I grinned slightly, not sure why I liked his approval, but I did.
We walked in silence for another minute or two. “Where are we going, anyway? My grandma said something about a doctor?” He looked puzzled. “She said you wouldn’t get the joke unless my mother told your mother?”
“Ohhhh,” he said. “Yeah, it was a rhyme my mom used to say. ‘Dr. Foster went to Gloucester.’ It was their explanation for why the town was deserted. That the people left for Gloucester. Which was partially true. But it’s an old rhyme about the Gloucester in England, not here.”
“What town that’s deserted?”
“We’re almost there.”
I was thoroughly confused, but he didn’t say more about the town, so I changed the subject. “Did you know our mothers were friends?”
“My mom told me. When I said I was taking Evelyn’s granddaughter around town.”
It hadn’t occurred to me to ask my mom about anything. I reflexively pulled my phone out of my pocket. No service. I held it over my head, looking at it to see if it picked anything up, and promptly tripped over a tree root. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground—except it wasn’t the ground. I had fallen into Joe, knocking him down in the process.
My phone was faceup in the dirt, about a foot from his head.
“Sorry. I’m so sorry, I wasn’t—” I pulled myself off him and stood up. He pushed up on his hands before rising, then stooped to pick up my phone and handed it to me.
“Do you text while driving too?”
I started to protest and explain myself. But it was almost like I felt my grandmother’s presence, whispering in my ear that I was being boring. And I wasn’t boring! Instead, I shrugged. “Only if there’s a cute cop nearby to stop me.” Jenna, what are you doing? I didn’t back down, and he eventually shook his head and continued walking. But I saw the hint of a grin as he turned away, and I felt my nerves crackling with electricity.
Flirt a little, that’s fine, I reminded myself. But you’re going home next week. And you’re still married.
We walked in silence for the next quarter mile until Joe stopped. “We’re here,” he announced.
I looked around. The trees were less dense, and there were a lot of rocks, but I didn’t see anything that resembled a town. He was looking at me expectantly. I looked around again. “Uh . . . what am I looking at?”
He spread his arms expansively. “Welcome to Rockland.”
“You’re putting me on, right?”
“Huh?”
“Rock Land?” I gestured to the rocks littering the ground.
“They weren’t real creative with place-names in the 1600s, I’ll give you that. Most towns in Essex are named for places in England and the rest are about the terrain. But this was a real settlement up until around 1800.”
“Did they live in the trees like Robin Hood?”
“A lot of the trees came later. You can see them growing in the ruins of houses. Come on, I’ll show you.” He began picking his way through the flora until we came to something that was square enough to let me see that it was man-made.
“So why did the people leave?”
“Most left because it was safe to live on the coast again after the Revolutionary War. And the fishing industry started to really be a thing . . .” He trailed off.
“And the rest?”
He looked up at me, a spark of excitement in his eyes. “Well, you asked about Salem.”
“Witches?”
“That’s what they say. When everyone else left, this was a safe space for them.”
I felt a slight shiver of excitement. “You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?”
He shrugged. “Not really. But they did back then. And some of them were pretty well known.”
“So what happened to them?”
“Maybe they’re still here. People say it’s haunted.”
I tried not to look apprehensive. I didn’t believe in magic. But in the middle of nowhere with a strange guy and no cell service . . . I laughed nervously. “You . . . uh . . . you meant it when you said you didn’t bring me out here to kill me, right?”
“They do like their sacrifices.”
There was a zero percent chance I could find my way back through the woods. What did you do, Grandma?
He laughed. “I’m messing with you.” Then he turned more serious. “It’s actually a sad story. People came from Hereford and burned what was left of the town. You can still see charring on some of the foundations.”