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“I’m sure they are,” Danny acknowledges tightly.
At the top, Spencer and Cameron stood stock still, not daring to look down at the long drop below their boots. They pressed their backs to the wall of the lookout station as the wind blew, taking a moment to acclimate.
Silas had forgotten how intense this peak was, with its heady combination of staggering height and never-ending view. Past the railing that ran along the deck’s edge, the view stretched for miles, and the offering of so much unspoiled wilderness brought moisture to his eyes he couldn’t attribute to the wind. From their position against the wall—not even daredevil Spencer seemed eager to step out onto the free space of the deck—Silas pointed out all the familiar landmarks.
“The Marble Lakes Loop is there,” he said, one raised finger against the blue sky to indicate the circle of lakes that made up their stomping grounds, shining like tiny green eyes in granite sockets.
“I pointed out the lodge to them from the top,” he tells Meg and Danny. “We made a game of them trying to identify each building.” A thought occurs to him, and hope takes wing in a sudden flurry. “What if they tried to climb up there? What if they decided they could find the lodge from that vantage point?”
“I don’t know ...” Meg says. She glances at Danny, caution lining her features.
But if she was anticipating an argument, she doesn’t get one. “Weren’t you just saying not to underestimate them?” he says. Not waiting for an answer, he pulls out his search-grid map, unfolding it so they can all study it anew. He points out the lodge, then runs his finger along the wilderness surrounding it until he reaches the search boundary marked in yellow highlighter. “It’s about ten miles,” he says.
“To the end of the search radius,” Meg interjects, looking over his shoulder. “But that only gets them to the base of Marble Peak, and the lookout-tower trailhead. Assuming they even found that ...” She studies the mileage key. “They’d have to travel at least another six miles from there.” She sighs. “It’s not realistic,” she admits. Silas looks ready to protest, but she stops him with an upheld hand. “They didn’t travel sixteen overland miles in under seventeen hours,” she concludes softly. “Not while wandering, lost. Not even your kids.”
Silas kicks the dirt at his feet, hard. He takes the map from Danny, not satisfied until he’s done the math, too. He doesn’t want to admit it, but Meg’s right. Even if they thought of the idea, and had the stamina to get there, Spencer and Cameron wouldn’t have known which direction to head from the point where they got lost, which was presumably near the ridge. Kids that age, they’re big-picture people.
“If I were a bird, I’d fly off of here every day,” Cameron said, taking in that epic view from the lookout, and right then and there Silas felt eighteen again instead of thirty-three, standing boldly at the rail instead of the wall.
Don’t you just want to launch yourself off?Meg had said, and Silas remembers looking at her in surprise. After all,hewas the risk-taker.Hewas the extremist. When had Meg joined him at the rail? Now, in the tiny inch of breathing room he’s managed to carve out between memory and fear, he lets himself admit a simple truth: he’s missed the old trio. Even in the midst of this erected tent city of a staging area, with his life in pieces around him. Even with his kids ripped from him. Why has he allowed pride and pain and, yes, shame to keep him from reaching out to them? Why did he let another tragedy be the thing to bring them back together?
Because I was a coward,he reminds himself, looking between Meg and Danny in their orange uniforms. And he used up any remaining courage returning here to Marble Lake.
“I keep trying to stop thinking about them out there,” he admits, “even for just one second at a time.”
He braces for disgust—worse, pity—but it doesn’t come.
“You must be in hell,” Meg says, “keeping up this ... vigil in your head.”
What she doesn’t have to say, because it’s written all over her face: she knows all too well what that’s like. He’s comforted by the knowledge that he can still seem to read her. “And yet how can Inot?”
She shakes her head so resolutely her hair sways back and forth across her shoulders. She still wears it long. “I don’t know,” she says, and unlike everyone else who’s addressed him today, she doesn’t retreat. She doesn’t pacify or sugarcoat anything.
Danny clears his throat and tucks his search map back into the breast pocket of his jacket. “I’ll ask Darcy about the Marble Peak trail, just in case,” he says.
Silas is surprised but grateful. Haven’t they just decided the lookout is a dead end? “Thank you,” he says. “Though like you guys said, even if they had thought of the tower, the boys would have no way of knowing which direction to go.”
His mind locks in on the Silva Ranger compass he’d just ordered for Spencer as a Christmas gift, even knowing he is probably still too young to learn how to use it. He thinks of the piles of maps he wants to show them, despite the fact that Cameron has yet to learn to read. Why is he always getting out ahead of himself, flinging himself, like Aunt Mary liked to say, into empty air, no safety net in sight? This time he’s brought his little boys along with him. He turns away, choking on the sob that’s risen in his throat.
“Knowing they have been introduced to the fire tower might confirm a hunch I had earlier, though,” he hears Meg say, and he turns back to look at her.
“What’s that?”
“That maybe we should be searchingup.”
“What do you mean, up?”
She explains the basics of search theory, and victims’ tendency to travel downhill, and he nods in agreement. “Spencer and Cameron, at least Spencer, anyway, are definitely just as likely to travel uphill as downhill,” he says. He doesn’t miss the quick look she shoots in Danny’s direction, as if to say,See?“I always taught them to get their bearings up high. To climb. To reach ...” His throat tightens again, and he clears it roughly. “You know me. You know how I hike.”
Meg smiles. “We do.”
Hope swells, finding a foothold in his chest. In all the hours of questioning he endured this morning, no one thought to ask him about the likelihood of the boys traveling uphill instead of down.
“Tanner! Cairns!” Someone in the crowd of searchers waves them toward the com van, and while Meg wavers, Danny pivots on his heel immediately, following orders.
“Ever the Boy Scout, huh?” Silas observes as they watch him stride away.
Meg smiles again, but more guardedly this time. “Ever the Boy Scout.” For a second it looks like she might want to say more, but then she shakes her head slightly to clear it. She turns to follow Danny.
