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Meg squeezes her eyes shut tightly, picturing it against her will. Little boys, fighting their way through the brush. Losing the battle. Huddled out of sight of their would-be rescuers. And right on the heels of that image, Jessica, undoubtedly every bit as disoriented. Getting tired. Possibly even hungry. Didshetrip and hurt herself? How many days did she struggle? How many nights did she spend alone, sheltering as best she could?
It’s the never knowing that breaks you.Please,she beseeches the majesty of the Sierra,don’t let this be another story with no ending.Silas doesn’t deserve that. She thinks of Teresa Howard wringing her hands in Walters’s office and shudders. No parent does.
Santos reemerges from the command tent, Silas, of course, in his shadow. He hands another stack of papers to Darcy, who distributes these, too, through the crowd. Before Meg’s fully prepared for it, she’s staring into the photocopied faces of Spencer and Cameron. Even in the crude black and white produced by the SAR mobile printer, their childish exuberance nearly jumps from the page, and instantly the theoretical concept of Silas’s children is replaced by flesh and bone. These boys are suddenly so real to her, she bites back a sound of distress.
They look so much like Silas, right down to their shaggy mops of straw-colored hair. In their side-by-side portraits their smiles are the same, that enticing blend of mischief and keen interest that draws people like a magnet, and for a long moment Meg can scarcely breathe. Gripping the entire stack of fliers tightly between thumb and forefinger, she tastes the metallic tang of blood from the inside of her lip where she’s clamped her jaw too hard.
Eventually she’s nudged by someone to her right.
“Can you pass those along?”
“Sorry.” She takes one copy for herself and thrusts the pile onward.
Do Spencer and Cameron have their father’s charisma, too? Given the search radius, they clearly possess his energy and athleticism. Meg tunes back in as Darcy imparts more facts to the group at large—weight:fifty-five pounds, shoe size: three ...that must be Spencer—and even though Meg is not a mother and has never met these children, these details of the boys’ lives threaten to shatter the last of her resolve. To her dismay, she realizes she’s about to cry, right here, surrounded by her team.
The sob builds up hard and fast at the base of her throat, and Meg doesn’t wait around for anyone else to notice. She turns abruptly from the circle of people, making her escape in long strides she hopes appear purposeful. She’s certain Danny is aware of her departure, but she doesn’t turn around, and with each step she takes, she wills him not to follow.
She doesn’t stop until she’s reached the far edge of the parking lot, where a log barrier marks the start of the forest beyond. Her shin bumps into the rough wood, and in the quick, clean pain of contact, she remembers: This is exactly where they sat, she and Silas and Danny and the Albrights, waiting for help the night Jessica went missing. She pivots immediately, following the boundary of the parking lot around to the dirt road that leads to the lodge, letting instinct guide her toward happier memories.
As she passes the entrance sign, she sees that the white paint has cracked in the deep grooves, and her eyes water again. She has to blink back the swell of tears still threatening before letting her gaze sweep wider, to the main building, which sits perched on its rocky slope tall and square, as though built for the singular purpose of withstanding winters.
She walks toward it without pause. The dirt road curves, and more of the lodge grounds open up before her. She can see the large firepit now, and a few old ping-pong tables, their playing surfaces sagging permanently in the centers from years of rain and snow. The laundry machines still sit encased in a tiny plywood lean-to, and she wonders if the adjacent storage shed is still stuffed to the rafters with linens and towels and the overwhelming smell of detergent and Clorox bleach. How many afternoons did she kill time in there, waiting for the dryer cycle to finish so she could fold sheets for Mary Albright? Silas’s crazy stories distracting her from the heat and the heavy, lemony smell?
She stops directly outside the main building, where she takes care not to look up to where she knows she’d see Silas’s long-ago upstairs window. Are the maps still on the wall? The constellation posters still on the ceiling? Best to look only forward, where, on the lower level, the huge industrial kitchen and smaller dining room are situated. The same drapes are in the windows as were hung by Mary in ’03, and looking up to the second-story balcony, Meg can see the same weathered Adirondack chairs, still set at the perfect angle to catch the sunset.
She’s left her jacket with her pack at the staging area, and for the first time since the return hike she feels cold. The wind is picking up, although now that she thinks about it, it’s always been more pronounced here, at the crest of this low hill. The windows are already boarded for winter, but the main door is propped ajar, tempting her to seek refuge from the cold. She hesitates—there are still a few deputies about—but no one’s paying her any attention. She pushes open the door and blinks into the gloom.
