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Meg nods. “But they’ll wait until ...” She hesitates again.
“What? Until when?”
Misery seems to soak into every crevice of Meg’s face. She swipes at her eyes, brushing her hair back. “Well, until our team needs longer breaks. After the first few days and nights.”
“The first few daysandnights? Just how long do you all think my kids—mylittleboys—can survive out there?” He flings one arm out toward the mountains, where Marble looms in deep shadow, its evergreen blanket losing definition in the gathering darkness. “God, Meg! Every second is torture, and that’s just whatI’mfeeling!” The cry of protest is wrenched from his chest, and he bends double under the weight of it, sobbing into his hands.
“Oh, Silas.” Meg chokes back a sob of her own, her professional demeanor broken.
“I’m sorry,” he says, through his fingers. He feels her hand on his shoulder, and the touch burns through his flesh same as always, but now, he barely registers the heat. No matter how many pillars of support surround him, he continues to feel so alone in this. He says as much, into his hands.
“What about their mother?” Meg asks softly, her hand still on his back. “Have you connected?”
Silas nods. “She’ll be here soon.” In his focus on the search, he still hasn’t spoken to Miranda directly, but Santos has been keeping him abreast of her travel itinerary, which included a delay in Denver but isnow back on track. “But ...” He wants to say,It won’t help.Instead, he says, “This ismydoing, Meg.” All his to bear. Seeing Miranda will just mean one more person to pay amends to. He leans back against the trunk of a ponderosa, too tired, too shaky, too depleted to stand back up.
Meg remains right there beside him. After a while, she says softly, “Tell me about them.”
He looks at her for a moment.
“Your boys. Tell me. Are they just like you?” She manages a brief tease of a smile. “Wild and unruly and stubborn?” She pauses. “Are they just as smart and strong-willed? I hope so.”
“I hope they’re far smarter than me,” Silas says. “God, I was reckless and stupid and impulsive, wasn’t I? And it hurt us all.”
“You weren’t the only one,” Meg says. It makes him feel a little less alone, but it doesn’t loosen the grip of dread on his heart. How could it? “Iknowthey’re smart,” he states. “They’re also inquisitive as hell, and fast on their feet. At least ...” He pauses, that dread doubling down, making it hard to speak. “At least Spencer is fast. Cameron ... Jesus, Meg, what if he can’t keep up? I know what I said, about the boys sticking together, but they won’t know what to do. What if they got separated somehow? What if they’re both all alone?”
She exhales, a long, shuddering sigh, and then her hand is back on Silas’s back. “Darcy told us they’re the best of friends.”
“Ever since Cam was born,” Silas says, after he’s regained enough composure to speak again. “They had a bit of a rough patch adjusting to the move here, but overall? It’s always been the two of them, thick as thieves.”
Just last week, when Silas explained that it was time to enroll Spencer in elementary school, didn’t he instinctively clutch Cameron’s hand in his and squeeze?
“But he’ll be lonely,” Spencer said, looking to his brother for confirmation that came in the form of an earnest nod. “He won’t want to be here all by himself.”
“I’ll be here,” Silas pointed out, but both boys shared another look. Neither of them seemed convinced that this would help much.
“If they’re that close,” Meg decides, “then they’ll be together.”
But for how long, in this wilderness so foreign to them? In this cold? “Tell me straight, Meg. How many days will they look?”
She eyes him warily, and he knows why: he knows the answer. They found out together, didn’t they, that August fifteen years ago, when they waited and waited as time seemed to stand still until—poof! Time had run out, just like that.
When the Howard search was called off, for the first time in Silas’s young life he understood the impulse to turn back the clock.Rewinding his life, and not even that far, either, would have made everything all right, and just the thought of such a simple yet unattainable solution brought the sharp sting of tears to the backs of his eyelids and caused his chest to swell tightly as he swallowed.
Just like now. Silas shuddered, imagining his eighteen-year-old self, privy to the depth of misery that lay in store for him over a decade later. It would have immobilized him. It would have reduced him to rubble. And then timewouldhave stood still, and he’d never have grown up and moved away and met Miranda and had his boys.
No, turning back the clock isn’t the answer. Waiting around isn’t, either. “I’m going todosomething,” he tells Meg, rising to his feet with a sense of purpose that draws a sharp pain of resistance from his quad muscles. “Once and for all.”
Meg rises with him, in alarm. “Do what, exactly?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. Justsomething.”
“You can’t just barrel forward, like you always did! Silas! You can’t—”
He turns on his heel. “Meg, Ihaveto. Can’t you see? It can’t be like before. It can’t end the same way!”
Meg visibly flinches.
“I’m sorry, but you know I’m right. Meg, we have to do differently. We have to—”
