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“There’s only so much a person can do to make amends,” Danny told her through a clenched jaw more than once after the Howard search ended with no resolution in sight. No answers. The bitterness in his tone had made her wince. In it, she’d heard what he’d left unspoken:Nothing we do will ever be enough.And yet here they still sit, shoulder to shoulder, forever trying to tip those scales.
When the meeting ends, she and Danny drive out of the department lot in silence. It’s Tuesday night, and Tuesday night is usually reserved for darts and IPAs at Conifers off the highway with the rest of the SAR crew, but Danny suggests they drive directly home.
“I don’t exactly feel like socializing,” he says.
She doesn’t really, either, but there’s also River Bend Brewery, where the crowd is younger and livelier, even midweek, and the cacophony of voices and clank of pint glasses might help keep any lingering questions resurfaced in the SAR meeting at bay. But they never go to River Bend on Tuesdays, and Danny’s mouth has already set in a firm line, his brow knitted against the oncoming headlights of the few cars on the road. “We have your dad’s retirement thing tomorrow night anyway,” she offers, by way of concession. “Not to mention Thanksgiving coming up.”
And next Monday, they’ll have bowling league, because they bowl every Monday at the Cosmos with Charlotte from call-out and Steve from the fire station, who are expecting their second little girl next month. Meg supposes there will be a temporary reprieve after Char’s water breaks, though she can count on another SAR meeting on Tuesday, of course, as well as the Tuesday after that, and so on and so forth. She stares out the windshield of her SUV, making each familiar turn as the road parallels the river, wondering how long she can stand to be stuck in such a rut.
I could apply for the promotion,she reminds herself. Walters said the victim-advocacy position that had come across his desk had her name written all over it, but Danny worried it would be triggering.Triggering for me or for you?she’d just managed to bite back. But all she had to do was think of that horrible week at the end of August 2003 to know she was no more immune than Danny.
“They were all staring at us,” Danny says now. “The search veterans, I mean. McCrady. Santos. Even Walters.”
“They weren’t,” Meg counters automatically. She knows how much it pains him to feel the condemnation of his peers, real or imagined. “And Santos wasn’t even here in ’03.” But even as she insists on this, Meg’s mind is playing a familiar, and always morbid, loop in her head. Running through the forest. The scream she can never unhear. She clenches her jaw tight to keep from suddenly crying. “Trust me,” she tells him. “No one thinks about this more than we do. No one.”
He turns to regard her, his face awash with misery in the glow cast from the dashboard lights. “I can think ofoneperson whoshould, at least,” he mutters. “That is, if he even still cares.”
That bite is back in Danny’s tone, and Meg’s sympathy dissipates. “That’s not fair. We can’t possibly know what he’s thinking.”
“He should never have come back,” Danny counters. “I know that much.”
Meg exhales, eyes determinedly on the road. They’d heard Silas Matheson was back in town just two days ago, from Janice Hall, the checkout clerk at Clark’s Market; the moment his name dropped, Meg’s whole body turned to lead. Danny, too, went rigid.
Should they feel insulted that he has evidently been here for days already, taking over Marble Lake Lodge for Mary Albright without so much as a courtesy call? At Clark’s, it was all she could do to retrieve her share of their groceries from the conveyer belt before the apples and lettuce collided with the eggs. A paper bag under each arm, she and Danny escaped in record time, only to sit in the car in the parking lot, processing this news in what felt like parallel universes.
Silas had left town fifteen years ago without even saying goodbye. And now he was back, reinstating himself at the lodge like nothing had happened? Meg wasn’t insulted, she decided then. She was hurt, the wound she’d deluded herself into thinking had scarred over years ago still raw.
“I hear he’s got kids,” Danny says.
Meg nods numbly. “Two boys.” She debates saying more, then adds, “He isn’t with their mother anymore, though.”
Danny glances at her. “Well, it’s nothing to us,” he says.
He stares her down as she drives, his expression now a dare, and Meg lifts her hands from the steering wheel in a gesture of surrender. What other recourse remains to her? She’s always suspected that behind the bravado, Danny is a man who doesn’t want to know. Not really. Not all of it. Despite his dedication as a volunteer with SAR, despite working in public service, he never combs through the well-worn Marble Lake topographical maps and archived search notes on his days off, like she does. And every year, he shoots down her suggestion to put in a formal request with Sheriff Walters, imploring him to reopen the Howard search. His argument: “How can any of us heal if we keep picking at the scab?” True to his word, as far as Meg knows, he’s never even set foot in that terrain since.
Now, bitter victory shines in his eyes at her lack of rebuttal. He looks away first, saying, “On second thought, I think I may grab a beer at Tomahawk before calling it a night.”
He knows the dive bar isn’t her scene, but she doesn’t have the energy for a conflict right now. Certainly not about this.
She sighs, and Danny reaches over and gently squeezes her shoulder. “It’s just that after tonight’s meeting, I know I won’t be good company.”
She can’t argue there. They’re both just doing the best they can, but it will be a relief not to feel his angst tonight, to get out from under his gaze. But twenty minutes later, after dropping herself off and giving him the use of the car, she can’t seem to shake herself of his condemnation of Silas. She still feels the heat of it, like coals glowing under her skin, searing her from within.
This is precisely why they never talk about this, apart from when statistics and unexpected news bring it all crashing back. It’s easier that way. Meg can skim along the surface of their routine life—work, friends, family, SAR—without dipping too far under it. She pinches her eyes shut, blocking out the haunted look on Danny’s face, the tension in the car, and the echo of Walters’s announcement at the meeting. She forces her thoughts away from the Marble Lake wilderness. Refuses to visualize the path of each trail, blazed into rock and dirt. Doesn’t allow herself to wonder if it’s already feeling like winter up at the lodge, two thousand feet higher into the Sierra range.
Not while she’s down here in town, spiraling in what feels like endless circles.
4
SILAS
November 19, 2018
5:00 p.m.
Marble Lake Lodge
To say this lodge is a mess would be an understatement, and Silas has officially almost run out of daylight. It’s not just the landscaping and exteriors Aunt Mary had been forced to let slide following Les’s death; all the chimneys needed cleaning, new storm windows should be installed on the cabins, and now, after almost two full weeks of nonstop repair work, Silas has discovered a decaying wasp nest in the corner of the upstairs hallway of the rec building.
