Page 181 of Silent Shadows

Owen drums his fingers on the steering wheel and I catch myself thinking back to my dad doing the same.

Our family solved things in cars, or tried to. We processed side by side. No eye contact required, no pressure. Just miles of endless road ahead.

And eventually, if you waited long enough, somebody would say the real thing. The memory sneaks up on me hard enough to hurt.

Mom in the passenger seat, feet tucked underneath her. Dad drumming fingers against the steering wheel while classic rock rattled through blown speakers. Owen sprawled half asleep against the window in the backseat. Me, peppering our parents with impossible questions beside him.

Always questions. What happens after people die? Do aliens count as neighbors? Could animals miss people? Does grief weigh anything?

Dad never laughed. I’d never thought of that before now. He never laughed at me. Just nodded as if the questions mattered. Then drove. Eventually saying something maddeningly calm like, “Maybe the not knowing is part of it.”

I stare out the window. The high desert rolls past, slow and familiar.

Red dirt mingles with light sandstone, glowing warmly against the blue sky. The kind of landscape that makes you feel tiny. It usually comforts me, but today it just feels… lonely.

My throat tightens. Owen knows exactly what he’s doing. No wonder he told me to get in the truck. No wonder he didn’t start talking. He’s recreating something. Giving me somewhere safe to fall apart. The realization settles warm and terrible all at once. Tears start to pool in my eyes.

And suddenly, painfully, I miss Daisy. And not in the abstract, breakup-sad-montage style. I miss her specifically. Painfully specific.

I miss her narrating things under her breath. I miss the way she sat cross-legged on the couch, pretending thermal footage was boring while watching closely out of the corner of her eye. The way she stole blankets like possession laws applied. The sound of her laughing in the truck-stop shower. The way she looked at me when I said something weird enough to surprise even me.

The way she saw through me. Too much. Too fast. Enough to scare me. Enough to scare her. Clearly.

My chest tightens again.

“I fucked it up.”

The words land heavily between us.

Owen doesn’t rush to answer.

“Yeah?”

“Yep,” I say. “What do you think?” I turn to him, eyes watery under my glasses.

The silence answers for me. Owen exhales slowly through his nose.

“You know what Dad used to say?”

I already hate this. Each mention still feels like a paper cut on my heart.

“What?”

“That when people are scared, they stop listening to what you say and start listening to what you do.”

The words land uncomfortably.

I remember Daisy in the rain. Daisy stepping back, hurt.

Then me… talking routes. Containment. Risk mitigation. Problem-solving. Because that’s what I do. I fix, control, and obsess. Protect the crew. Except she wasn’t asking for protection. She was asking to be chosen. I stare out at the road stretching endlessly ahead.

At cliffs glowing red against the morning light.

At uncertainty. At grief. At the shape of a life I suddenly don’t know how to hold. And somewhere between the silence and the miles and my brother quietly refusing to let me drown alone, I let tears fall.

“She thinks I care more about this than her.”

“And?” he says.