Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
I tapped my phone to wake up the screen, checking to see if Micah had texted. I hadn’t seen or talked to him since he dropped me off at the house after the gorge, and I was beginning to worry that I wouldn’t.
Over the last forty-eight hours, I’d had the list of reasons I shouldn’t have slept with him scrolling through my mind on repeat, and he was probably doing the same. I didn’t know if it was this place or if it was me, but sitting out there in the firelight, the rain falling in the gorge, I’d been sixteen again. Seventeen. Eighteen. I’d been every version of myself that was in love with Micah Rhodes.
I traced the scar that curved up my wrist, remembering the way it had felt when Micah’s fingers had done the same thing. I had seen in his eyes how the memory played out the morning we woke up in the truck.
We were seventeen our first time. The house was empty and our secret was becoming harder to keep. I don’t know which of us first said out loud that we wouldn’t tell Johnny—not yet. But according to Micah, Johnny had known. I suppose I knew that, too.
Things had changed between all three of us, as if the closer we got to finishing school, the closer we came to nothing ever being the same. It didn’t take long for me to realize I was in love with Micah, but when it came down to it, I was afraid of any feeling of permanence. Any chance that I would be grafted into this forest like my mother, like so many other women who married loggers and had babies and erased themselves. I was even more worried about how Johnny might mess it all up. And in the end, he did.
Micah and I were lying tangled in my sheets when the landline rang, and a few seconds later, I was frantically pulling on my clothes, snatching Micah’s keys from his hand. We spotted the beams of the headlights cast across the road just outside of town, and I was already opening the door before Micah had stopped the car.
Johnny stood almost invisible against the trees, blood snaking down his neck in a sticky stream, but his eyes were strangely vacant, his movements limp under my touch. He was wasted.
The 4Runner’s windshield was busted, the passenger side scraped and one of the mirrors dangling from a single rubber cord. It looked like he’d sideswiped something, and when I looked back to see Micah climbing out of his truck, his eyes were pinned across the road, to the glow of light down in the ditch. Another car.
What scared me, even now, was how quickly I’d done it. How instantly I’d made the decision. One second I was standing on the side of the road, and the next I was climbing into the 4Runner and telling Micah to take Johnny home. Only an hour before, I’d been kissing Micah in the dark, giving my body to him for the very first time, but even that, I couldn’t have. Everything always came back to Johnny.
I hadn’t even blinked as I pulled up the sleeve of my shirt and dragged my arm across the broken glass. It was an impulse. A deep-rooted instinct in me, like I had no choice in the matter. It was up to me to protect my brother. To save him from everything, even himself. And the only thing that had given me pause, had made my trembling hand hesitate, was that look on Micah’s face. He stared at me through the shattered windshield, like it was a terrifying thing to watch, and I remember feeling like I was looking in a mirror. That Micah was that mirror. It was a moment that marked a change in him. After so long of everything revolving around Johnny and whether Johnny was okay, Micah suddenly became the only person in the world who seemed to be worried about me.
It didn’t really hit me until the fire truck arrived. Until they were pulling the man from the car in the ditch. I remember staring at the linoleum floor, barely feeling it as the doctor stitched up the cut on my arm, and Timothy Branson’s voice was a faraway sound in the room.
Micah and I met eyes over the paper-lined tray of sutures as Branson told me that the man driving the other car had been drinking. He was a logger from out of town, on his way home from The Penny. His legs were broken, but he would live, and according to Branson, we’d all been lucky that night. No one but me and Micah ever knew that Johnny was even there.
I pulled down the sleeve of my sweater, covering the scar. Then I turned my phone over to hide the screen, in an attempt to ignore it.
There was a reply from Josie waiting for me when I got back to Six Rivers, and she’d offered to meet me in Fort Bragg. In my mind, I was still trying to draw a line from the voice I’d heard out in the gorge to her. It had sounded almost like it was underwater. Drowned and buried, but it was there. I could still hear it, like a ghost I’d woken in the gorge. If Micah was right and the backpack belonged to Autumn, maybe there was no real reason to believe that Josie was there that day. But I didn’t know if I was ready to consider that Johnny had really been out there with that girl. Just thinking about where that possibility could lead stoked a heavy sense of dread in me.
