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“Mary—”
“Silas,” she said softly, her voice a gentle rasp. “I understand your reluctance, really I do, given all that happened, but this place was meant for you, and you were meant for it. We both know you were the one who loved it most.”
Her words were a punch to the gut. Had he? Loved it most? Or had he just loved who he’d spent the most time with there, that last summer of high school? Finite memory, tactile and raw, rose in his mind’s eye in a startled rush, like a bird flushed from its hiding place. The girl he’d loved, tanned and happy. So impossibly young. He hasn’t been able to banish it since.
Sensing victory, Mary pressed her case. “With your ex out of the picture, and you and your boys on your own now—”
“Miranda hasn’t disappeared from their lives, Aunt Mary.” Even if Silas suspected it might feel like it to Spencer and Cameron, with her on the other side of the Atlantic.Malleable, he reminded himself.
“With your situation changing,” Mary carried right on, “those kids need stability. You’ve always found that here.”
He nearly laughed at the irony: a rough bark of aggression painful to swallow. He couldn’t deny that Miranda’s departure and his subsequentforay into full-time fatherhood had yanked the proverbial rug out from under all their feet. He’d underestimated everything: how much time the boys would spend in childcare, the difficulty of balancing family time with his career in environmental law. Cutting back his hours had only added to the emotional toll; his work protecting vulnerable wilderness had always served as a touchstone, tenuous as it was, to the outdoors he loved.
Maybe, he decided, it was time to return to the root of that love, even if it did hurtle him back to his past. “Do you mean it?” he asked Mary, while trying to imagine it: he and his boys carving out a new home in the High Sierra.
“I’ll transfer the ownership on Monday,” Mary said with soft satisfaction. “Look at us, coming around full circle.”
Back to where it all began, Silas thinks now, with the addition of two little passengers. How will the three of them be received? In other words, how long is Feather River’s memory? Not quite ready to find out, he drives right past Clark’s Market, even knowing they could use a few essentials. He presses down on the accelerator instead of topping off at the Quik Save, willing back a trepidation no one should associate with a homecoming.
The boys resume their roughhousing in the back seat as the highway opens back up and they begin their ascent up the mountain pass north of town. By the time they reach the weather-fadedMarble Lake Lodge, est 1953sign, it’s full-on road-trip WrestleMania, but now Silas doesn’t mind the distraction; it makes his initial reunion with the lodge a bit less weighted. It seems unfathomable that this unassuming cluster of eclectic buildings can somehow hold his most cherished memories and his most desperate nightmares, but the second Silas eases to a stop, he knows Marble Lake Lodge can still make room for both.
The boys tumble out of the Chevy like pent-up puppies, legs churning as they race each other to the entrance, and he watches them go, glad to see their little-boy energy redirected from any newfoundsibling unrest. He forces himself to make his own reacquaintance with this place more slowly. Perched on a shelf of granite, the main building’s bank of south-facing double-story windows stare toward eight-thousand-foot Marble Peak. Its foundation is laid with river rock, the remainder of the walls constructed of thick pine planking, and a huge stone chimney draws the eye to the entire far outer wall. In the muted light of the evening sky, its metal snow roof seems to shimmer.
The green trim on the shutters has faded, and the dried remains of last summer’s geraniums still cling to the soil in the planters around the cavernous front door. Silas feels a stab of guilt for allowing self-preservation—and shame, if he’s being honest—to keep him away so long. He should have been here, helping Uncle Les and Aunt Mary during their golden years.
The boys have run around the side of the building to discover the path that weaves through the property, and Silas trails behind them as they take a whirlwind tour. They pass guest cabins 1 through 6, the two-story recreation building with its own river-stone fireplace, the housekeeping-supply building and toolshed, the woodpile, and, finally, cabins 7 through 9. Just beyond these: the meadow, the creek, and the trail system that, once upon a time, took Silas all over the wilderness that was his backyard.
He corrals the troops, and they return to the Chevy to empty it of their possessions, carrying loads of boxes through the main lodge entrance and past the guest dining room, where memories assault Silas anew. He allows himself only quick flashes between instructing the boys and carting duffels and luggage up the stairs to the living quarters: himself, at age eighteen, sitting right there on that dining-room chair, sweat dripping down his back, stomach in knots. His friends sitting across from him, unable to meet his gaze. People everywhere: asking questions about Jessica.
He pinches his eyes shut and draws in a deep breath. Draws forth the good memories this lodge can offer instead. Like sitting in thewindowsill on the second-story landing, feeling the sun on his face. Cleaning cabins for Les with his besties, Danny and Meg, the smell of Comet and Pledge cloying but somehow homey. Taking off after work to trek up into the wilderness, where a cannonball leap from the cliffside into ice-cold Long Lake would elicit a whoop from Danny and a shriek from Meg.
Standing here in the dining room, staring at the massive mantel over the fireplace, he spots something that sends a shock of recognition through him. Yet another memento Marble Lake Lodge has stored for him for safekeeping, though he can’t decide if this particular one is pleasant or terrible. Both, somehow. Definitely both.
“Hold up, boys,” he calls as Spencer drags a sleeping bag, half out of its stuff sack, behind him across the wooden floor and Cameron trails after, his arms overflowing with stuffed animals. “I want to show you something cool.”
He lifts the smooth chunk of Sierra obsidian from the mantel with exaggerated show for the boys’ benefit, who have engaged in a tug-of-war with a stuffed dragon while his back was turned.
“What is that?” Spencer asks, rising on tippy-toe to inspect the shiny black rock.
“This,” Silas tells him, “is a type of stone I’ve only ever found right here, in these mountains.” He must have left it here, by the fireplace, when he left in such a hurry so many years ago.
“So it’s special or something?”
“Yeah,” Silas confirms, after the ache this question elicits eases from his chest. “Very special.”
He continues to stand by the mantel, studying the obsidian even after Spencer has lost interest, trying to decide whether the stone still belongs here. Whether any of them do.
I should call them,he thinks. It would be perfectly normal to reach out to the two people he once called his best friends, now that he’s back for good, but then another thought follows right on its heels.I don’tdeserve to.He burned that bridge years ago. Now, here at the lodge, he somehow feels even further from them both than he had in Oregon.
Over the past decade and a half, he’s kept up with the Feather River gossip as best he can, mostly thanks to Aunt Mary, who would offer what she heard at the beauty parlor or post office.Meg and Danny? Yeah, they’re still in town. She works for the sheriff’s office now, as a secretary or some such. Yes, they’re still together, last I heard. They volunteer for the county search-and-rescue unit in their spare time.
Of course they do. Silas wouldn’t expect anything less. Not from those two. Not after what happened. Suddenly he’s very ready to call it a night. “Boys! Let’s wrestle up some dinner.”
“Pizza Hut?” Spencer asks hopefully.
Silas pretends to consider this suggestion, picking up his cell phone. “Hey, Siri, closest Pizza Hut,” he intones, then waits, head tilted in concentration, for dramatic effect.
When no tinny reply comes, the boys both gather around the phone. “What’s wrong with it?” Cameron asks. “Where’s Siri?”
