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She believes him, she does, but people make the same mistakes over again all the time. Hasn’t she made fifteen years’ worth with Danny? She knows Cameron was released from the hospital only this morning.They’ll be back at the lodge by now, letting both boys recuperate, but what if their recovery is the only thing holding Silas to Marble Lake? They’ve all had Jessica’s whereabouts hanging over them all for so long. What if finally laying her to rest closes a chapter in Silas’s book?
The possibility is unacceptable. Meg rises from her chair fast enough to send a swell of vertigo to her head. She can’t do anything more for Jessica, but she can still fix her own life.
The break in the weather lasted longer than anyone anticipated, but now the low clouds are back, waffling between frozen rain and tiny, icy flakes. It’s getting dark, and it’s starting to snow, but she’s out the door, turning over the engine of her truck. As she eases out onto the slick road, she decides she’s channeling neither Silas’s impulsivity nor Danny’s reason but following, rather, some unique impulse of her own making.
She makes good time along the highway, but just as she makes the turn onto Marble Lake Road, fat flakes begin to fall from the sky. Within minutes, they’re so thick Meg’s windshield wipers can’t keep up. She clicks her headlights down to low to avoid being blinded by the ever-spiraling expanse of pure white against the blackening night and bends forward over the steering wheel.
She’s driven in whiteout conditions before, and this can’t even be considered one, because Meg can still make out the occasional flash of a snow-marker reflector along the shoulder of the road. Still, she can feel the tires crunching the powder as her truck lurches within a single set of deep ruts, already iced over; only one other vehicle has paved the way before her. Silas, just hours before, bringing his boys home?
She passes the midway point to the lodge, where a permanent sign marks the end of the plow route. From here on out, the snow will accumulate unchecked. Even if she can make it up the hill, she won’t be coming back down anytime soon. The warning only makes her press her foot down more firmly on the gas. This is exactly what she needs. No way out. A one-way path.
SILAS
The lodge living quarters feel empty with the boys both asleep, Spencer in his own bed, Cameron on the daybed in Silas’s room despite his preference to be with his brother, just in case of lingering complications. The wind wails as the storm does its best, and he ought to feel at peace now, with all of them together under one roof. With all of them back home.
Instead, he paces in front of the fireplace. The past days of doctors and reporters and follow-up questions with Walters have left him little time to process the discovery of Jessica’s body and Danny’s blurted confession. He knows he will need to come to terms with this soon, but not this week. Not tonight. So many people have come and gone: medics and specialists, Santos, Miranda. For Silas, the search had acted as a sieve, shaking and sorting his priorities.
When he hears the knock at the heavy front door, he first thinks it’s icicles breaking from the eaves. The sound persists, a steady drumming, muffled but distinct, and he opens the door to swirling snow and a cold gust of air. In the way that’s become a hazard to his health, the blood begins to pound in his temples as he makes out the shape of the woman waiting on the deck.
“Meg.” Snow covers her pants up to her knees, and fat flakes cling to her hair. He looks past her to where her vehicle must sit, already accumulating snow. He flips on the outside light.
She blinks as though he’s surprised her and not the other way around. Steam rises from her mouth to dissolve into the night when she speaks. “I thought maybe you had left and gone back to Portland.”
The sentence ends on a slight uplift that’s not quite a question, and not quite fear. “I thought about it,” he admits. Hasn’t the lodge just been feeling too empty? Too large for his little family of three?
Meg’s gaze searches his face, her eyes almost green in the light, but she doesn’t ask why he didn’t retreat again. He’s glad, because he doesn’t want to admit he didn’t know why until now.
She’s still standing on the lodge steps. “Meg, come inside.”
She remains in place. “How are the boys?”
He tells her, and she smiles at the news before sobering again. She shifts on her feet, her face cast in shadow as she steps sideways out of the weak ring of porch light. “I saw Danny,” she tells him, but then goes quiet again, only shaking her head. “I still can’t believe, all this time, he kept such a tragedy from me.”
“Working at the station, volunteering in SAR ... I think he may have kept it at arm’s length from himself, too,” Silas says. Maybe he has been giving this enigma more attention than he realized, on some level. “Or at least kept the full truth at bay.”
Meg nods. “He deluded himself somewhere along the way.” She changes the subject, for which Silas is grateful. “There was an article in the paper today about Jessica. And the boys. Did you see it?”
He didn’t. Is this why she is here? “No,” he says. “Should I?”
A few wisps of wet hair cling to the side of Meg’s face, and she peels them back. “There’s nothing in it we don’t already know.”
Snow falls on her cheeks and nose, each flake landing with a delicate precision only to instantly melt, and he stares at her before saying again, “Please.Come in.”
“Silas?” she says instead.
He steps toward her, straddling the entry and the snow.
“Do you think it would have made a difference—back then—had we told them everything we knew?”
Her fingers twist nervously in the cuff of her coat, but her eyes are on his with an intensity he’s seen before. The need reflected in them would unnerve him were he not certain of his answer. “I don’t.”
She studies him, waiting.
“That doesn’t mean we made the right decision, staying silent. It just means we could have relieved our guilt, but it wouldn’t have helped Jessica. Our confession would have been an admission, but not a solution.”
She nods, her chin ducking into the folds of her coat. “Not an answer.”
“We weren’t the one privy to the answers, Cass.”
