Page 48 of Silent Shadows

She opens her mouth. Pauses. “I plead the fifth.”

Taylor snorts into her hot dog.

Maya shakes her head. “We’re not a cult,” she laughs.

“Terrible branding choice if we were,” Jax mutters.

Daisy laughs despite herself, then looks between us.

Her face softens. “No, seriously. Why… this?”

This is not the question I expect. Most people ask what we’ve found or what our craziest story is. Nobody really asks why.

Maya doesn’t hesitate. “My grandma used to tell stories when I was little,” she says. “About places where the world felt thinner. Places people respected because they knew they weren’t the only things living there. My family’s Hualapai—they’re actually not far from here. We grew up hearing stories about ancient things that scared the shit out of most kids.”

“Skinwalkers,” Jax stage whispers, and Maya slaps him hard on the shoulder.

Shaking her head at Jax, she continues, “Well, the stories didn’t scare me.”

Daisy leans forward. Listening. Really listening.

Maya shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t think mystery means danger. I think people stopped having the courage not to have answers.”

Something in Daisy’s face shifts, and she nods.

Taylor finishes her hot dog and picks up a second.

“For me?” she says. “I think people pretend certainty exists because uncertainty scares them.”

She gestures toward the dark around us. “But life’s weird. Timing’s weird. People survive impossible stuff every day. The world’s too big to be that certain.” Her voice stays matter-of-fact. Almost careless. But I know better. Embracing uncertainty is her life’s guiding principle.

Jax points dramatically at the stars. “I’m here because if aliens are real and nobody told me, I’d take that personally.”

Maya groans and Taylor throws a piece of her hot dog at him.

“I’m serious!” he says. “Also because…” His voice softens unexpectedly. “I don’t know.”

The fire pops, and he fiddles with his marshmallow skewer.

“Maybe the kid version of us before we grew up and got conditioned by the world is actually how we should be. Before we got all jaded.” He scratches awkwardly at the back of his neck, then looks around at us. “I want to do what I can to get back to that.”

“That’s really poetic, Jax,” Maya stares at him as if this is the first time she’s heard him admit that.

“So, why Bigfoot?” Daisy asks.

Everyone looks at me expectantly.

I pause, debating how deep to get here. “Bigfoot’s always been on my list, and there was a surge of sightings in Ohio that got us on that track.” I sigh, feeling the pressure of hopelessness weighing on my shoulders after a few weeks in Ohio resulted in nothing. “But it was too saturated with other crews. I’ve been seeing a rise in reports here, so here we are.”

“What was Ohio like?” Daisy questions.

From there, the conversation stays easy. Mostly teasing. Stories. Jax recounts the time Taylor almost flipped the 4Runner because she “followed intuition instead of road conditions.”

Daisy laughs so hard she almost drops her hot dog.

And every single time she does that—every time she laughs genuinely instead of performing it—I feel it low in my chest like something warm cracking open.

Which feels more like a problem every time it happens.