Chapter Eight
Eight
I stared at myself in the little bathroom mirror, reaching up to give my cheeks a gentle pinch. The cold had all but drained the warmth from my skin, but there was also something about the light in Six Rivers that seemed to suck the color out of things.
I loosely ran my fingers through the length of my hair, giving my reflection one more glance. I hated that I was nervous. That I’d even felt the need to look in the mirror in the first place.
I’d stopped by the diner that afternoon to look up the directions to the address Micah sent and jotted them down before I left, not willing to risk losing the GPS mid-drive. It was less than four miles from town, but on these twisting, steep roads it was more than a fifteen-minute drive. I’d stared at that little red pin on the screen, thinking about the fact that I was about to drive to Micah’s house. The place he lived. I couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that this spot on the map, right here, was where he’d been all this time.
For so long, it seemed impossible to imagine that he, Johnny, or I could exist anywhere without one another. Like removing one of us from a specific time and space made the others vanish, somehow. But in the years since I last saw Micah, he had, in fact, gone on living. We both had.
I stood in Johnny’s driveway with his keys clutched in my hand for several minutes, staring at the 4Runner.
The old truck had a story, just like we did. It had belonged to the foreman at the logging outfit before Dad bought it, and when he left for Oregon, he gave Johnny a ten-minute driving lesson before he handed him the keys. Only a year later, I’d be sitting in the cab surrounded by shattered glass, blood pooling on the carpet and the flash of police lights reflecting on the wet street.
Within the decades of memories I had of this place, the 4Runner felt like a time capsule that concealed the life I’d lived in Six Rivers. Like it had been sitting here waiting to be opened at this moment. Byme.
I went over it again in my mind. The cabin, the darkroom, the diner—there was a pattern taking shape. It seemed like every time I fit myself into the spaces Johnny had been, I was plugging into an outlet. Like I was suddenly reanimated into a scene of his life. That made this feel like an experiment.
When I finally got up the nerve to open the door, it popped with a familiar sound that loosed a shaking breath from my lips. Smoke jumped in and I reached up for the handle, lifting myself onto the step below the driver’s side door. I lowered myself in, and the soft, ripped beige seat gave beneath my weight. When I looked up, my line of sight just barely made it over the steering wheel.
Within seconds, I could hear it—the sound of the engine roaring to life before I even had the keys in the ignition. The sticking sound of the gear shift and the echo of music—what sounded like an indie folk jam. The click of a seatbelt.
The smell of exhaust drifted through the air, and I closed my eyes, trying to chase down the vision. Carefully, I tried to let it unfold, sinking into the seat until the sound of the guitar came more sharply into focus. Soon, I wasn’t in my own world anymore. I was in Johnny’s.
I didn’t know how, but it was working. It was even clearer this time, more distinct than the slivers of moments that had found me in the cabin and the darkroom. Almost as if Johnny wanted me to see this.
Where are we going?
My eyes popped open, the sound of a voice making me jump, and the keys slipped from my fingers. But the voice wasn’t Johnny’s. It wasn’t a man’s at all.
I sat up straight, eyes shooting to the passenger seat, but only Smoke was there. Slowly, the remnants of the moment were bleeding away. So quickly that I couldn’t grab hold of them. Within seconds, the emptiness of the space around me returned and it was just me sitting in the cold truck. Alone.
I swallowed hard, fist clenching tighter around the keys before I finally started the engine and turned on the heat. I had to consider the possibility that I was the one creating these visions, these moments. If I was, there were a number of explanations, grief being the most plausible. But I’d lived my whole life with a supernatural connection to my brother and there was a part of me that believed, or wanted to believe, that all of this was him. And if I was right, I didn’t know what that meant. Was I was simply crossing into currents of his energy or—I hesitated before I let myself think it—was he trying to tell me something?
I stared at the windshield, carefully letting the thought settle in my mind. The question had been like a slowly building fire inside of me. Johnny wasn’t gone. Of that, I was sure. But whether he was capable of communicating with me from the other side of whatever this was, I had no idea.
The truck took a while to warm up, but a few minutes later, I was putting the gear in reverse. My hands gripped the leather-wrapped steering wheel, and before I let my foot off the brake, my eyes turned to the scar that wrapped around my forearm, down to my wrist. My own memory was hovering in the cab now. I’d been sitting in this same spot, my hands on the wheel, watching the shining red drip from my elbow. That was the first time I’d started to understand just how far I would go to protect Johnny. Just how fast I’d take the fall.
