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Matheson search
November 20, 2018
6:20 a.m.
Marble Lake Lodge
Susan Darcy’s briefing still burns in the forefront of Meg’s mind, the nameMathesonstill echoing in her ears, when she finally sees Silas again in the flesh. He steps out of the Lemon upon the announcement of the identity of the missing kids, and, prepared as she should have been, his presence hits her with the brute force of a wind rising up over the Sierra snowpack midwinter, unyielding in every regard. She’s instantly reminded that nothing about this man has ever been temperate.
He looks smaller, somehow, standing next to the sheriff, but there’s a stubborn set to his jaw that’s instantly familiar. It’s easy to look past the day-old stubble and disheveled clothing to recognize the boy she’d known, bursting as he had from the periphery of Meg’s and Danny’s lives to the center in the blink of an eye.
Back then, everyone was drawn to Silas like a moth to flame, the golden boy with the bright light he was generous to share, if you couldstand the heat. She reminds herself that it’s been a full decade and a half since he snuffed that light out of her life.
He’s shuffled to the sidelines as more leadership emerges from the com van, and Meg makes her way through the crowd toward him cautiously, Danny close on her heels, and when she finally reaches Silas she falters, her nerves at seeing him again back in full force. It’s been so long. So much has changed. Will he even welcome their presence here? She can’t tell. Silas’s face is a study of shell-shocked misery that Meg knows has nothing to do with her or Danny. His kids are missing. Missinghere,at Marble Lake, just like ...No,she tells herself.Don’t go there. This is about his boys. Nothing else.
Mercifully, her training kicks in. “Silas,” she says, swallowing hard. She hears what’s almost a plea in that simple greeting, but she manages to maneuver around it to deliver the line she’s been taught to say to family members of victims in their time of need. “I promise we’re doing everything in our power to locate them.”
“We’re allocating all our resources,” Danny adds, in even more rote search-speak.
The words are so clinical, and so insufficient, Meg flinches. Silas studies this reaction, looking at her just as he always used to, as though she’s left him somewhere, stranded, and not the other way around.
And then his face gives a little twitch of uncertainty, and Meg’s professional demeanor cracks. Ambiguity is so uncharacteristic for the boy she knew that grief burns a path across her chest, the chronic pain she’s learned to live with for over a decade suddenly acute.
She turns away, catching Susan Darcy’s gaze. She’s watching them all like a hawk, and not just because Meg and Danny lost focus midbriefing. The clearly defined (and strictly enforced) boundaries between searchers and the families of their subjects is being breached. But then Walters says something in Darcy’s ear, and recognition flashes across her face. She still looks conflicted but lets the reunion carry on without interference. It can’t be a good thing that the sheriff has instantlyremembered the connection between them all, but this, too, Meg pushes to the back of her mind. All that matters right now is finding Silas’s boys.
The media has yet to make its way up the icy road for a quick clip and a sound bite, and though this image—of two searchers and a victim locked in what is clearly a moment of awkward, unspoken intimacy—would surely be their idea of front-cover nirvana, Meg knows they’ll be too late. By the time the local news Jeep arrives, or the helicopter from NewsWatch 5 out of Reno, crowding the airspace, she and Danny will be gone, combing the wilderness for the boys, leaving Silas to be photographed here alone, broken in the shadow of the yellow com van.
As if he, too, realizes their time is limited, Silas looks between Meg and Danny and speaks to them for the first time in fifteen years. “I don’t know how this could have happened,” he says, palms open in supplication. Or penance.
Either way, the truth of such a simple statement reaches about a dozen layers under Meg’s skin. She knows, of course, that he’s referring to this search, to his boys lost somewhere in the mountains, and not to the three ofthem, or whatever lingers of them in this chafing air and blowing wind. Even so, she has to swallow multiple responses long buried, the sight of him eliciting a rawness in her like an exposed nerve.
He stares back at her, caught in his own pain, his blue eyes as vibrant as ever. But new lines spiderweb toward his temples, like he’s spent time squinting into sunlight, and a thin, almost translucent scar curls in a half shell below his lip. It reminds Meg that there are stories she and Danny don’t know. There have been adventures they have missed. She glances toward Danny. Is he thinking the same? There was a time when he made a cameo in every one of Silas’s anecdotes.
But then Silas straightens. “I need to get out there!” he tells them, looking between Meg and Danny as if deciding whether to beseech them or dare them to object. “My kids have been missing sincelast night, have they told you that?”
Meg and Danny nod wordlessly, but Silas isn’t finished. “They’ve had me stuck inside. My boys, mylittle boys, have been in this cold too long already”—he gestures wildly toward the forest—“and I can’t be standing around! I need to belooking!”
This is the Silas Meg knows. The man of action. The leader. The memory of the long hours they spent together after Jessica’s disappearance takes her firmly back in its grip: The days as hot as today is cold. Sitting on a cheap folding chair in the lodge dining room, the metal plane of the seat sticking to the backs of her thighs as she sweated in the stuffy heat. Silas had been sitting right there, too, of course. Right between her and Danny.
“You can’t come with us,” she tells him now. She knows her face is a mirror of Silas’s misery, but she can’t help, not with this. Thankfully, Danny steps forward, as Danny can be depended upon to do.
“They won’t allow it,” he says softly. “They’ll have more questions for you—”
“I don’t want to answer any more questions!” Silas yells, attracting the attention of half the ground pounders assembled and waiting. “I don’t want to sit, or wait, orthink!Those are my kids!Mykids!Out there!”
From the corner of her eye, Meg can see that Darcy has decided enough is enough, making her way over to break up the party. She needn’t have bothered. Silas is already making a beeline back to the Lemon. His fists are clenched, shoulders angled forward in singular purpose. Meg trails quickly in his wake.
“Silas!”she says as he pushes his way through the searchers, the last vestiges of their awkward reunion burning off in the heat of the moment.
He ignores her. Reaching Darcy, he takes one look at her clipboard of search teams and schedules and starts ticking off a list of the many threats faced by his kids. “Hypothermia. Frostbite. Disorientation. Dehydration. While we stand around!”
Darcy doesn’t flinch, not even when Silas thrusts his hand out, demanding a radio. Despite the woman’s tiny frame, Meg knows she can hold her own. Darcy meets Silas’s eyes as he stares her down, his mouth set in a hard, fast line, her neck craned and her shoulders squared, matching him in both posture and expression.
Her words, however, when she speaks, are surprisingly gentle. “Give us twelve hours.” She indicates the gathered searchers. “We’re a team. We work well together. We train together. Give us a day, Mr.Matheson, to put our best foot forward, before you attempt to actively join us.”
He’s already shaking his head before she can finish her sentence. “I’m going to be a part of this!” he demands. “I can hike! I can search!”
“But today, that isourjob,” Darcy answers firmly, and even while unyielding, her tone is still kind.
