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“But you heard her scream?” Santos prompts.
Meg nods, then remembers to add the audible “Yes.”
“How long after you scared her was that?”
Meg thinks. Remembers Silas’s arms around her. Remembers the feel of his mouth on hers. She hopes her face hasn’t heated. “Five minutes? No more than ten. And we went in search of her, but we couldn’t tell where the noise had come from. It was dark, and by then ...” Bythen it had all unraveled. “We knew we needed help, and we called you guys.”
Outside the room, she can hear the search teams getting restless, waiting for the debriefing to start. Before the interview can end, she asks, “Was any DNA evidence recovered?”
The prosecutor shakes her head in the negative. “No soft tissue remains intact, and while we can positively identify Ms.Howard based on her skeletal matter and dental records, any incriminating evidence, like fingerprints, blood, or bruising is of course long lost.”
“We wished so badly that we’d known where she was,” Meg says.
Walters studies her. “We?”
“Silas and me,” she clarifies.
“Silas and you ...” he repeats, and Meg waits, but that’s it. That’s his point. “You sure it was always ‘we’? Not ‘he’?”
She’s not sure what he means.
“Silas was with you the whole time? Never left? Never acted on his own, or with Danny?”
She returns the sheriff’s gaze and finally sets her hands, folded calmly, in her lap. This question is easy.“Yes,”she tells him. She’s sure it was alwayswe.
33
MEG
Three days post–Matheson search
November 24, 2018
4:30 p.m.
Feather River
Jessica’s cause of death is officially ruled first-degree manslaughter. Danny is also charged with intent to impede a search-and-rescue operation and the endangerment of minors. It’s the leading story in the local paper, and the reporter has done a very thorough job of linking the longtime mystery and horror of the Howard search to the fervor of excitement and celebration currently attached to the Matheson search. Even though Meg now knows how the story ends—and, more importantly, how it began—it’s startling to see it laid bare in black-and-white print across her kitchen table after so many years.
Through a series of circumstances both coincidental and calculated,the article states,the search efforts for Cameron Matheson essentially led authorities to the location of the remains of Jessica Howard, who had been missing since 2003.The story quotes Sheriff Walters, who expresses gratitude for the Matheson boys’ safe return before adding, “All of us atFeather River Sheriff’s Department are saddened and dismayed at the evidence that has come to light in the Jessica Howard missing-persons case, which is now an official criminal investigation. Our thoughts and sympathies go out to the Howard family, and they can be assured this department will prosecute the accused to the full extent of the law.”
It’s something,Meg supposes.It’s a small shred of the atonement she’s so long sought, arising from the boys’ ordeal. But it’s not enough. The article focuses on the sensational, detailing how Jessica Howard died of a fracture of her C2 vertebra as the result of a fall, only to remain hidden by the dense underbrush for fifteen years. It’s not until Meg reaches the end of the story and sets the paper down that she realizes what’s missing: the short window of time from when Jessica first fled to the time of her death. The reporter doesn’t speculate on what led Jessica away from the trail to the cliff by the mines; Walters didn’t see fit to make this detail from the official report fodder for the media, his act of kindness to Meg and Silas.
Teresa Howard, too, has shown kindness beyond what they deserve, requesting that only Danny be listed as a defendant in her daughter’s criminal and civil cases.
“Why?” Meg felt compelled to ask her, standing under the fluorescent lighting of the sheriff’s-department hallway.
Teresa Howard gripped Meg’s hand in both of her own. “I need justice for Jessica,” she told her candidly, watery brown eyes holding Meg’s with earnest appeal. “But enough lives have been all twisted up by her death already, haven’t they?” She assessed Meg a moment longer. “And, my girl? You’ve done so much, for so long. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I imagine you’ve done your time.”
Meg is grateful to be omitted from the article and from Teresa’s process of closure, but she still finds herself half wishing the reporter could have pinpointed what still eludes her—where her guilt leaves off and Danny’s responsibility for Jessica’s death begins. She closes her eyes, sinking inward on the downfall—her back is hitting the rough bark of thetree, the stone is arcing through the air—and rising on its redemption—Cameron is drawing breath, Spencer is smiling. Down. Up. Fall. Rise. Will she ever feel balanced, or will she live in this lurch for the rest of her life?
She knows one thing for certain: she has outgrown the careful monotony of her existence here in Feather River. She can’t go back to sitting at her same desk job next week, and the week after that, and with sudden certainty, she knows she wants the victim-advocacy job Walters has put her forth for, if it’s still on offer. Her unique perspective on the Matheson search, privy as she is to Silas’s struggle, gives her confidence she’d be good at it, but there’s also something about facing her past that lends a sense of propulsion, ironic as it may be.
Silas is still a moving target, even in her memory. In her mind’s eye she sees him standing before her for the first time, carrying her through a conversation so effortlessly it leaves her breathless. He’s lying beside her on the bed in his room, his arm outstretched, tutoring her on the cosmos, narrowing their scope to include only her. He’s pointing out Cassiopeia, giving Meg a tour of the nuances of her own psyche. He’s looking at her in a way she knows—she’s always known—he’s never looked at anyone else ... across a pond, in the woods amid darkness, under the rotors of the helo, braced against the wind. He’s kissing her in a way that makes her wish for so much more. In a way that makes her not care, and do the wrong thing, and then he’s gone, and she’s left to remember.
Danny once told her that bracing for a punch to the gut made it hurt worse: this is true. She replays the shock of hearing of Silas’s departure secondhand, so many years ago, then the startle of his return. She sees his earnest frown as he imparts his apology in the silence of the com van.
If it matters, I’m sorry I left.
