With the team breaking up into pairs every day, she and Russ working together at Dr. Wells’s suggestion, she saw little of her during the day. In the evening, when Cassie and her partner, Mariah, returned, they were all too busy working independently for there to be much interaction. By the time they finished with the day’s work and retreated to their bedrooms, Laurel, like everyone else, was too exhausted to talk. So she was particularly looking forward to the group’s next foray out into the field together. She hoped that working side by side with Cassie once again would give her a chance to get a reading on her mood. “Today I’d like you to take the canoes out to that little island at the far end of the lake,” Dr. Wells told them early one morning at the end of the third week. They were gathered outside the cabin, near a decaying wooden picnic table that often served as a makeshift lab in the evenings. “You know what to do when you get out there: use the fish traps and the seines to get fish samples, use the sweep nets to collects insects, gather botanical specimens ...
