes his actions so much more compelling.”

“Sure, I guess I’ll give that to you. But I still reckon- just how long is this damn road?” Asher impatiently placed his hands on his hips, glaring at the far end of the road as though it had personally slighted him for existing. “I feel like we’ve been walking along here forever.”

“Well, we don’t know where it leads,” Lila reasoned. “Don’t you want to see where it ends?”

“I… guess,” Asher replied doubtfully. “We’ve been gone for a while, though. Gabriel will be wondering where we are if we take much longer.”

Lila checked the clock on her phone. It was nearing 10.30am now – where had the time gone?

“I can’t believe we’ve been out here for so long,” Lila remarked, pocketing her phone again. “I could’ve sworn checking out Marlene’s place was only, like, ten or twenty minutes.”

“Might’ve been,” Asher observed simply. “But we did a few more things than just check out her place.”

“Guess so…”

Lila looked down the end of the road, which seemed to curve to the right this time and go downhill. “Sure we can’t keep going? I’m super curious.”

Asher glanced at Lila, a small smile forming on his face. “Well, when you seem that disappointed, we can go a little bit further, I suppose.”

Now that Lila was hyper-aware of the time, though, her anxiety started to seep back into her consciousness. Asher was right – Gabriel would be wondering where they were. Asher had only said they would be going for a walk to the shopping district, which both wasn’t far and wasn’t full of too many things to see and do.

“Are… we going to tell Gabriel anything?” Lila questioned, gripping the shoulder strap of her bag tightly, following Asher down the road which still revealed nothing but swaying, bowed trees.

“About what?”

“… About what we’ve been doing. About the investigation.”

Asher stopped in his tracks completely, staring at Lila for a moment. “I… hadn’t been planning on it. Why, do you think he can be ruled out?”

Lila sighed, relaxing the tension in her hand. “Well, he’s probably as ruled out as any of our suspects can get. Plus, he might know things, if you ask.”

Asher’s face seemed to darken as he shook his head. “Of course I asked. He said absolutely nothing useful. When I asked, he said he thought she went on a business trip. But like I said, Mum always tells me that kinda thing. And a business trip that’s taken this long? She would’ve had to prepare for that for a while, surely. Plus, all her stuff’s here. And she hasn’t contacted me at all…”

“I see. Don’t you think we should get some adults involved, though?”

“The fact that no one’s been honest with me, about where she’s gone or what she’s doing, makes me nervous that they’re all in on it,” Asher responded seriously. “I’d love to, but they’re all hiding things from me. Even Gabriel. I’m sure he knows more than he’s letting on. And besides, he lives with Marlene. Sure, there’s the divider, but you saw how easy it was for him to just get into Marlene’s side. What if she catches wind that Gabriel’s sniffing around to help us? We already know she’s dangerous.”

The implication that Marlene might do something to Gabriel made Lila’s blood run colder than the frigid air. “… That’s a good point. I should’ve known you’d thought about all this.”

Asher grimaced, running his hands through his hair. “I don’t mean to put you down, for your ideas.”

“Can’t know your thoughts if I don’t hear them,” Lila smiled comfortingly. “Don’t feel bad.”

“Sorry.”

“Asher, if you say sorry one more time, I think I’ll smack you.”

He looked shocked for a moment before giving her a cheeky grin. “Maybe I’ll like it.”

Lila’s face turned scarlet, and she started spluttering, trying to process normal thoughts amongst the others now flooding her mind. ‘This is dangerous,’ she thought, looking elsewhere. Saying things like that, coupled with his touch that was still vividly in her memory… it was starting to make her feel a different type of woozy. The effect he was having on her – no one person should be able to do that, especially not so easily. It wasn’t fair.

“You went all quiet on me,” Asher’s voice startled her, and she spun her head to look at him. “Everything okay?”

“Fantastic,” Lila replied, her voice strained. She cleared her throat and stared down at the road. “J-Just thinking about some things.”

“Dollarydoo for your thoughts?”

“They’re not worth a cent, sorry,” Lila whispered. “Not now, anyway.”

Asher fell silent, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Shall we keep going, or head back?”

“We could keep going for a little bit longer,” Lila suggested, the curiosity not quieting down any. Being distracted by this walk, the purpose of which was clear, was helping her mind focus. Then, a thought occurred to her – this one far less frivolous than the previous.

“While we’re out here in the middle of nowhere,” Lila said, diving her hand into her bag, “we could do something else.”

“S-Something else?”

Not a second later, Lila victoriously held up Mr Snugglebutt’s collar, its bottle still attached. “Let’s see what it says.”

“O-Oh,” Asher replied, his posture softening significantly. He tugged at his shirt, pulling the neck down, as he waited for her to open the bottle.