The main room is just as she remembers it, with its giant fireplace on the opposite wall, the historic black-and-white photos depicting mining life, and the rack of brochures pointing guests to areas of local interest propped to the right of the doorway. There’s a new rug strewn across the wooden floorboards, however, and the sight of it stops her.
This is Silas’s lodge now. All of it ... not just his teenage bedroom. And she’s trespassing without permission. She’s no better than the deputies and searchers who are still poking around, opening doors and roping off buildings. She exits immediately, following the wraparound porch to the far side of the building to sit down heavily in a slatted wooden chair.
Marble Peak looms in the distance, off her right shoulder, and she cranes her neck, trying to make out the fire tower at its craggy top. She still maintains that there’s an almost zero chance the boys have attempted to reach it; Marble is by no means the only elevation the boys could have climbed. She thinks again of Long Lake, with its slopesthey dismissed earlier. She’s still holding her newly revised search map, gripped in her hand under the printout of the Matheson boys, and she hastily unfolds it in her lap, rechecking the search margins. Yes, Marble Peak still falls just outside the new search perimeters, but that bowl her team searched just this morning? It begs further investigation, given the Matheson boys’ propensity for heights.
With her eyes alternating between her map and the mountain, she doesn’t see Sheriff Walters approach until the stiff black tips of his boots catch her eye, and for the second time today she jumps.
Walters reaches out and rests one hand on her shoulder. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” He looks at her quizzically, then offers a gentle smile. “Again.”
“No, no, it’s fine.” She straightens in her chair, looking up from the map as though she’s just been caught with some sort of contraband.
She forces herself to turn and look him in the eye. Under the weight of the search he looks every one of his sixty-two years, but the face that peers back down at her exhibits the same mellow features—thinning gray hair, light-blue eyes—she’s observed from her position at her desk in his office for over a decade.
For a brief second the victim-advocacy job he’s offered springs to mind. Might as well start advocating right now. She gestures to the map in her lap. “Silas said something a few minutes ago that has me thinking—”
Walters cuts her off. “Cairns already cornered me. You’re right: we shouldn’t underestimate these kids, so we’ll pull teams from the Lakes Loop detail to comb Marble Peak and the lookout.”
Meg frowns. Where is Danny’s head at today? They’ve all but eliminated the Marble Peak possibility. “No,” she says, “I think you misunderstood.” Walters’s eyebrows raise, and she’s quick to explain. “The boys are familiar with Marble Peak, but we all agreed they couldn’t have traveled that much distance. But if they’d be willing and able to climb Marble, they may have done so along the bluffs surrounding LongLake.” Just because Danny doesn’t relish the memories that particular trail holds for them doesn’t mean the SAR team should shun it.
But Walters shakes his head. “We go from the inside out, as you know.” He places one finger on the dot that represents the lodge, sitting squarely in the center of the search grid. “And Cairns assures us Long has had a once-over already.” He looks at her sharply. “Byyourteam. Which Susan is still debriefing, by the way. If you had been present, you could have brought up your concerns.” Meg flushes at the chastisement before he follows it with: “Are you all right?”
Is she? She replays her conversation with Danny and Silas in her head. She’d been so sure that the consensus was to cross off the Marble lookout. Had she misunderstood? The turmoil of this search, in this location, must be getting to her, because she’s doubting herself. “I’m okay,” she says slowly. “And you’re right. I’ll head back.” She moves to rise, but Walters’s arm comes up impressively quickly for a man his age, clamping firmly on her forearm.
“Take a minute,” he suggests, while the pressure on Meg’s arm lets her know this isn’t a suggestion at all. “I hadn’t realized you and Silas Matheson were still so close. You’ve never mentioned it.”
“We weren’t,” Meg says, and her tongue feels thick in her mouth. “We aren’t.”
“You aren’t?” The sheriff’s tone is still mild, but his gaze penetrates. Meg’s not sensing hostility, it’s nothing like that, but there’s a hum ofsomethingin the air between them. It flusters her; Walters has always trodden gently with her, even back in ’03. Certainly more gently than he trod with Silas. And even with Danny.
No matter how she answers, she’s acutely aware that her words must maintain equilibrium across the thin wire she finds herself poised upon. “Until today, we hadn’t spoken in years.”