I leaned forward, reaching down to lift the floor cover beneath my feet. The bloodstain was still there.
Overlook Road climbed the ridge with sparse views of the twisting canyon below, and the farther from town I got, the more treacherous it became. I’d learned to drive on roads just like this one, which made the famed steep city hills of San Francisco easy to handle when many refused to drive them. You didn’t realize just how much this forest was trying to kill you until you got out. The skyscrapers and bridges I saw out my dorm window at Byron had felt safe compared to this wild, unruly place.
Smoke hung his head out of the passenger side window as I took the truck up the bumpy dirt track until the road came to a crude fork, and my headlights landed on a small wooden stake marked with the number eight. It had been driven into the ground on the left-hand side, and I turned, flicking on the brights. The cabin looked to be the only one on this vein of the road, and its lights were like amber orbs in the growing darkness. Thick mats of moss clung to the roof, where a few fallen twigs were scattered across the shingles. The trees were more spread out than the ones that encircled town, and the blaze of the sunset in the distance cast orange beams between the trunks as the sun descended toward the ridge.
I parked beside Micah’s truck, and Smoke was climbing over me before I’d even made it out myself. He jumped down, bounding up toward the front door, and it opened, flooding the small porch with light.
Micah stood inside, wearing a green half-zip sweater and jeans. When Smoke reached him, he jumped up, paws landing on his chest, and Micah gave him a rough scratch behind both ears before he pushed him back down. The smile on his face made the clock rewind ten years. Twelve. Fifteen. Until the man standing in that rectangle of light was the first boy who loved me. The first and only one I ever loved back.
Smoke disappeared inside the house, and Micah leaned into the doorframe, waiting. “It’s too late, James. No going back now,” he said, cracking another smile.
It wasn’t until then that I realized I wasn’t moving, one hand still on the car door like I might duck back inside. I rolled my eyes, trying to bury my own smile as I grabbed my bag and closed the door. I was a few minutes late, and he’d probably spent them convincing himself I wasn’t going to show. Another few seconds, and he might have been right.
His eyes moved over me as I made my way up to the porch. “Hey,” he said, the low timbre of his voice nearly lost beneath the sound of the wind in the trees.
“Hey,” I echoed.
He stepped back, gesturing for me to come inside, and as soon as I did, I could feel my heart coming up into my throat one agonizing centimeter at a time.
His place was…perfect. Beautiful in a rugged way that I couldn’t quite find a word for. A plush, deep-set sofa faced the stone fireplace, where a fire was crackling, and most of the furniture looked old. Antique. Mission-style wooden chairs were pushed up to the dining table, where an open-shelved farmhouse hutch reached almost to the ceiling. But the little things that colored in the corners of the room were full of character. A blanket thrown on the worn leather armchair. The southwestern woven rug. The clay pot on the kitchen counter. There was a record player turning on the cabinet in the living room, playing something acoustic and slow.
He closed the door behind me. “You find it okay?”
“Yeah.” My voice sounded strange.
I picked up one of the blush-colored stones that were arranged along one side of the fireplace mantle, turning it over in my hand.
“Petrified wood.” He answered my unspoken question, hands sliding into his pockets. “I run across it on the beach or along the rivers sometimes.”
I glanced down at the striped wool socks that covered his feet. This was the same Micah I’d known for most of the first half of my life. The same one who spent the better part of our junior and senior years crashing at our place. But something about the sight of those socks felt more intimate and vulnerable than all the mornings he walked around our house in his boxer shorts.
The look on his face made me think that he was struggling with that feeling, too. Like he was both relaxed and uncomfortable at the same time. That was us, I thought. Snapping into place so easily and then struggling to just be still there.
I set the stone back down.
“Can I get you something? A drink?”
“Sure,” I answered, letting the bag slide down my shoulder.
Micah went to the cabinet against the wall, pulling two glasses down before he filled them. The smell of whiskey slowly distilled in the air as I took a seat at the table.
“You want to talk about it?” he asked, keeping his back to me.
The sheer number of possible things he could be referring to almost made me laugh. There was a long list. “About what?”
“About whatever made you text me.”
