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Could he? Silas looked at him more closely. Or was he going to puke all over the lodge floor? “You got this, Cairns,” he said. “Keep it together, all right?”
They’d tell Danny’s version of events and leave it at that. Ignoring his own churning stomach, Silas practiced this version in his head as they trotted down the hallway to the office: Jessica got scared. That part was all Silas’s fault. But then she ran away, and they couldn’t calm her. And now they couldn’t find her. All of this was true. The rest didn’t matter.
Except it did, so very much, didn’t it?
When they all burst through the office door, Uncle Les clambered to his feet in surprise. “We need help, Mr.Albright,” Danny blurted. His voice shook with adrenaline, and Uncle Les wasted no time.
“Mary?” he called out. “You’d better get on down here.”
She joined them, already in her nightgown, and they gathered in the dimly lit lodge great room. Once there, it was easier than Silas had thought to stick to Meg’s plan. To tell only the barest of facts. This wasa small blessing, as the rest was lodged in Silas’s throat anyway, hard to extract. Telling the full story would have been like picking the meat off a bone, exposing skeletal truths word by word.
“Start at the beginning,” Les instructed, after several minutes of words tumbling one over another.
“We were all together,” Danny told Uncle Les. “Hiking the Lakes Loop trail.”
“And?” Les sounded wary. He liked Danny. Trusted Danny. Always had. “What happened?”
“Well, sir,” Danny began. He swallowed. “Silas may have scared Jessica.”
“Dammit, Silas,” Les said. “How many times have we told you to cool it with the pranks?”
“But people get lost in the woods all the time, right?” Danny interjected. “It happens.”
“And they always get found,” Meg added. “Right?”
“We tried to call out to her,” Silas said.
“But we couldn’t catch up to her,” Meg supplied.
“We looked and looked,” Danny echoed. He took a breath like he was ramping up to say more, and for one long, horrible second, Silas feared he and Meg had miscalculated. Maybe Danny already knew the whole story, and it was about to come pouring out. But Danny only concluded tightly, “There was no trace of her.”
Silas exhaled.
Next to him Meg shifted on her seat. Danny looked to her for confirmation, and Silas would have liked to believe he was the only one who could detect the briefest moment of hesitation that followed. It played about Meg’s mouth, tugging the corner of her lip downward, just before she nodded. “No trace,” she echoed dully.
Her protection of him should have bolstered him, vindicated him, even, but it only brought a sour taste, rising up in Silas’s throat.
Uncle Les wanted more details, but Danny, designated spokesman, didn’t seem to have many. Guilt bubbled up in Silas, but it didn’t spill over. He couldn’t let it. He just sat there, censured, because this was the only way to ensure this stayed far away from Meg, too.
“Did Jessica know where you were all headed?” Les wanted to know. “Before you scared her?” He looked Silas’s way sternly again. “Did she have a map with her?”
Silas shook his head in the negative. Jessica hadn’t had so much as a bottle of water on her when they’d set off, despite Danny’s attempt at organizing them all.
Aunt Mary wanted Jessica’s parents’ names and number. “Did you all think to pack some gear, at least?” she asked. “Did she have a jacket?”
No, and no. Shame heated Silas’s cheeks. He knew better than to go into the wilderness unprepared. Even for a last-minute hike he hadn’t wanted to take.
“I’m sorry,” he found himself saying. He was. He was so, so sorry. But purging himself of the whole story wouldn’t help Jessica now. She certainly wasn’t where he’d last seen her. And coming clean wouldn’t help Meg. It would only ease the pain deep inside him where omission swelled into bloated fabrication.
He needed air.
Back outside, he sat down heavily on the log bench outside the lodge and waited. For what, he wasn’t sure. Meg to join him here? To tell him everything would work out? Or to remind him again to keep his mouth shut?
The voices inside continued to roll over one another, but from out here they mingled with the sound of water flowing over the boulders in nearby Marble Creek; Uncle Les’s tone stony, Danny’s and Meg’s grating like rocks in a tumbler. Aunt Mary’s voice echoed after. Eventually she joined Silas on the porch, the arm she cast around his shoulder pillowy in her bathrobe.
“Your uncle is making some phone calls,” she said.
The others followed shortly, Danny sitting below Meg on the front steps. As Silas watched, he fidgeted with his shoelace, yanking, and yanking, and yanking, his mouth forming a tight, hard line. What was he thinking? Unlike Meg, Danny was impossible for Silas to read.
