Chapter 26

While Nate, Griff, and Jake combed the neighborhood in a grid system they’d laid out, Hunter started in on a more systematic search of the house and yard. Jake had instructed him not to reject any possible hiding spot, no matter how implausible. “Kids can make themselves a lot smaller than you think.”

They were here, all of them, helping him. They’d shown up, really more like guardian angels than Hells Angels. No blame, no questions, just arms slung here and there across his shoulders, and Jake, a guy he barely knew, giving him that steady-eyed reassuring look, like Dude, I know you’re freaking out and I would be, too, but it’s gonna be okay.

It just felt so far from okay.

He finished the house and started in on the woods again, combing as thoroughly as he could, trying to see the maze of it as a grid like the one they’d laid out over the neighborhood. He peeked into every corner of the tree house, under the daybed, in all the cabinets, even the ones he knew were too small to hide a preteen girl.

He came out of the woods into the sunlight of the backyard and stood there, letting the sun’s brilliance blaze into his eyes, as if it might illuminate his next move.

He was listening with half his self for a call from inside, or the sound of Jake or Nate or Griff hailing him from the neighborhood, or, best of all, the music of Clara’s voice sifting through the ordinary forest sounds. But all he heard was trees moving in the breeze and the tree house creaking just slightly on its perch. The distant highway and a lawn being mowed. Children playing, but not his child.

If something had happened to her, he would never forgive himself. Trina, who loved Clara with a mother’s love, would never forgive him.

Except he knew that wasn’t true. Trina had held him blameless for the woman in the darkness. For Dee’s death.

That blanched, shocked face, the accusation—

With a tremendous effort he pulled himself back from that black hole.

Those things weren’t in your control. That woman’s death. Dee’s death. How much you love some—

She’d been about to tell him, You can’t control how much you love someone, when he’d cut her off. Furious. He’d been furious.

He wanted—

He wanted to believe her.

His chest ached, something rising and looming just behind the veil of numbness.

He couldn’t.

He pushed it down again and the veil held.

Find Clara.

There was just the toolshed left.

He blinked against the power of the sun and strode toward the shack. Threw the door open. In that transition from absolute blinding sun to pure black, the world vanished and he could see less than nothing, so the first thing he knew was the sniffles, the small, helpless sounds in the dark, and then, like something rising to the surface of memory, a face in the dark, pale, frightened. Eyes. For a moment he grappled with it and crossed over between worlds, the impulse to tear at the concrete between them almost overwhelming, his fingernails burning, dust rasping his lungs, because she needed his help and he would have done anything, anything, to protect her.

“Daddy!” said the white face with the big eyes, and it was, suddenly, Clara.

Clara, crying, her arms thrown around him.

“God, Clara! You scared me so bad.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

The words were all murky wet with tears, and she was sobbing against his chest.

And the numbness parted like a curtain and he felt the weight of the guilt he’d carried, the spiky outlines of fear that had lurked in all the dark corners of his mind, and he was—

He was crying, too. For the woman in the dream, in the wrecked building. For himself, lost in his own mind, and for Trina, for what she’d lost. For all of them. Because there were just so many damn ways it was possible to be in the dark, alone.

But most of all, for Dee, because he never had. Because he’d buried her deeper than lost memory, rather than feel what he was feeling now.

He clung to Clara and her sobs drowned out the quiet sounds of his grief and his tears got lost amids hers, and he comforted them both by stroking her hair and whispering “shhhh” into her ear, the way he had when she was a colicky infant.

It worked. On her, and on him. The grief, unleashed, dissipated. Felt manageable again. And she subsided to hiccups and sighs against him. Between the tortured little breaths, she informed him:

“Phoebe and I thought if I were missing you’d have to call Trina to help look for me and then they wouldn’t go, and if they didn’t go then Trina’s job would be gone and they would have come back for good.”

He heard the sharp intake of breath behind him, but he didn’t lift his head from his daughter’s hair, fragrant and soft.

“That was—foolish. And brave.”

“She’s the best,” Clara said on a sob. “She makes everything fun.”

Hunter squeezed his daughter tighter, and he thought of Lakeshore and the raft, the sparkle of sun on water and mischief in Trina’s eyes, the torment of her body slipping past his as they kidded and teased. Thought of the spit and how it felt to walk out on the most precarious, narrow bit of land with her hand in his, as close to the sea as you could get without a boat, and yet thoroughly anchored. Of building the tree house with her, and how she could make a box into a room, a hidey-hole into a hideaway, a space into a stage. A house into a home.

The darkness and grief and guilt began to lift, just a little. The way a morning mist starts to hint at the brightening sky above before it’s gone completely.

“She remembers for you. When you forget,” Clara said.

Startled, he drew back. “What do you mean?”

“When I forget my lunch. When I forget my homework. She helps me remember.”

You used literally those exact words.

Yeah, you were mad at her the first time, too. At least you’re consistent.

Do you want me to tell you what you did? Or what I think you wish you did?

She’d remembered for him, too. And even though it had been hard, she’d put the world back together for him.

“She knows the right things to say to make you feel better.”

Shh. Shh, Hunter. It’s okay.

That night, dreaming, he’d been in the dark, but he hadn’t been alone. He’d wandered through the maze of his own thoughts and followed her voice out again.

It wasn’t your fault, Hunter. You did the very best you could.

Trina had been incredibly brave, risking her heart for him twice over. Following him into the dark, holding his hand against the sheer, howling loneliness.

He felt a rush of emotion, gratitude, relief, love, sweeping through like sunlight streaming through the mist, like a sudden flood of light, a door opening into a black room, stones falling away from the dank closeness of something caved-in and ominous, washing away the darkness. And in the brief, brilliant illumination, he saw, in the strange familiar frame of memory, his fingers drawing back a strand of Trina’s hair, his thumb brushing over her lower lip. He heard his own voice, a slight echo like too much reverb, the sound in his own head.

He remembered. One moment. One sentence. But it was enough.

I know my feelings, and they’re not going to change.