He picked up the drinks, setting one in front of me before he pulled out the chair next to mine. He was only inches away, and I instinctively inhaled, catching his scent drifting between us. He still smelled the same, and I didn’t know how that was possible.
He raked his hair back carelessly, not bothering to mess with it when it fell back into his eyes. It took a moment for me to realize that he was still waiting for my answer.
I hadn’t figured out exactly how I wanted to do this. I hadn’t even let myself imagine how this first conversation might go. There were countless unfinished things we could discuss, and I wasn’t prepared for most of them.
“I want to talk about Johnny,” I said, finally.
“Okay.” Micah’s tone was careful. “What about him?”
“I want to know what was going on with him before he died.”
Micah’s eyes moved over me again, as if he was trying to read me. After a long moment, he picked up his glass and took a drink. “All right. But it’s probably all stuff you know.”
“I want to hear it from you.”
“Hear what, exactly?”
I let out a frustrated sigh. “Anything. Everything. I show up here, and it feels like he had this whole life he didn’t really tell me anything about, and I just…”
Micah cut me off. “This was his home, James. Of course he had a life.”
I gave him a look that bordered on exasperation. “I get that. I just— I’ve been back for barely forty-eight hours, and that’s all it’s taken to make me feel like my own brother was a stranger. It almost feels like he was…like he was hiding things.”
“That’s Johnny,” he said. “That’s what he did.”
“He didn’t used to hide things from me.”
This time, Micah said nothing. But the set of his mouth told me that he wanted to.
“What?” I prodded him.
He shrugged. “Maybe there were things he thought you didn’t want to know about.”
In an instant, a swift and familiar anger rose up in me. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Come on, James. You left Six Rivers the second you could and you never looked back.”
“Are you serious? You’re going to make it about me?” I gaped at him.
“I’m not the one who made it about you.” Micah’s tone took on the slightest edge. “You show up in town after all this time, pretending to give a shit about this project he was working on—”
“I do give a shit about it.”
“But that’s not why you’re here,” he said. “You tell me what you’re really doing in Six Rivers and I’ll tell you what you want to know about Johnny.”
We stared at each other, and I fought to push down that rising heat that ignited when he looked at me. I wasn’t about to tell him about the pain still throbbing in my chest or the voice I’d heard in the darkroom. I wasn’t going to tell him that I was convinced that the Johnny we knew wasn’t quite gone from this world or that he might actually be trying to communicate something to me. That was a bridge I didn’t want to cross. Not even with myself.
“I think there was something going on with him,” I breathed.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Like something was off. I’ve just had this feeling since he died that maybe there’s more to it than a hunting accident. Like maybe there’s something missing.”
Micah’s expression changed a little, his eyes softening.
“And for it to happen out there. ” I swallowed, careful not to touch too closely to the memory we’d both worked hard to bury. “I mean, that’s just a coincidence?”
Micah leaned back in the chair, saying nothing, and I didn’t know if it was because he didn’t want to revisit the night Griffin Walker died any more than I did, or if he’d thought the same thing.
Griffin had been our friend. Never as tightly pulled into the circle as me, Micah, and Johnny, but, living next door, he was always around. I would never have pegged him as a kid who would turn out to be remarkably talented, but the entire town revolved around him for the few years before he died. Even then, to us, he was still just Griffin.
Things didn’t really change until he was recruited by Stanford, and overnight, it was as if he suddenly believed everything everyone was saying about him. I’d had the same experience when I got my acceptance letter and scholarship to Byron. Like before that moment, it hadn’t been safe to really buy in to what other people said about me.
That’s also when things changed between us. I still don’t know why, but Griffin was the first person I told about the news from Byron. I didn’t know how to tell Johnny, or Micah for that matter, and I wasn’t sure I could really talk myself into going. Maybe the reason I told him was because Griffin was the only other person in town who was leaving. Or maybe it was because I wanted someone to give me permission to actually do it. But what I didn’t know was what would happen once there was a secret between us.
Stanford was only a short drive from Byron, and it wasn’t long before Griffin was talking about when we went away. When we went to the city. Weeks went by, and I still hadn’t told my brother. Not because I was afraid that he would stop me from going. The real reason I didn’t want to tell him was because I knew he would make the decision for me. He would pack my things himself. Drive me down to San Francisco, even if I didn’t want to go. And I was ashamed to admit that I was terrified to leave him behind.
