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The team member who responds is from Team Eight, and he tells her they’re close by. With the coordinates she’s given, they can be there within minutes, and Meg allows herself a fleeting instant of relief. She knows she’s unprepared for the multitude of contingencies revolving in a slow circle in her brain. Cameron will be hypothermic, he could be hurt; the list goes on and on. And that’s if they’re lucky enough to find him here at all. When the others arrive, maybe a fraction of the weight of responsibility will be lifted from her shoulders.
Silas runs up the steep slope ahead of her between the two shafts, and she follows after him, her boots slipping in the mud as she struggles to find purchase on the incline. He crests the ridge and drops down the other side to where the mine lies in wait, and suddenly Meg knows she can’t let him do this alone. She has to be the first to cross that threshold and see what there is to see, because what are the odds this will end the way they all hope? If there’s any justice at all in this world, they’re slim to none, aren’t they? Certainly for her and Silas.
She calls out to him, but of course he cannot hear her, and still she climbs up the slope ... slipping, falling ... her fingers sinking into the loosened soil. She reaches the top and practically slides down the otherside just in time to see him bend, and duck, and then enter the mine they opened all those years ago. He calls for Cameron, and then he’s calling forher, and she realizes belatedly that he doesn’t have a light. He must be blindly feeling his way along the blackness of the tunnel as he yells. The muscles of her thighs burn as she propels herself downward, willing her legs to go faster.
He’s still calling—“Cameron! Meg! Cameron! Meg!”—as she reaches the halfway point on the downhill slide, but then, with a shift to his tone like the flipping of a switch, he’s screaming. It’s a wail that slices straight to the core, shaking Meg in a way that would have made her legs give out altogether had she not already been there,just now, at the entrance to the mine shaft. Her light catches first the glint of blackness in the tunnel—obsidian? Simply the void of daylight?—and then it shines upon the image of Silas, bent forward on his knees, his hands groping wildly as he reaches for the pale shape of his son.
She falls to her knees beside him, offering her light, but Silas is frantic, skimming his hands along the planes of Cameron’s face, his fingers trailing over his nose and then his mouth in the most desperate of tactile sweeps. To Meg, it looks as though he’s trying to absorb two days’ worth of pain and suffering from the parting of Cameron’s lips and the bell of his ear to the awkward clasp of his hands pressed between his chest and the stone floor of the mine. Her light is on them now, and it’s clear that Cameron is completely unresponsive—not a twitch, not a blink—his skin a reflection of the sky in the coldest, stoniest gray. What Silas is really doing is refusing to see.
She wants to do the same, but instead she angles the headlamp more carefully, holding it aloft. Silas begins to moan in a strange cadence that unnerves Meg more than his screams did, echoing unbearably through the tunnel. When he leans forward to sink his face into the curve of Cameron’s small shoulder, she shouts at him, trying to pull him back even as she sobs that she’s sorry.
“Let me see him!” she yells, because maybe, just maybe, the light is playing tricks on them, desaturating the hue of Cameron’s complexion to this particular shade of unnatural white. She’s seen hypothermia before—she saw it on his brother only this morning—and if she can just hold the light higher ... if she can just press her cheek to Cameron’s chest and feel for the sigh of a breath, she’ll know for certain that—unlike fifteen years ago—she’s done everything she can.
That this time, she hasn’t hidden, hasn’t withheld, and hasn’t run away.
29
MEG
Howard search
September 1, 2003
Feather River
The Howard search officially ended at 6:00 p.m. on Day 5. What Sheriff Walters, and Halloway, and Les, and Meg’s mother said this meant: there was nothing more the kids could do. They were free to go.
After five days of constant vigil, interrupted by only a few hours of rest in Feather River in between, it felt so wrong to be home.Home.For good. In her room with her posters on the wall and her graduation tassel hanging from her bedpost, while Jessica was ... Jessica was who knew where? As much as Meg had hated the hours spent sitting in the cloying heat of the lodge, at least she had been doing something, if only standing vigil. She imagined Jessica, isolated against miles of empty forest and craggy granite, scared and alone. She imagined her as she’d been before, happy and tan, chatting with Silas on the trail.
Silas.
A strangely euphoric feeling rose through Meg, only to turn to nausea when it hit the guilt churning in her gut. Like thinking of somethingvery pleasant, then remembering it was a dream. Not real. Couldn’t be real.
She couldn’t stop seeing the look on his face when she’d stopped him outside the lodge, urging him not to tell the authorities everything. Once she’d gotten through to him, she’d seen her own fear reflected back at her. Her own doubt, too.
Just days ago she’d dared to hope things could be so different. As they’d set out on that hike, she had been ready to leap toward a new future, at the college of her choice. And in the shelter of those trees with Silas she’d discovered the awakening of an enticing possibility. Jessica, lost, still missing, changed everything.
Meg wanted a do-over. She’d never wished for anything so hard. Turning the clock back could fix what she had broken by wanting too much. Reaching too far. Altering just one day could make everything all right again. Could return her to the status quo.
But what good was wishful thinking? In the quiet of her bedroom, the rush of the interrogation, with all its frightening intensity, fell away until only one truth remained. Jessica was stillout there, all alone, and no one knew where to look for her.
The wave of loneliness this thought sent through Meg propelled her out of her bed. She pulled on a pair of jeans blindly, then reached for her shirt, sweeping a pile of papers off her desk in the process. On the top of the stack: the welcome letter to UC Davis. She stared at it for a moment before crumpling it and tossing it in the direction of her trash bin.
Crossing the empty living room, she slipped out her front door in silence. Wanting a change of trajectory had led to all this horribleness. She should have just stayed steady. Maybe she couldn’t have a do-over, but she could at least pivot, turn back, and reset her course.
She made her way down the street at a speed walk. It was late; everyone was either in their beds, like her mother, or on the red-eye Union Pacific run toward Reno, like Danny’s father.
Later, she’d try to convince herself that what she was about to do was premeditated, but halfway to Danny’s house, she realized she’d forgotten her sweatshirt, the cotton shirt she’d tossed on about as useful as tissue paper against the night air. Her shoes weren’t doing much for her, either, left back on her front stoop. So much for preparation.
She jogged around the back, careful to avoid tripping over stray logs from the woodpile, and tapped on his bedroom window. Waiting for him to respond, she stared down the darkened glass.Open up, open up, open up.
His face registered surprise as he slid his window wide to help her inside. “What’s wrong?” he whispered. He looked leery and aged beyond his years, like what he really meant wasWhat’s gone wrong now?
She squinted into the gloom of his bedroom. “I don’t want to be alone.”
Maybe she could still be redeemed. It was irrational, but what choice did Meg have? Burning bridges was all she had left, if she wanted back on the straight and narrow.
Danny made room for her on the bed, and she sank down onto the mattress while he stood awkwardly over her. He looked out the window again, as though half expecting Silas, too, out of habit, before shutting it.
