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Holding hands is babyish, but Spencer takes Cameron’s, and he doesn’t let go.
1
SILAS
Two weeks earlier
November 3, 2018
Feather River, California
Silas Matheson keeps his eyes trained on the ribbon of road before him, all his focus necessary to navigate the sharp mountain turns. No matter how raucous it gets in the back seat, he can’t swivel around to scold the boys, warranted as it may be. “Settle down,” he instructs for the fourth time, as, in the rearview mirror, he watches Cameron hurl an empty juice box at Spencer’s head.
“Ow! Da-ad!”
“Oh, he missed, and you know it.” They’ve been driving six hours already today, and if Silas is being honest, he’d like to throw something, too, if only to distract from the relentless doubt that’s ridden shotgun for every one of the past four-hundred-some miles. What kind of father whisks his kids away from everything they’ve ever known?
One who’s determined to keep his head above water with these two, who’ve never bickered so much in their short tenure on this planet until now. Is it this move that has his children grating against one anotherlike rocks in a tumbler in the back seat? The upheaval in their family life? Both?
“Apologize,” Silas tells Cameron, who mumbles something under his breath as Spencer makes a show of scooching away as far as the back seat of the Chevy will allow, pressing his body into the side panel of the door.
“I saidsorry,” Cameron says again, pouting on his own side of the bench seat.
Sorrywon’t cut it, though, will it? Spencer has heardsorryfar too often lately—from his mother upon her acceptance of a dream job in another country, from Silas himself as he logged far too many work hours of his own—for this apology to soften his seven-year-old resolve.
Children are malleable, Silas was told by well-meaning acquaintances when he and Miranda split years before, not long after their youngest’s birth.Children adapt, teachers and day-care providers assured, while Spencer and Cameron bounced between two households and two professional parents nearly the entirety of their lives. Has Silas finally pushed this theory to its breaking point, uprooting the three of them for a much-needed fresh start that, for Silas at least, might prove to be anything but? An uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty still gnaws at his determination as they cross the river they’ve been paralleling and the road finally straightens.
Spencer sits up taller to peer out his window. “What’s this place?” he asks as they pass a city-limits sign.
“Feather River.” The last place Silas had lived before being forced to grow up. It’s been fifteen years since he fled this town, the sun at his back instead of hitting his eyes through the windshield. He flips down the visor and forces renewed enthusiasm into his voice. “Which means we’ve only got thirty more minutes to go.”
“Until we get to the lodge?”
“Until we get to Marble Lake Lodge,” he confirms.
The imminent end of their journey should have the tension draining from Silas’s shoulders, but instead, the forested landscape rolling off the transparent arc of the windshield has the opposite effect. Because Feather River, cradled at five thousand feet within the rise of the California Sierra, hasn’t changed a bit. How can this be, when Silas himself has changed so exponentially, the boy he’d been when he lived here becoming a man nearly overnight?
Over five nights, to be exact. And five excruciating days.
He grips the steering wheel tighter. There’s the railroad trestle spanning the river, underneath which his friends had once fished. And the diner on the corner where he killed time over baskets of greasy fries. The highway takes them past the same laundromat, burger joint, and dilapidated tavern it always did, and the landmarks instantly conjure the faces of the people he knew here best: young, laughing, blissfully unaware of what life had in store. He shuffles through them, until he lands mercilessly on Jessica Howard at seventeen.Perpetuallyseventeen, to Silas. Her face eager and fresh and flawless.
He forces this thought back, trying to see this place with fresh eyes, but it’s useless. Even the trim color of the Feather River Frostee is the same shade of red it was the day Silas had driven in the opposite direction, leaving for good, or so he thought.
When he picked up the phone last month to hear his aunt Mary’s voice, rough as ever from all the Marlboros, he couldn’t have imagined their conversation would lead him back here.
“So I’ve been thinking,” she said, which, with Aunt Mary, translated toI’ve decided something.
Silas proceeded with caution. “And?”
“And I’ve earned myself some Arizona sunshine.”
“You’ve been saying that for years, Aunt Mary.” At least five, anyway, since Silas’s uncle Les had passed of a stroke, leaving far too much responsibility on the shoulders of his aging widow. Throughout the summers of Silas’s youth, culminating in the summer that overshadowedthem all, he had worked side by side with his aunt and uncle at Marble Lake Lodge as they made repairs to the buildings, cut new trails, and taken care of guests; made up cabins and stacked wood; whipped up endless batches of French toast and blueberry muffins in the cavernous kitchen. Even with all the hard work, some of which, Silas was embarrassed to admit now, he’d shirked as a teen, Marble Lake had been an idyllic haven of his youth, right up until it hadn’t been. “You really going to sell?”
“No, I’m going to gift.”
Silas didn’t follow.
“You and your boys could use a change of scenery, from how you tell it.”