By the time I realized that Griffin had feelings for me, it was too late. And that night in the gorge, when he’d tried to kiss me, he was drunk. I couldn’t tell him that I was with Micah, because no one knew. Not even Johnny. And I had no idea when I put my hand on his chest and pushed him away, what was going to happen next.
“I’m just trying to understand what exactly was going on before Johnny died,” I said.
Micah finally exhaled. “Honestly, things were going…really well. Once he got hired on to the CAS project, I felt like that was it for him. Like he’d finally found his way in the world. He really believed in what they were doing, and he was well suited for it. I could tell that he was dreading it being over.”
“And he seemed…normal?”
“Normal?” Micah almost laughed.
“I mean, was he himself?”
“Being himself wasn’t exactly…You know how he was, James.”
I did. And that was the whole problem. Johnny had always been a burning fuse, even when we were kids. I’d spent years feeling like it was my job to tamp it out, but eventually, I’d had to accept that there was no controlling him. No predicting him, either. It was that burning fuse that had resulted in me leaving.
The mistake I’d made was thinking that I knew the limits of what he was capable of. And I’d also been wrong about the lengths I’d go to protect him. In the end, Johnny wasn’t the only one with blood on his hands.
“I just want to know that he was okay,” I said.
“Sometimes he was. Sometimes he wasn’t.”
“Come on, Micah.”
“What do you want me to say? You want a detailed timeline of Johnny’s moods for the last twenty years? I can’t give you that. Was he always kind of a mess? Yeah, he was. But he’d made a life for himself. He was happy. And you would know that if you’d bothered to come back.”
As soon as he said the words, I could tell that he wanted to pull them back into his mouth. But it was too late. It had taken all of three minutes for us to fall back into the same gaping wound that had always been there.
“Look, I don’t want to fight with you, James.”
I swallowed past the pain in my throat. “I don’t want to fight, either.”
“That’s a first,” he muttered.
I shot him a look, my temper ready to flare again, but it fizzled out when I saw the small grin pulling at his mouth. He was teasing me now.
“How about we try this again.” His eyes lifted from his glass to meet mine straight on, but it looked like it took effort. “It’s good to see you, James. Really.”
I let my fingers tap against my glass, emotion curling in my throat. “Yeah. You too.”
The words were hard to say, but not because they weren’t true. It was good to see him, but it hurt, too.
He licked his lips, hesitating. “And I know I owe you an apology.”
“For?”
He leaned forward, coming closer, and one of his knees came between mine. I looked down at it as another song started on the record player. It was a stripped-down folk ballad that swelled softly in the air. That little bit of physical contact made me feel like a channel of electricity had opened in my veins.
“I should have been the one to call and tell you what happened,” he said.
The weight of the words bore down on me as he spoke them. It’s not what I had expected him to say. I may have been Johnny’s next of kin, but I knew that Micah was probably the first one they called when they found my brother. He’d been told before me. Maybe even hours before. But when the call finally came, it was a stranger’s voice on the other end.
“I should have told you myself. I should have gotten in the car and…” He trailed off.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” I whispered.
He nodded, and I could only assume that he knew what I meant. The only thing I could imagine being worse than feeling the kind of pain I did in that moment was the idea of touching Micah’s pain at the same time. I didn’t know if either of us would have survived that.
“We haven’t talked about a funeral or anything,” he said, changing the subject. Though it didn’t feel any easier than the last. “We didn’t arrange anything after Johnny died because I wasn’t sure what you wanted to do. But Sadie offered to host something over at the diner. A memorial.”
“That would be nice.” I took another long drink.
He nodded, as though he was thinking the same horrible thought I was. That a memorial made all of this feel so final. So real. It was like an acceptance of what couldn’t be true.
I cleared my throat. “Amelia Travis asked about the ashes, and I told her she could send them to you.”
Micah stayed silent.
“I’m leaving soon. Thought it would be easier,” I offered as explanation.
“I’ll take care of it.” His words were a little hollow now. He didn’t sound angry, exactly, but I had a feeling that I knew what he was thinking. That I was putting it on him. That I wasn’t willing to deal with things. And I wasn’t. I couldn’t.
Micah stood, and as soon as the press of his leg against mine was gone, I found myself aching for it. He went to the dying fire, stoking the flames before he put on another log.
“So, how’s it going with the project?” he asked.
