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She looked at him a bit more closely then, her gaze hot on his skin. “Maybe,” she answered, and that familiar dismissal in her tone set Silas’s teeth on edge anew. He couldn’t understand why she undersold herself; it wounded his own pride on her behalf.
“I’ll support whatever you decide,” he promised. They were standing face-to-face by the Jeep now. She’d peeled off his sweatshirt at some point during their battle with the mud, and as he said the words he finally touched her, pressing just two fingertips to the hollow of her elbow to gain her full attention, though he knew he already had it. The pads of his fingers burned upon contact with her skin, but if she felt this heat, too, she didn’t show it.
Silas’s anger quieted to a deep ache. He’d have to break up with Jessica, never mind that nothing could come of him and Meg. It was the right thing to do, but he wouldn’t even be able to tell her why. Not really. And of course, he’d never say a word to Danny, though the last thing he wanted was a secret from his best friend. Maybe that hardly mattered; right now, even the thought of conversing with Danny seemed impossible to Silas.
He refocused his attention on the Jeep, making sure the debris they’d placed in front of the tires would provide traction this time. It would work, he decided, but even so, as he climbed back into the driver’s seat and hit the gas, fishtailing out of the mud, he felt more stuck than ever.
15
SILAS
Matheson search
November 20, 2018
12:20 p.m.
Marble Lake Staging Area
Silas follows the movement of the team of searchers returning from the field from across the circle of vehicles and tents. He feels like a voyeur, but when Meg’s in his line of vision, Silas can never manage to look away; yet another thing that hasn’t changed. The first thing he notices is the way she holds herself: shoulders tense, thumbs braced around the straps of her pack, redistributing its weight against her back on each stride. The first thing he thinks:Her shoulders hurt.
The automatic concern that shoots through Silas for her well-being feels natural, even after so many years, and it’s just about the only thing that does. His homecoming to Marble Lake felt more like a hard shake of the shoulders than a warm embrace, and yesterday ... God. He straightens his shoulders before he can crumble. Racing through the forest? Crying out for his kids? Yesterday was a punch directly to the gut.
So if he finds his eye drawn to Meg’s face, softened under the overcast sky, or even to the familiarity of Danny’s careful frown, he can forgive himself, if only because he’s desperate for any distraction from the misery that’s pounding a relentless, staccato beat against the back of his skull.
In all the possible scenarios he has imagined for their inevitable reunion, it’s painfully fitting thatthisis how they finally come back together. In the midst of yet more agony. More uncertainty and despair. His thoughts swing from Meg and Danny to Jessica as another wave of remorse dashes upon whatever weak walls he’s erected to protect himself in the years since her disappearance. Not that it’s worked. That August night in ’03 has colored everything in his life since: his choice of career, protecting wilderness even though he can’t seem to protect the people in it; trying to form a family with Miranda in an effort to outrun the profound loss he experienced here in Feather River.
Meg catches his eye as she enters the base camp; is she, too, thinking of Jessica right now? She sets a course toward him, Danny pivoting to follow on her heels. This, also, is typical. Everything has changed and yet nothing has changed.
Silas stands just as Meg approaches, and in his haste he catches the heel of his boot on the leg of the metal folding chair behind him, sending him stumbling. He grasps at thin air, and then Meg is right there, her hands steadying him, her arms encircling him, and he nearly loses his balance all over again.
“Hey,” she says as he allows himself the count of two, maybe three, to lean into her, his eyes pinched tightly shut against her jacket. “It’s okay.” And in those simple words are comfort, and camaraderie, and sympathy, and care. The pressure of her hand on his back carries him—just for an instant—away from the deputies and the words they’re not saying, and from his children and their cries for help he’s not hearing.
Her body radiates warmth from the efforts of her hike, reminding him of his own impotence here in camp, and he pulls away reluctantly to ask, “Any update?”
Danny, standing back, looks immediately guarded, like Silas is breaking protocol again, but Meg’s still looking at him with the same open, inviting gaze he remembers. If time or circumstance has jaded her, Silas can’t see it. There’re a million things he wants to say—to both of them—but his current tragedy trumps everything else.
“Any sign at all?” he presses.
Meg shakes her head. Danny swallows hard and looks away. “It’s still early,” he says.
“Where did you go? What ground did you cover?”
“We’re really not supposed to—” Danny starts, but Meg has already launched into a full report.
“The lodge to the ridgeline, then Lakes Loop trail to Long Lake.” Danny frowns at her, and she changes course. “Where else might they have gone, Silas? Can you think of anywhere? I know you must be sick of talking, but try to think.”
Where would his boys go, if they’re not on the ridge? If they didn’t drop down into any of the lakes in the basin?
“Somewhere you explored with them, maybe? Some spot you showed them?”
You know all my favorite spots as well as I do,Silas wants to tell her. Instead, he hears himself say, “I took them to the lookout tower last week.” The memory almost allows him to smile, another welcome reprieve from the present. “The one on Marble Peak, where we went that once.”
“I remember,” Meg says. “That fall. Before the snow hit.”
Late autumn of ’02. The trail had glistened with early frost, the last of the pale-yellow alpine aster blooms already over for the season, only the dried husks of Wyethia mollis—mule ear—rattling in the wind. The weather was nearly identical the day Silas had introduced his boys to thetwo-thousand-foot elevation gain culminating in an open-weave metal staircase hugging the granite of the butte at the top of Marble Peak.
“They made it all the way,” Silas says proudly. He can’t help himself. “They’re tough, you know?”
