Page 15

And you can't say one sentence to the woman who taught you to talk.

I'm not going to tell her anything. That's yours.

I'm going up to the boulder field. The fog's coming, and you'll have to find me in it. Don't trust your eyes. Listen. If you find me, say something to me you've never said out loud. If you don't come, I'll know. I'll drive out at dawn and I won't ask you for anything.

A long pause.

I know you're there, Cole.

The recording ends.

I sit with the recorder in my hand until the fog is all the way around the cabin.

She said she wouldn't ask me for anything. She stood outside this door and asked for the one thing I couldn't give.

She told me she'd sit next to me while I called. She meant it. She'd have sat there all night without a word.

I don't want her to have to.

Tomorrow is the first of the month. Marian will dial the tip line at nine, and she'll say it to a machine, and I'll know she said it. Nora offered to hold the door open while I walked through it. I'm going to walk through it myself, and then I'm going to go find her.

I get up. I go inside and take the satellite phone off its charger.

I have known the number for four years. I've dialled six of the seven digits more nights than I can count. I hang up at the seventh. My thumb is wet. It takes me two tries to get past the six.

She'd have held my hand. That's why I can do it alone.

It rings twice.

"Hello?" Older. Thinner. The same.

I can't get anything through my throat. I put my free hand flat on the table.

"Hello? Who is this?" Sharper. Afraid. "Who's calling?"

"Mom."

Nothing. A long nothing. I hear her breathing change.

"Say that again."

"Mom. It's Cole."

A sound comes down the line that I've never heard her make. It's low and ragged, and it goes on.

"I knew it," she says. "I knew it. They kept saying the word and I wouldn't say it back. I told everyone. I told the police, I told your cousin, I told that podcast girl. I said, my son is alive. I'd know."

"I'm sorry." My voice is gone. "Mom, I'm sorry."

"Don't you apologize to me. Don't you dare. You're alive. You're on the phone. You're alive." She's crying and laughing at once, and I put my fist against my mouth. "I never gave up. Not one day, Cole. Not one."

"I know. Nora told me. You called every month."

"Of course I did. Somebody had to keep the light on."

I slide down the wall until I'm sitting on the floor of the radio room with the phone against my ear. Four years. I'd planned what I'd say. None of it was this.

"You sound different," she says, quieter. "You sound steady. You sound like yourself again."