Or maybe most of my soul is dead. He didn’t say that, though. It was the thing he wondered about in his most private self. The thing he was afraid of. Another part that had been stolen from him that he could never get back.
“Anyway,” she went on, after he’d stayed silent, “you’re right. Nature can be beautiful, but cruel. I know that too.”
He thought maybe she did. “You look for the car then? Is that why you come here? Is that why you do your job?” I would, he thought. If my family was out here somewhere—dead or alive—I’d look for them too.
She stopped and so did he, turning to her. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth was twisted in a weird shape. She looked off to the side and then back at him. “Mostly,” she said, very softly, a quick stop in the middle of the word that made it sound like she had something in her throat. He thought he saw tears in her eyes, and the speed of his heartbeat picked up. Don’t cry. Don’t look sad.
“I never really . . . I guess I never really admitted that to myself, but . . . yes. I’ve been looking for the wreck since I was old enough to come here on my own. The job is just . . . a way to make money at the same time so I can still eat.” She paused. “I’ve needed to move on, to figure out what to do with my life, but I’m . . . stuck.” She laughed softly, but it didn’t sound like a regular laugh. It sounded more sad than anything else.
He watched her pretty face and exhaled slowly. He could suddenly understand this woman in a small way and it made him feel . . . human. Like a man. “I know what it’s like to be lost,” he said. It was the thing that made him different from all the animals. The reason this place would never really be his home the way it was to them.
She met his eyes and it felt like sunlight filled the space between them. Invisible, but bright and warm and real. The whispers grew so they were almost . . . singing inside him. He’d never felt that before. He didn’t know what to think, but he liked it. He liked her.
Leaves crackled around them and a hawk spotted a mouse below him and called out his attack, dipping low and then streaking back into the sky. The hawk cried out again, different hawk words this time. Anger. His lunch had gotten away. “How old were you when you came to live here alone, Lucas?” she asked.
He stared at her, his instinct to ignore the question, lie maybe. Protect himself. He knew now that was because he had been taught to do that, using fear and lies. Did it matter if he answered her? Before he could think any more about it, he said, “Almost eight, I think.”
Her mouth fell open. “Almost eight?” She shook her head. “That’s not possible. Lucas, that’s . . . that’s illegal. It’s abandonment. Someone needs to answer for that.”
“It’s too late now. It won’t change anything.” I’m guilty too.
She looked like she was thinking about that and then shook her head. “I guess not, but it just seems . . . wrong not to do anything at all. Even if you’re not going to involve the law . . . you should . . .”
“What? What should I do? What would you do?”
She glanced at him, biting at her lip. Finally, she sighed. “Well, you could curse God, I guess. That’s usually my best solution. Do it really loudly, and with great outrage.” She shot him a quick smile that was also somehow sad.
He turned her words over in his head, figuring out the ones he didn’t know, his mind working quickly.
Great outrage. Rage. Anger. Big Anger. Very angry.
He squinted off into the place where the earth and the sky met. “Does it work?”
“Not generally. All it does is make me feel really small and useless.”
“An ant, cursing God from the summit of a blade of grass,” he quoted from memory, the words rolling off his tongue before he could stop them. He bit down, grimacing as he drew a small amount of blood.
She shot him a surprised smile that turned into a chuckle. “Basically.” She was quiet for a moment. “What will you do? Now that Driscoll is gone? I understand you used to trade with him?”
“Yes. But not much in the last few . . . years. I don’t need Driscoll to survive.” He paused for a minute. “I’ll miss the things he got for me, but I survived for winters . . . years, without him. I can do it again if I have to.”
She didn’t say anything and when he gave her a quick look, he saw that her brows were close together and she was biting at her lip again the way she seemed to do right before she began asking lots of questions all in a row.
“What happened to your parents?” he asked, trying to move her thoughts from him to anything else. “How did the wreck happen?”
Her chest went up and down as she took in a big breath. “I was young like you, too, when my whole world ended.” She smiled but it was quickly gone. “Or at least, that’s how it felt.” He again felt understanding. The way she’d said her whole world ended; that’s exactly what he thought had happened to him once, twice. The whole world had ended.
There’s a war.
“We were on our way back from dinner in Missoula. I fell asleep.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what happened. That’s one of the worst parts about it. I remember the crash, I think, very vaguely. I remember falling. I remember being wet and freezing. It was winter. But then the next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital. I’ve tried to piece it all together, but there are just . . . hazy flashes that I can’t put into context.”
I can’t put into context . . . context. Understanding? I can’t . . . can’t make fit? Come together. Yes. Like a puzzle. That’s what she meant. Context. He stored the word away. A new one among so many new ones in the last few days. “How were you found but not the car?”
“Lost hikers found me.”
“Out here?” He’d never seen anyone. He’d thought he’d heard people a few times. But that had meant danger to him, so he’d hidden until he was sure he was safe.
They’re killing the children.