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“We have your team taking the Lakes Loop trail to Long Lake, then descending to the shoreline.”
Dropping them directly into the epicenter of the worst day of their lives. Meg just hopes she’s the only one to detect the tightness in Danny’s jaw as he lifts his walkie and compresses the talk button to confirm receipt. A prickle of resentment makes itself known. Did he think he could avoid that acreage forever?
At his terse nod, they stride forward right through the lodge grounds, on a direct course for the far outbuildings. From there, they’ll fan out at a bearing of 120 degrees from north until they hit the T that connects the lodge trail with the Lakes Loop trail. This particular swath of wilderness covers the entire slope below the ridge and much more besides, just for good measure. Silas has outlined the area as oneof the few he’s introduced to Spencer and Cameron since their arrival. According to Darcy, it quickly became a favorite.
Like father, like sons.
She pushes back against this line of thought, too, but succumbs to a glance up at the rec building as they pass it. How many hours did they log in there, helping Les and Mary with chores and maintenance? Goofing off when they were supposed to be working? The green-shuttered windows and weathered porch look the same as ever. Is the same pool table still inside, the one with the ripped felt and the missing eight ball? Are there still dusty paperbacks in the bookcase, puzzles stacked on the end table by the fireplace?
They pass through the end of the lodge grounds next, where the last of the outbuildings gives way to a meadow that come summer, Meg knows, will be carpeted with wildflowers. These buildings, too, still look achingly familiar. She bites back a painful swell of homesickness. How is it possible that it simultaneously feels like a million years ago and just yesterday that she was last here? With the exception of some new rain gutters on the cabins and storm windows on the utility room, Silas’s mark upon the lodge in his few weeks of ownership gives her no insight into his future plans for the place.
She focuses back on her boots on the frozen ground, forcing a deep, cold breath of air into her lungs. Seeing him this morning felt like being yanked above water after years of submersion. For so long now, it has seemed easier to sink below the surface, allowing the lodge, the river, and lakes they loved to disappear from view.
She’d set her focus on Danny, the flip side of Silas’s coin. Now, she studies the tread of his boots in the half-frozen dirt at her feet, matching his stride as she hikes. Much of the time she can almost believe they’re meant to be together. But in her most honest moments, she knows it’s more that she thinks they deserve one another, their shared life a sort of penance.
But itisa life, she reminds herself again. It’s something. She relies on Danny to be steady, to not rock the boat. She enjoys the drama-freeexistence they share. It’s a characteristic of his she’s always appreciated, that she’s always chosen, hasn’t she? But the way she greeted Silas—all awkward tension and fear and adrenaline—and the way he greetedher—despair personified ...
There was nothing drama-free about that.
Even though Silas, at least today, is not quite the commanding presence Meg remembers. Back when she and Danny knew him best, Silas took up all the space in a room.
When Danny comes to a halt at the base of the incline on the far side of the lodge to pin their location on his handheld GPS unit, she stops, too, holding up one hand to Max. Danny depresses the call button on his radio. “Team Five to Base, come in.”
Darcy’s voice crackles out of the speaker; muffled by the fog, it sounds grainy and otherworldly. “Go ahead, Team Five.”
“We’re in position and beginning our hasty search now.” He looks back down at his GPS display and reads out his coordinates.
Back at the Lemon, Meg knows, Darcy is recording the numbers and checking the position they were assigned on her master map.
“Position confirmed,” she says, and they spread out again in a loose line, Meg once again flanking Danny’s left. Slowly, they make their way up the steep slope, Danny holding their bearing at their assigned 120 degrees. They’re widening their sweep as they go, but Meg can still see the occasional flash of his orange jacket sleeve through the thick trees and knows he’s keeping an eye on her as well. On the other side of her, Max is matchingherangle, and on his left, McCrady is matching his.
They’ve officially started their search, and they yell out as they hike, their repeated calls for the Matheson boys reverberating back to each other against the trunks of the trees and the sharp pitch of the rocky terrain. Meg glances back at Danny through the trees, and once again, it’s easy to know exactly what he’s thinking: that there’s nowhere on earth he’d less like to be.
8
MEG
Ten months prior to Howard search
October 2002
Feather River
Despite being born and raised in Feather River, Meg had never seen Marble Lake Lodge.
“Come up and visit,” Silas said before they all went their separate ways after school one sunny October afternoon. “I get lonely, doing all my chores by myself.” He wagged his eyebrows at both her and Danny.
“Well, when you put it that way,” Danny laughed, while Meg intoned, “That line actually work on the girls?”
“Seems so.” Silas grinned, and Meg rolled her eyes. Ofcoursehe’d already be playing the field; Silas probably had his pick of Feather River’s most eligible singles. Maybe when he finally settled on one, Meg would stop feeling like the odd woman out in this trio.
“Dan has plenty of chores at the fire station,” Meg said now. She looked to him, trying to reach the Danny she knew under whatever this new persona was that Silas brought out in him. The Danny who relished going to the fire station to sweep out engine bays and hose down trucks.“And you have that paper for English, right?” She’d finished hers, but she could keep him company while he knocked it out.
“The station can do without its Boy Scout for one day.” Silas laughed. “And last I checked, you’re not Cairns’s mother.” He threw one arm around each of their shoulders. “C’mon.” He grinned, shifting the charm into high gear. “It’s paradise up at the lodge. Tell her, Dan. Besides,” he whispered mock-conspiratorially into Meg’s ear, “he has to read the book before he can start the paper.”
Danny hadn’t evenread the book? She shot him another look, this one of complete disbelief.
She was still feeling surly and unsettled—for one, Danny didn’t evenhavea mother around, so maybe Silas could cool it with the offhand jokes—as they took the highway out of town, and as they climbed in elevation after taking the right onto Marble Lake Road, she planned to be indifferent to this “paradise” of his. But as the dense pine woods fell away to be replaced by sharp, craggy rock and spindly alpine ponderosa, Meg leaned forward in her seat despite herself, taking it all in. Each turn revealed a landscape that rose and fell in jagged cliffs, stealing her breath away.
