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“You and me against the world?” Spencer questioned, kind of incredulous, after Silas rambled on about superheroes or bravery or some such thing. Had he really said that? Against the world? He tried again.
“Well, you and me and Cam. Which makes us more like the three amigos.”
The moniker had brought him immediately full circle, to the trio formed so many years before, but Spencer quipped, “The three a-mathesons,” a slow smile spreading across his face. And then he wasgrinning in earnest, the pink gummy space where he’d just lost one of his bottom front teeth on full display, and Silas grinned back.
He runs one hand down his own face now. “I don’t know the size. He’s seven.” For a moment, he stares down at his lap, a feeling of inadequacy he’s beginning to feel accustomed to slicing through him in place of the wind outside the tent. “He’s seven,” he repeats, “so size”—he glances down stupidly at his own feet—“two? Three?”
Santos beckons a nearby deputy and issues instruction Silas cannot hear, leaving Walters free to continue his careful study of Silas’s face. “The team over at the lodge will look through the boys’ closet. See what other sneakers they can find to shed some light onto the size situation.”
“There’s a team in the lodge?”
Walters nods passively. “Checking for anything we might have missed. Standard protocol.”
Silas feels his cheeks heat as frustration rises. “I’ve already checked the boys’ room.” Cameron’s new puffy coat was there, cast on his bed. Ditto for Spencer’s, though that had been discarded in the lodge kitchen sometime the day before. The find gutted Silas, sent him in frantic search of the boys’ other various hoodies and sweatshirts. Had Cameron left one in the rec room, after playing a heated game of puzzle piece air hockey? Had Spencer discarded his favorite on the deck before dinner the night before? It was impossible to keep track.
He’s already given a team of deputies an inventory of what he thinks the boys were wearing when they set out from the lodge. Which basically amounted to what they hadn’t been. Deputies, questions ... lodge searches ... Is Silas under investigation? He can’t be sure and is suddenly afraid to ask. What if they decide he shouldn’t be here? What if they exile him even farther away from his boys? The mere possibility has his empty stomach clenching in revolt, even as his humiliation doubles: What kind of idiot doesn’t even know if they’re under suspicion?
Walters plucks these questions from his brain effortlessly. “The faster we can eliminate any possibility of foul play,” he says carefully, “the faster we can allocate all our resources to the trail.”
The wordsfoul playhave Silas ready to vomit, but it’s the possibility that the department has not, yet, put every able human being on the search for his kids that has him seething. He stares the sheriff down, eyes locked, shoulders rigid.
Santos fills the tense silence that follows. “Even though there aren’t a lot of shoe prints on the trail this time of year, having the specifics makes the process of elimination much easier. Easier means quicker.”
“Yeah, about that.” Silas swivels in his chair, craning his neck to get a glimpse of the staging area from where he’s been sequestered. It looks mostly abandoned, which means the teams Walters has assigned to the search have finally all deployed. Still, it’s not enough. Not by a long shot. “There was nothing all thatquickabout getting boots on the ground this morning.”
“There’s a process,” Santos tries to interject, but Silas cuts him off.
“Yourprocesscould cost my kids their lives.”
Walters doesn’t bullshit him, which Silas supposes is one benefit of their history being an open book between them. “It’s true that the first twenty-four hours are crucial,” he says, as Silas’s mind flashes on the stuffy heat of the lodge in the early hours of the Howard search. On Meg and Danny, rooted on folding chairs beside him. “We’re all concerned about the cold,” Walters continues, “especially at night, when the temps go below freezing.”
Somehow, hearing it out loud is even worse than the vague terrors on a loop in Silas’s mind. He moans involuntarily, letting his face fall into his hands.
Walters leans in. “Listen now, son. You’ve got to be strong for them.” He looks directly at him. “I know you’re tired, I know you’ve spent the whole night in a panic, but I also know you can be toughas nails, when you want to be. So, let’s go over the sequence of events again.”
Silas forces himself to straighten in his chair, even as the last vestige of his strength seems to melt from his body. They’ve been at this, on and off, for hours already. Just like last time. And like last time, he feels every bit as culpable. He has no choice but to take a deep breath and begin recounting the timeline anew.
Just as he explained to a deputy late last night, and that Darcy woman earlier this morning, he starts on the upstairs landing, with the wasp nest he had to break down, the repairs that seemed to multiply before his eyes.“I definitely underestimated the job.” He turns to Santos. A fresh, hopefully unbiased audience of one. “By the time I came downstairs, I was greeted by silence. An empty room.”
He has long associated that kind of deep silence with these mountains, but not ever with his little boys. He squeezes his palms to his head, as if he can coax the headache from his temples. To think he used to crave that kind of solitude! Seek it out in these very woods as a teen, when his life felt so big and loud, spinning faster and faster.
Now? In this interrogation? He doesn’t know whether it’s the altitude, the thinness of the air unable to act as a buffer to the raw serration of the granite slopes, or simply the fear that serves as his new, constant companion, but he’s fighting lightheadedness along with the fear and the shock. Instead of allowing him to think more clearly, like they did when he was a teen, these mountains have somehow emptied him, with his kids snatched from him like this. He’s hollow inside as he continues.
“That’s when I went looking for them,” he tells Santos. “Right after I came back downstairs.” He pinches his eyes shut, but it doesn’t block out the memory of running, calling, tripping over roots and sage. “And then when I returned—without them—I called you.”
This time, Silas’s voicedoescrack, splintering at the edges until he caves completely, bowing his head as he feels the despair sluice up within him like acid. “They were both gone ... just ... gone.”
When he looks up, even Walters looks sympathetic. Santos lays a palm on his shoulder. “Have you had a chance to make any phone calls?” he asks. “To relatives? The boys’ mother?”
He dials Miranda again right then and there, but when she picks up this time, sounding a bit breathless, like maybe she’s had to quickly exit a meeting room or restaurant to accept the call, he finds he can’t speak. His throat completely closes up around the words, wrapping them tightly into a parcel of misery he cannot dispel, let alone deliver. He can’t do this to her, can’t be the one to tell her he’s failed in this simplest and most sacred of tasks.
Santos gently peels the phone from his ear and takes the call himself. He steps away from Silas and speaks softly into the receiver; Silas sees his back tense as Miranda’s wail cuts through him. They all hear it, Walters bowing his head as though taking a moment of silence for the grieving mother. The sight only adds to Silas’s misery. Ofcoursehe hates knowing Miranda is suffering now, too. Of course he’ll call her back just as soon as he can offer anything but his own terror reflected back at her. Buthe’sthe parent right in front of Walters now.He’sthe parent gripping discarded jackets—jackets that should be on his boys’ bodies right now—in his helpless hands. He’s the parent staring down at his children’s empty beds, scrolling through photos of them on his phone for some SAR volunteer to photocopy, trying to remember when they last ate a meal. Where ishismoment of silence?
Walters has more questions, and Silas comes further and further undone with each effort to recall exact times and places. He can’t shake the ever-present knowledge that yesterday, just yesterday, his kids were right here, within his reach, and now they are not. He simply cannot set that thought downlong enough to pick up another.
Children are malleable,sure. Until they slip through your fingers as quick as lake trout, disappearing in a silver-bellied flash.
When he next cradles his head in his hands, Santos calls mercy on his behalf.
