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“Stay put,” he calls down to the boys, who are making a ruckus downstairs. The wasps once occupying the nest have probably long since taken up residence elsewhere, but the last thing he wants—or needs—is for someone to get hurt.
He gets only a vague reply from Spencer; from the sound of it, they have uncovered the pool cues and a sword fight has commenced on the staircase. By the time he’s found a dusty can of Raid in the utility closet, the battle has mercifully moved to the porch.
His relief to have them out of his hair comes with the usual chaser of guilt. He brought his boys here so they could create a new lifetogether, not so Silas could keep reshuffling their spot on his never-ending to-do list. It’s hardly their fault he’s given up a more than satisfactory salary to take a gamble on this place. It isn’t their fault day-to-day custody has proven more daunting than he cares to admit after years of successful co-parenting.
“You have to take the job,” Silas had urged Miranda the day she’d been offered the position in Manchester, even knowing she couldn’t take the boys with her, given the demands of the new position. “I got this,” he promised, his brain already buzzing with the implications for his own life. Their relationship may not have gone the distance, but they’d always supported one another’s pursuits. They’d never stood in each other’s way.Kids are happiest with happy parents,Miranda always said.
But can they be? Happy here? Aunt Mary’s words echo back to him in answer. Silaswasalways the one to love this lodge most. Surely his boys will discover all there is to love, too. They’re already settling in, he reminds himself, if the din downstairs is any indication. It’s loud, sure, but the boys aren’t bickering for a change. With all this open space and room to breathe, they’ll find their stride, just as Silas once did. It’s already started: in the sparks of creativity as Spencer and Cameron make up new games combining incomplete chess sets and checkerboards, the laughter as they build forts outside out of logs and sticks. They’ve only been at Marble Lake a few weeks, but that camaraderie between the boys Silas always loved seeing in Portland is blossoming again: Spencer is Cameron’s best friend, and Cameron is Spencer’s.
The thought ofbest friendshas uncertainty creeping its way back in, so Silas picks up the can of Raid with renewed enthusiasm, ignoring the sting of the fumes. Each new discovery the boys make—the stairwell at the top of the lodge that leads to a jumble of old gear in the attic, the constant sound of the wind in the pines that lulls them to sleep, the way the stars appear like a solid ceiling of white—will continue to remindSilas why he brought them here. Will reinforce his parenting instincts. No more second-guessing.
And no more distracting himself from the past by way of DIY. “Hey, guys!” he calls from the landing, coughing from the Raid cloud he’s created. “How about the three amigos take a quick hike before dinner? Just give me a few more minutes.”
He’s rewarded with a chorus of whoops from below, and he’s smiling as he rips the Raid-saturated wasp nest from its prime square foot of real estate at the dark far corner of the hall. And then his smile fades.
He’s face-to-face with the most acute case of mold he’s ever seen.Goddammit.He’s no contractor, but he knows that where there’s mold like this, there’s a leak, and not a small one, either. He’s still assessing the situation when Cameron calls, “How many minutes is a few?”
“Five,” Silas decides, frowning at the wall.
Five minutes turn into twenty, maybe more. Silas loses track, his head buried in the depths of the hall closet. What if a pipe has burst? But even as he peels back wood paneling and pries away rusted nails, he can still hear Spencer’s and Cameron’s voices rising and falling as they work out the rules to yet another made-up game. His boys are resourceful, he reminds himself. Resilient, just like everyone always says.
Until their patience finally wanes.
“Dad?” Spencer’s whiny tone. The one that used to be reserved for his mother. “Are weevergoing?”
“Da-ad!”
“Almost ready,” he calls, though this time, he already knows he’s full of shit. So do the boys. One of them answers with an angry clunk on the ancient upright piano downstairs while the other whines, “But that’s what you said before!”
But Silas keeps staring at the stripped closet, because he’s finally uncovered a full-blown water stain blossoming across the drywall. The damage trails all the way to the floor, which means, what? A compromised foundation? What began as a simple project has morphed into acomplete headache, but even as Silas tells himself that the second floor has remained standing for decades and isn’t likely to collapse tonight, he doesn’t table it. Ignoring Uncle Les’s voice in his head, chastising him for barreling forward, per usual, he goes after the source of the issue buried under the floorboards.
