They sat in the dark for another minute. The forest had gone fully black around them.
Logan lifted his head. “Take me home, Dad.”
Home.
To the house on Maple, not to Denver.
Bear’s throat closed up. “Yeah. Let’s go home, buddy.”
By the time they made it down the trail, the temperature had dropped hard, and Bear’s left knee was giving him a warning ache. He was going to pay for kneeling in the dirt for so long, but it was a price he’d pay many times over because his son had finally called him “dad.”
The parking pullout was empty except for his truck and Greta’s Jeep. She was standing by it with Atlas, the dog pissing on a nearby trail marker.
King sat worriedly at the base of the trail and popped to his feet, tail wagging frantically, when they finally appeared. He plowed into Logan, tongue flapping behind him like a flag. Logan stooped, got both hands deep in King’s ruff, and buried his face in the dog’s fur. The high-pitched sounds King made were more suited to a five-pound puppy than a one-hundred-fifty-pound dog.
Bear smiled and lifted his gaze until he found Greta. She was smiling, too, and laughed when Atlas decided to get on the action, and the dogs tackled Logan, licking away the tears.
Christ, she was beautiful.
He wanted to thank her, wanted to ask her what she’d said to Logan up there, what story she’d told, but the words jammed up in the back of his throat. And the more he looked at her, the more he realized it didn’t matter. She’d done what he couldn’t. She’d found Logan. More than that, she’d broken down the kid’s defenses.
She was good at that.
She’d been working on Bear’s since the moment they met, and—he realized now—he never stood a chance of resisting her.
She touched his arm as they reached her, and he saw the question in her eyes:“You okay?”
He nodded. “Thank you.”
It wasn’t enough. But those two words were all he was capable of at the moment.
She squeezed his bicep, then stepped back toward her Jeep and whistled for Atlas. “You know where to find me if you need anything.”
Logan went straight upstairs.
Bear stood at the bottom of the staircase and listened to the footsteps cross the hall overhead, heard the door close, and then the house went quiet except for the refrigerator cycling and King settling onto the kitchen floor with a grunt. He put his hand on the newel post and held it. Then he went to the kitchen.
He stood at the counter with both palms flat on the surface and stared at the backsplash until the grouting blurred. He put the kettle on. He made two mugs of tea, the box Nessie had left in the cabinet months ago, and set them on the counter and didn’t drink either of them. He checked his phone. He put it face down. He stood and listened to the particular quality of the silence from upstairs — not the silence of an empty house, but the weighted, specific silence of someone lying very still, trying not to be heard.
He’d cracked his knuckles through half the drive home, and he was doing it again now without noticing, one hand, then the other, a sequence he couldn’t stop once he’d started.
Around nine, when the thin yellow line under Logan’s door had been there for two hours without moving, Bear went to the foot of the stairs. He stood there for a beat in his socks on the cold hardwood. Then he climbed.
He tapped his knuckles on the door.
“Come in.”
Logan was on the bed with his back against the headboard and his knees pulled up, his phone face down on the comforter beside him. He looked at Bear when the door opened, and Bearlooked back, and neither of them said anything for the space of three full seconds.
Bear looked at the floor. Then at his son.
The desk chair was small — meant for homework and a lanky teenager, not a man built like a load-bearing wall. Bear pulled it out from under the desk and sat in it anyway, knees up near his chest, because sitting on the floor felt like too much and standing in the doorway felt like not enough. He folded his hands between his knees.
“I need to say something,” he said. “I need you to let me finish before you say anything back.”
Logan’s jaw tightened. He nodded.
Bear looked at the wall behind Logan’s head. He’d been finding the words for this for six weeks, and they were exactly as bad coming out as he’d known they would be.
