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He gets nothing. Meg keeps her eyes trained on the ground as she runs in a crouch away from the helo; by the time she straightens, her back is to him. She meets with Susan Darcy and another officer in a brief team huddle, then makes a beeline for the staging area, shoulders hunched against the wind.
Darcy returns alone, and he knows what she is going to say even before she reaches his side. He decides to beat her to it. “No update? Nothing?”
“I’m sorry,” Darcy says, and she does look it, though this is hardly any comfort to Silas. Her face is hardened and lined, more from weather than age from the look of it, and he can tell she’s trying to rearrange her features to shift from no-nonsense leadership to something that suggests more sympathy.
He’s been told she’s good at her job, and he’d rather her get on with it instead of expressing her condolences. “You don’t have to babysit me,” he tells her. He winces at the harshness of his tone. It’s just that everything inside him, right down to his soul, has become as rough and gravelly as this mountain terrain, coarser every minute his boys are missing.
Darcy just pats his back with one gloved hand and, mercifully, leaves him to his agitation and mourning, crossing the staging area to disappear back into her yellow com van. Silas stands there for a minute, feeling utterly lost. Only when the irony of this fact fully sinks in does he manage to drag his feet—like lead—in the same direction. He sees the media van at the last second and pivots on the spot, skirting the crowd of searchers, dogs, and vehicles to duck down the first sign of safety he sees: the forested walkway to the lodge.
Only to be rerouted yet again, because almost immediately he can see that the lodge is still teeming with sheriff personnel. His fingers ball into fists at his thighs, because if this isn’t the most colossal waste of time, he doesn’t know what is. This sight of so many resources wasted on his property is even worse to endure than the long com-van meetings and the slow-moving bureaucracy.Search outthere!he wants to scream.In the forest!
In a blind rage, he nearly trips right over Meg.
She’s sitting off to the side of the bustle of the staging area, like she’s cast herself into self-exile as well. She certainly looks as lost as he feels. In her hand she clutches her short stack of search papers, including the photocopy of his sons’ faces.
“Oh!” she says, half rising before sinking back down just as quickly, as if her legs suddenly decided not to oblige. “Silas. I’m so sorry. Aboutthe flight ... not having the results ...” She clears her throat roughly. “I was feeling so hopeful, but sometimes, this is just how searches go.” She looks up at him. “It’s a setback, but it doesn’t mean we won’t find them.”
Silas nods shakily. “I guess we both know a little bit about search setbacks.” And search failures.
He leaves this part unsaid, but surely she’s remembering? They were just yards away from this spot, in the upstairs landing of the lodge, at 1700 hours on Day 5 of the Howard search as it was officially called off. Silas felt frozen in place, rendered mute by choices both in and out of his control, as the earth continued to rotate on its axis, indifferent to Jessica’s plight. Spinning faster and faster, stopping for no one.
Just as it is indifferent now, toward his boys. His young children, innocent of the sins of their father. If this, too, is karma, it is fucking unfair.
He stares at the photocopy at the top of the pile in Meg’s hands—Spencer’s and Cameron’s pictures—until the ink seems to blur on the paper, like those crazy 3D images that take form only with intense and protracted concentration. If he looks at these photos of Spencer and Cameron long enough, will they spring to life?
Meg follows his line of sight to her lap. “I look forward to meeting them,” she says pointedly, with an air of confidence—no, of authority—she has mustered from somewhere inside herself in the last five seconds or so. Silas remembers that this is her domain now, more than his: these mountains, yes, but, more so, these search protocols and rules and chains of command. He wills himself to believe that if Meg feels confident that she’ll be laying eyes on Spencer and Cameron soon, then so will he.
He sinks down beside her on a nearby log. “I’ve been wanting to invite you up here to the lodge,” he says before thinking better of it. It seems he’s been driven primarily by impulse—clamoring, desperate, driving impulse and instinct—since the boys went missing last night. “I mean, before,” he adds, “you know ...”