“Fine, I guess. I’m making my way through the paperwork and reports, and I’m still missing some of the images.”
“What are you missing?”
“A few photographs of one of Johnny’s subjects. I’m sure they’re all there, but his stuff is kind of a mess, like you said. I’m just narrowing down which images go to which location and all of that. I might have found a few I can use, but I need to compare them to other negatives and figure out where they’re from.”
“I don’t know if I’d be any help, but let me know if you get stuck on something.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he answered.
I gave him a grateful smile, relaxing into the almost normal feeling between us. Even if it was fleeting.
“That reminds me.” I pushed the chair back from the table and went to the front door, where I’d left my bag. When I returned, he was back at the table, refilling our glasses.
I thumbed through the negatives and prints, pulling free the one I was looking for. Micah’s brow pinched when he saw it. It was the photograph of him I’d enlarged from the negatives I’d found at Johnny’s. Micah’s face was illuminated in shadowed angles, the edges of him gently blurred in the firelight.
“I found it in Johnny’s things. I thought you might want it.” I slid it across the table.
The muscle in his jaw ticked before he picked it up, face paling just a little. Maybe because of the strange sense I’d gotten when I saw it, too. Like I was looking through Johnny’s eyes.
“Do you remember it?” I asked.
He stared at it, thinking. “Maybe. We were probably just out at the fire pit behind your place having a couple of beers. There were a lot of nights like that.” For a moment, it looked like he was going to say something else but thought better of it.
“What?” I said.
Micah cleared his throat, shaking his head. “It’s nothing. He just had a way of seeing things, you know?”
I watched the light in his eyes shift with the tone of his voice. “Yeah.”
“Thank you.” He set the photo down on the end of the table, making a concerted effort not to look at it. The warmth and humor that had made him feel so familiar to me a moment ago was gone now. The thought that maybe the photo would graze the surface of something in him that still hurt too badly to be touched hadn’t crossed my mind, and now I wondered if it should have.
I studied him, watching the tendons in his neck flex beneath the collar of his sweater. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
I hesitated before I set a hand on his arm, and immediately his hand closed into a fist. “Tell me.”
“It’s just hard to think about.”
“What is?”
His face flushed a little. “Just, sometimes when I think about him, I can’t forget seeing him like that—when we found him.”
I froze.
Found.
That word was like an expanding pinprick, conjuring that image of the sun-spotted treetops from the forest floor. The one that had been branded into my mind. Immediately, that pain in my chest was back, an echo of the rib-splitting hole that had ripped through me. I reached up, pressing two fingertips there and trying to push the feeling down.
“What do you mean, we ?” I said.
Micah’s hand dropped from the table and he turned toward me. There was a question in his eyes.
“You were there when they found him?” I rasped.
Micah nodded, confused. “Yeah, I thought you knew.”
I leaned back in the chair. Amelia had never mentioned it.
He rubbed at his brow. “He’d been gone a couple of days, and I was worried when he didn’t come back. Amelia and I went to look for him.”
I shifted the stack of photos until I found the one I’d enlarged of Trentham Gorge. My gaze traced the shape of the rocks, following the white diagonal sediment lines until they disappeared into the lush green. The picture I had of those treetops in my mind flickered back to life. That window of light through the branches—what I imagined was the last thing Johnny saw as blood pooled on his chest. I could feel the heat of it on my own skin, beneath my shirt.
“James?” Micah’s voice was like a fading light.
I stared at the contact sheet, eyes on the thumbnails. That buzzing in the air was back—the same one I’d felt in the truck. At the cabin. Anywhere Johnny had left his trace. Is that what I’d find in Trentham Gorge, too?
I’d been looking for evidence that there was more to all of this. I’d come all this way, back to Six Rivers, because I needed to make sense of the fact that Johnny wasn’t gone. And now, I suddenly had the overwhelming need to see it for myself. To stand on that circle of earth where Johnny took his last breaths.
A bone-chilling, stomach-turning thought snaked through my mind. That if I could find the exact place he’d been, the exact spot they’d found him, maybe I’d be able to connect with the part of Johnny that had refused to leave. Maybe there, in the gorge, there was something to find.
“James?” Micah tried again, and this time his hand came down on my arm, his fingers lightly resting on my wrist, where my pulse was racing.
My eyes lifted from the table, finding him. “Micah, I need you to take me there.”