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No one spoke except for Uncle Les, who kept saying, “We’ll find her all right, we’ll find her,” and Danny, who kept answering, “Yeah, I know,” between yanks on his shoe, drawing great breaths to—Silas assumed—avoid crying.
He wanted to cry again, too, but he wouldn’t.
“The authorities will be here just as soon as they can,” Aunt Mary promised. She meant to soothe, but her words, too, felt rough around the edges.
They waited, and waited more, all of them, out in the cool of the summer night. And when the flash of police lights finally rounded the final bend in Marble Lake Road, they all stood of one accord, as though rising to await a sentencing.
25
MEG
Matheson search
November 21, 2018
8:15 a.m.
Marble Lake Staging Area
Inside the com van, Meg enters the coordinates where they found Spencer onto a spreadsheet on Darcy’s laptop. She’s still waiting on the flight report from Rick, and she swivels her chair closer to the screen, trying to concentrate with the constant chatter on the radio as Santos continues to direct teams through the field.
“Shit, be right back,” he says, then excuses himself to deal with some sort of problem with someone’s GPS unit. A moment later, Darcy follows, muttering something about doing things yourself if you want them done right.
It’s silent for one blissful moment before it dawns on Meg that she and Silas are alone in the van. She looks over at him: so worn down. So tired. “Any update on Spencer?” she asks softly.
Silas exhales slowly. “Stable,” he breathes. “But he’ll likely be at Washoe Medical for a few days.”
She wants to say,You’ll be with him soon. You and Cameron both.But she can’t bear to, because what if it isn’t true? She’s so weary of lies, even the ones meant to console. He’s staring out the window at the lodge grounds in the distance, and after inputting the final coordinate, she gives her eyes a break and follows his gaze.
“It’s been over a decade since I’ve seen this place,” she notes. “Your place,” she amends. Her voice startles him; he flinches slightly, just like Max when the squawk of the radio seems to come from out of nowhere. It’s no wonder he’s so jumpy, waiting on any news related to his kids. She can’t imagine that sort of agony.
“Over adecade,” he repeats quietly. “How did that happen?”
She hesitates, unsure what he needs to hear. Not wanting to inflict any unnecessary injury. Silas sits hunched like he’s just waiting for the next blow. “One day followed by another, I guess,” she says cautiously.
Several more seconds pass in silence. The waste of it weighs on her. There’s so much she would like to say to him, but timing has never been their strong suit. The clock on the com-van wall ticks, measuring Cameron’s struggle wherever he lies, keeping pace with the footfalls of the searchers out in the wilderness. Measuring Spencer’s flight time to Reno. And here she and Silas are, caught inexplicably together. But if experience has taught Meg anything, it’s that moments like this one pass in the blink of an eye.
“Listen, Silas—”
But he’s already speaking. “If it matters,” he tells Meg in a rush, “I’m sorry I left.”
It takes her a moment to find the composure to answer. “I’m sorry I stayed,” she responds slowly, and the words sink as softly as silt into lake water as she offers him a sad smile. “If it matters.”
He looks directly into her eyes. “It matters,” he says, and in this single isolated second, hovering and divided from the whole of her life, Meg sees something in his expression that she’s done her bestnotto seeall these years. The consequences, at least until now, have always felt entirely too high.
The first drop of rain hits the roof of the com van at the very second the door crashes back open. It’s Danny, stepping up the metal stairs and into the main compartment, and Meg and Silas both flinch, springing back from one another despite the fact that they were sitting more than five feet apart.
Danny freezes in the doorway, looking quickly between the two of them. Meg surprises herself by looking unflinchingly back. Warranted or not, her and Silas’s reaction to his unexpected presence speaks volumes. The truth is too exposed now to hide behind best intentions and penance. The rain begins in earnest, blowing through the open doorway and cascading off Danny’s search jacket in big drops, soaking the carpeting. The papers scattered on the counter get wet, but still, no one moves, and no one looks away. Meg is reminded of the GPS units they’ve been working with all day, triangulating as they search to connect with the satellites far above them.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Danny says finally to Meg. “Guess I should have known you’d be here, right where you always want to be.”
“Dan—”
“Don’t,” he says, holding up one palm. There’s something odd in his voice, a strange little catch like Meg’s next words could trigger a trap for her to fall through. It silences her as he pivots and retreats back out into the cold.
She stares at that door slammed shut for a long moment, coming to terms with the idea that it just may symbolize far more than this single aborted conversation between her and Danny, and then it bangs open again, Darcy in the threshold, dripping rainwater all over the floor. “A field team has called in near the pond coordinates,” she says.
Silas clambers to his feet. “Have they found him?”
