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It was an aria of blue.
It echoed in the forest around us as it died.
He waited.
There was nothing.
He did it again.
And again.
And again.
By the fourth time, his voice was hoarse and cracking.
He stumbled forward. “Carter! Carter!”
Winter birds took flight from the trees.
“CARTER!”
I caught him before he fell to the ground. I went down with him, holding him against my chest. He laid his head back on my shoulder and howled again, the air splitting around us. But this song wasn’t about calling his brother home.
It was a hymn for the missing.
For the lost.
I tightened my hold around him.
“We’ll find him,” I whispered. “I promise. We’ll find him.”
The snow continued to fall.
eleven
months
later
promise
In the middle of nowhere, an old truck pulled into a gravel parking lot in front of a small, squat building. The town around him looked as if it’d died a long time ago, and all that remained was dust and bones.
The door to the truck opened and a tall man stepped out, boots crunching in the gravel. He squinted up against the afternoon sun. Deep lines formed around his eyes and mouth, and the bones in his cheeks were prominent. His hair curled around the collar of his jacket, shaggy and unkempt. He rubbed a hand over a scraggly beard, scratching his jaw. His jeans were torn, his right knee poking through.
He rubbed a hand over his face as he sighed.
It’d been a long day.
A threadbare flag fluttered.
He didn’t see anyone else on the road.
He walked toward the building.
An old flyer in one of the windows, the paper yellowed with age, the edges worn, advertised a potluck from four years before.
He pushed open the door. Cool air washed over him.