He ignores Cameron on the piano, ignores the general scuffle of sneakers on the floor below. He returns to the hallway for his toolbox, then for his mask. It’s not until he has half a dozen more boards pried loose on the landing that he registers the silence.
He pauses, knees smarting on the hard surface. Listening harder.
Definitely no more noise coming from downstairs. He contemplates investigating, but he’s almost done here. He’ll finish just this one section and then figure out where Spencer and Cameron have gone off to. Probably one of the guest cabins, where they like to play house. Or back to the main lodge to find Cameron’s hydro pack for the hike. He’ll join them soon and apologize to them while they cobble together dinner.
By the time he’s removed the last board, he’s surprised to note how dark it’s gotten in the hallway. Out the upstairs window the sun has set behind Marble Peak, and he glimpses the forest beyond, the darkness not yet complete enough to reflect his own image back to him on the glass. Downstairs, the rec room is still silent. No ruckus. No whining. Not even the hint of a footfall on the floorboards.
He calls out to the kids anyway, then opens the heavy front doors to step onto the porch and yell their names in the direction of the main lodge. Maybe they got too hungry, he thinks with a fresh ping of guilt. Maybe they decided to start dinner without his supervision.
The thought of them breaking out the boxes of mac and cheese they finally picked out at Clark’s and trying to operate the Viking stove has him trotting toward the lodge kitchen, heart in his throat, a reprimand already on his lips. But the kitchen is empty, the lights off, the stovecold. Pushing back a prick of alarm, he doubles back, calling toward the direction of the cabins.
No response. No one in cabins 1 through 6, no one in 7 through 9.Shit.
Back in the rec building, he nearly trips on the toys on the floor: the oversize puzzle Silas asked them to pick up hours ago, the pool cues, the Nerf golf set, the foam clubs discarded by the fireplace. And then he sees it, on the arm of the couch: a note printed on the back of a roofing invoice in Spencer’s careful hand:
Gon to exsplor the rig wile you work. Be rite back. Have bude sistem
Cameron has added his mark, too, illustrating the final point with two carefully drawn stick figures, one just a bit taller than the other. The two brothers.
Dammit. It’s supposed to be the three amigos.This time, the expletive comes out of Silas’s mouth on a soft exhale, like maybe this note won’t be true if he doesn’t shout. Doesn’t draw attention to it. He knows exactly which ridge Spencer means; Silas has hiked it with them half a dozen times already, thanks to its proximity to the lodge. But they’re entirely too young and too green to navigate it solo. God, has he implied otherwise, in his gusto to get them to love this wilderness? He knows the answer, and swallows a quick swell of nausea. He whirls to look at the clock on the wall by the fireplace. 6:25. Right back? What does “right back” mean? When did they write this? When did they leave? Surely they’re already overdue. Surely they didn’t mean to be out past dark. Dammit, dammit, dammit. His kids don’t realize yet how fast night descends up here; the mountains reach up like arms outstretched, meeting the sinking sun far sooner than in Portland.
The pink slip of paper feels impossibly thin in Silas’s tight grasp, his pinched index finger able to discern his rising pulse in the pad ofhis thumb. He wills himself to think. How long ago did they last call his name? Thirty minutes ago? Forty? How many times did he ignore them? How many seconds—minutes—does his neglect of his children now equal?
Something inside Silas seems to weaken and then crack, crumbling in a wreckage of that god-awful uncertainty and guilt. All he’s been working so hard to avoid comes crashing down around him: the move, the stress of the renovations, Miranda’s departure to the UK, his obvious inadequacy in caring for these boys alone, evidenced by this note. He grabs the Maglite always on a peg by the door—too high for a child to reach, he realizes with a pang—and, on shaky legs, he exits the rec building. He sets out at a fast clip along the Marble Lake trail ... through the meadow, over the creek, and up the lake loop. He stumbles all the way up the ridge, thinking with every step:Be there. Be there. Be there.
But when he crests the top of the trail, no one is here.