It was finnicky, its size being hardly larger than a travel-sized toothpaste tube, but she managed to untwist the lid. Eyes sparkling with interest, she tipped the open side onto her palm. The furled scrap of paper resisted her efforts for a moment before shooting out. Lila almost dropped it in surprise but clenched her fist tightly around the bundle. Gingerly, she opened it again and plucked out the paper, passing it to Asher.

As she twisted the lid back on and dropped the collar back into the bag, Asher read the note, his brows furrowed.

“What the heck is this?” he asked, turning the piece of paper in his hands. “It’s just a whole bunch of random letters.”

“Lemme see,” Lila stretched out her hand for the note and he gave it to her, peering at her curiously as she read.

Olssv, tf uhtl pz Wlyjf. Tf Tbt sprlz av jhss tl Ty Zubnnslibaa aol Aopyk. P dvukly pm fvb’ss il hisl av jhajo tl, Hzoly huk Spsh.

“Is it a different language, maybe?” she asked in a low voice, glancing uneasily at Asher.

“Not one that I’m familiar with, at least,” he responded with a contemplative look, his eyes darting down the page and back to Lila’s face.

“Let me guess, not only are you the Dux, a star goalie, and generally brilliant, you know, like, 15 languages?”

“Not 15,” Asher laughed. “Maybe one day.”

“Go on, what’re they?”

“Not necessarily fluent in anything other than English,” he said cautiously, “but I know a bit of Tamil, some French, Italian, German, Swedish, Arabic, Mandarin and minute amounts of Latin. I was starting to learn Russian with Mum before… well, yeah.”

“Was she teaching you Russian?” Lila inquired incredulously. He shook his head.

“Nah, we were doing Duolingo together, and she also bought access to a language course that she was gonna share with me. Like I said though, I’m not fluent in any of those languages besides English, so don’t get too excited.”

“Well, I wasn’t about to,” Lila smirked. “Still, that’s a much longer list than mine. I’m impressed.”

“What’s your extra languages? Tagalog and Japanese?”

“Yeah, and the smallest amount of Bisaya.”

“Bisaya, huh. That’s pretty neat. Maybe together we could take on the whole world.”

Lila’s heart thumped. “Y-Yeah, maybe we could.”

He beamed at her before inspecting the note again. “I honestly don’t even know what syntax this is following. Is it English? What’s up with the random capital letters?”

“Let’s take a picture for now,” Lila suggested, passing him the note again. “We might lose this since it’s so tiny.”

“Good thinking.”

She pulled out her disposable camera and snapped a couple of pictures.

“Should we… put it back into the bottle again?” Asher asked, beginning to roll it up.

“May as well,” Lila replied, swapping her camera for the collar. It took them a couple of tries to slide it back into the bottle, but they eventually managed.

“I’m dying to know what it says,” Asher huffed, crossing his arms – almost like a petulant toddler. “I’ll be thinking about this for weeks.”

“Do you reckon it matches the other scraps of paper in Marlene’s drawer?” Lila tapped her chin as she tried to recall. Asher slowly shook his head.

“Some of them were more like pictographs, or actually in a different language with, like, Georgian script or something. I could be misremembering though – we’ll see when the pictures are developed.”

Their continued walk along the road was much quieter now, with Asher undoubtedly mulling over the message in his mind, just as Lila was.

“… you think I’m brilliant?” Asher’s question after several minutes of sustained silence pulled Lila from her consideration of the code. Was that what he’d been thinking about?

“Yeah,” Lila said, her voice suddenly coy. “’Course I do.”

“Huh,” Asher uttered, folding his arms across his chest as their steps emitted synchronised patters. “I would’ve thought that you’d think I was a bit of an idiot.”

“You have your moments.”

“Ouch.”

“Few and far between, though.”

“Well, shucks, I guess.”

They both laughed before falling back into a comfortable silence yet again. Lila continued to firmly press her hands together, suddenly unsure of what to do with them.

“You are brilliant,” Lila repeated in a low murmur. “That’s not just me saying it ‘cause I like you. I’ve always thought you were brilliant, even back in middle school. Probably earlier, too. But, almost too brilliant – like a shining star I couldn’t reach, I guess.”

There was a pause, and Lila peeked at Asher. His face was bright red again, though he covered most of it with his right hand. He quickly dropped it and nodded.

“Thanks. For telling me. And thinking of me that way, I guess,” he finally said. “I didn’t know you had that perception of me – especially back then.”

“It probably helped that Isaac’s your best friend,” Lila chuckled. “Not that he’s dumb, but you definitely stand out next to him.”

“Really?” Asher seemed genuinely surprised. “Despite everything?”

Lila wasn’t exactly sure what ‘everything’ was in this context – was he talking about the fact that she’d dated Isaac? Or was he talking about the rumours that had been around him for years, due to Piper’s meddling?

But just as the search for clarification was on her lips, both Lila and Asher simultaneously halted.

Finally, it seemed, they were at the end of the road.

And, contrary to the path to get here, it wasn’t pretty.