Finally, he lifted his head and met her gaze with red-rimmed eyes.
“You’re not responsible for what happened to her. It was an accident.”
He shook his head and buried his face back in his knees.
“Listen, I know you feel guilty. And it’s valid to feel that way. Hell, I’ve been looking for Alice for fifteen years because I felt guilty for fighting with her. I built my whole life around it. My shop. The SAR work. Atlas.” She reached down and scratched Atlas’s ear. “All of it was built on guilt and the hope that I can find her. But you know what I’ve only just started learning? That guilt is exhausting. It sucks the life out of you, and your mom wouldn’t want that for you.”
Logan wiped his face with the back of his hand, smearing tears and snot. “She wouldn’t want me living with him either.”
“With Bear?”
He nodded, his jaw tight.
“You know, your dad?—”
“He’s not my dad.” Logan’s voice cracked. “He’s just some guy who knocked up my mom and then went to prison and left us alone.”
She let that sit for a beat. “Can I tell you something about your father that you might not know?”
Logan’s shoulders tensed. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t tell her to stop either.
“Dane McKenna is the kindest, most patient man I’ve ever met. And I’ve met a lot of men. I’ve watched him work with horses that everyone else had given up on. I’ve seen him sit with men who’ve done terrible things and find the humanity in them that nobody else could see. And he’s been beating himself up over you for twelve years, Logan. Every single day.”
Logan’s shoulders slumped further. “He doesn’t know me.”
“That’s true,” she admitted. “He doesn’t. But he wants to. More than anything.”
The darkness had settled completely now, and the cold was biting through her jacket. Logan’s teeth were chattering, his arms wrapped tight around himself. She pulled her emergency blanket from her pack and draped it around his shoulders.
“He’s waiting?—”
“Okay. We can sit here a bit longer.” She looked up at the sky through the canopy of pines. Stars were beginning to dot the sky overhead. She always loved the Montana sky at night.
“This morning,” she said, still staring up, “my best friend brought me a photo from a security camera at a bus station in Spokane. A woman who might be Alice. I don’t know yet if it’s her. I’ve been wrong before. A lot.” She looked out at the trees. “I don’t know which one I’m more afraid of. Being wrong—which means she’s still missing, and I’m back at zero. Or being right—which means she’s been somewhere out there for fifteen years and never called.” She stopped. “I haven’t told Bear about thatphoto, or that I’m going to Spokane in the morning to find the woman.”
Logan lifted his head. “Why not?”
“Because he’d want to go with me, and he needs to stay here with you. And he’d feel like he’s failing both of us.”
Logan was quiet for a long moment, staring at his hands wrapped in the emergency blanket. “That’s messed up.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “It is. But your dad has a big heart, and he hates letting down the people he cares about. So maybe you can give him a chance?”
He put his face back down on his knees, but his shoulders had relaxed.
She gave it another minute. Then she said, “I’m sorry about your mom. I mean that.”
The wind moved.
“And I’m sorry about the porch,” she said. “I’m sorry you found out the way you did—from Kolby Roberts, of all the ways. That was careless, and you didn’t deserve it.” She kept her voice even. “But I’m not sorry about kissing your dad. I like him a lot. I think you might like him, too, if you let him in.”
He didn’t react. She hadn’t expected him to.
The silence stretched long enough that she started to think he might stay on the log all night, and she was working out how to handle that—whether to push, whether to wait him out, whether to go back down and get Bear and let the two of them figure it out between them—when Logan’s voice came, very small, with his face still on his knees.
“I want my dad.”
fifteen