“Yeah.” She looks from the paper in her lap to stare directly forward, where deep shadows are falling over the main lodge building. He’s studying her intently enough to see her swallow hard. She doesn’t look back at him when she adds, “Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.” But he does, doesn’t he? He didn’t invite her because he has been afraid. Afraid that too much time has passed. That she’ll have changed too much. Thathehas changed too much. Or not enough: that Meg will see in Silas the scared boy he was over a decade ago and declare him a coward for leaving the way he did.
He wants to ask Meg if she’s sorry to see him, and not just under these circumstances. He’s under no illusion: he knew she was still with Danny before he returned, but Silas would be lying if he said he didn’t hope that she’s missed him at least a little. That his worst fear before losing his kids—that she will have completely wished away their time together—hasn’t come to pass. He wants to know: Do they still understand one another like they used to? He wants to say:Seeing you again has provided the only comfort I’ve found in the past horrible day and a half.It has ignited a tiny pilot flame within, glowing weak but sure somewhere deep in the chilled hollow of his core.
But then he thinks of Danny again, and that little ember of warmth is snuffed out as if smothered with a wet blanket. Still, whatever complicated feelings surfaced for Danny upon seeing Silas, he’s set them aside to dedicate himself to this search, same as everyone else, and for this Silas is grateful. “I’ve wanted to invite youbothup here,” he amends. “YouandDanny.” He tries to lighten his tone when he adds, “Though I’m not sure he was too glad to see me this morning.”
She inexplicably flushes, and Silas thinks she’s about to excuse this with a polite reference to unfortunate circumstances, but she doesn’t. “You have to remember,” she says so quietly he has to strain to hear her over the steadily blowing wind. “It’s not his fault that he doesn’t—won’t ever—see things the way we do.”
She’s defending Danny and striking him from the score in the same breath, and Silas has no idea what to make of this. It reminds him, actually, of how he and Miranda view one another these days, as not really part of the other’s essential equation. But isn’t Danny essential to Meg’s?
He wants to know but also knows he has no right. He focuses his gaze on the windows of the main lodge kitchen across the path, which are already darkened by shadow and rain. Jesus, how can it already be getting dark? Again? His mind jerks mercilessly back to Spencer and Cameron, as it does about every ten seconds. They have no light. How will Spencer comfort Cameron, as he knows he will try, afraid as he gets without the glow of his night-light? Are they even together right now? Or is Cameron alone with his fear? Is Spencer?
“What comes next?” he asks Meg roughly, and she looks startled, swallowing again uncomfortably. Silas realizes she might think he means for them ... what’s next for them. “In the search,” he clarifies. “What happens after dark?” He tries not to let his voice break. Are there floodlights? High-intensity beams? They won’t stop looking, will they? “They’ll keep going around the clock?”
“Around the clock,” she promises, but then adds, “Although.”
“What?”
“The helo will be grounded. Obviously,” she adds, almost in apology. “And Darcy will probably call the newbies and novice searchers off until daylight.” She explains something about a specialty team of advanced ground pounders. “It doesn’t do Spencer and Cameron any good ifmorepeople get lost. I’ve seen that happen ... searchers looking for searchers. It takes people off the original mission.”
Silas paces. “What aboutotherspecialty teams? We should be calling in more resources, shouldn’t we? Where are the big-city SAR groups? The experts? The—”
“Silas. Please sit back down.”
He obliges, but only because she looks so miserable, and he knows firsthand how shitty it feels to be helpless. They both do. “More teamswill come help, just as soon as the jurisdiction is opened up,” she promises him. “Walters is already orchestrating cooperation with additional counties, probably dive teams ...”
She trails off, and he knows why. “Dive teams? You mean, to dredge the lakes?” He remembers all too well how the dredging during Jessica’s search took things to a new level of awful, watching the sheriff’s-department boats bobbing on the peaceful surface while being forced to wonder what lay beneath.