I made the walk to town by myself, and when I got to Main Street, it wasn’t the sleepy downtown I’d seen in the days before. Cars were parked in every space available along the shops, engines running and a few stereos playing. There were people everywhere, meandering along the sidewalks and huddled up beneath the awnings, with the blue and white team colors painting everything from car windows to letterman jackets to ball caps. It was a scene I’d witnessed many times growing up in Six Rivers. The team was caravanning to a game.
A banner that read Go Cougars was strung up between the two light posts, and a man with a clipboard was standing in front of the market, caught up in conversation with several people who were gathered around.
Walking into the crowd was like stepping back in time. The picture of me in the diner had been taken on a day just like this one, when we’d come to see the team off before a game in Crescent City. It was the last one they played with Griffin. When they went to state a few weeks later, it was without him.
I stepped off the curb, finding an opening in the crowd toward the market. When I went inside, the smell of soil and floor cleaner stirred in the air with the scent of winter, making it still feel like I was in a time machine. I picked up one of the baskets stacked at the crowded entrance, eyes roaming the narrow aisles stockpiled with groceries and a limited number of household goods you couldn’t find anywhere else in town. George Harvey, the man who’d worked behind the counter since I was a kid, was even posted at the register.
A few teenagers were in line with sodas in hand, and one of the store’s patrons clapped them on the back as they passed with a good luck murmured. When one of the kids glanced back toward the door, I realized it was Ben, Sadie’s son. He didn’t notice me, giving the mana half-conscious but polite nod before he went out the door. As I watched him go, I couldn’t help but search for another trace of Johnny.
I filled my basket with a few things to hold me over for the next couple of days, and being ignored in the midst of the commotion felt good. The list of dreaded reunions I had to make was dwindling now, and ripping off that Band-Aid had been the hardest part of coming back. Now, I found myself counting down the days until I left, and the feelings that accompanied that idea were becoming more confusing. Mostly because every single one of them led back to Micah.
I wasn’t surprised that he was keeping his distance, but if I was going to get to the bottom of my questions about Autumn, I needed him. What happened at the gorge between us had made that more complicated.
When I made it to the register, George was waiting to scoop my half-dozen eggs from the basket. “Was wondering when you’d wanderin.”
“I was wondering if you’d remember me.” I smiled, a little embarrassed as I took out the rest of the items for him to ring up.
“Oh, I remember you, James Golden.”
His tone implied that the name brought with it a number of memories, and I wondered which they were. We’d been in the market almost every day after school, and half the time, Johnny was swiping something from the shelf. I didn’t know if George really didn’t know, or if at some point he’d just decided to pretend not to.
I eyed the small jar on the counter that Ben had dropped his change into, stiffening when I read the wrinkled laminated sign taped to its front: Griffin Walker Scholarship Fund.
There was an old faded photo of Griffin in his soccer uniform above the words, and several folded bills and coins had been stuffed inside.
I looked away, sending my eyes to the store window as George punched the register keys, totaling up the items by hand. The number of people outside on the street had already multiplied twice over.
“Game this weekend?” I asked.
“Yep. The boys are off to Whitehorn.”
“The whole town still comes out to see them off?”
“There’s always a decent showing. A lot of them still go along, too. Should be pretty dead around here this weekend.”
“Are you going?”
He huffed. “Of course! Last one of the season!”
“Glad I came in then.”
He finished packing up the groceries, propping the head of lettuce on top so that the tender leaves could stick out beneath my arm.
“You be sure to winterize that cabin, now. Those pipes won’t stand a chance when the freeze comes in a couple of days.” He waited for me to nod in answer before he ran my credit card and pushed the filled tote back to me with a smile. “You have a good one.”
“You too.”
The door to the street opened again as a woman came in and I caught it before it could close, recognizing a face farther up the sidewalk. Amelia Travis was dressed in blue and white, the hood of her team hoodie untucked from her U.S. Forest Service jacket. She stood on the curb with a steaming paper cup in hand, and after a few seconds of indecision, I made my way toward her.
I waited for the line of teenage boys in front of me to file out onto the street before I crossed the jammed parking spaces. When she spotted me, she cut her conversation short, coming to meet me.
“You going with them?” I asked, looking around us.
She lifted a walkie-talkie into the air. “You’re looking at this weekend’s caravan captain.”
I followed her gaze to the boys kneeing a soccer ball in the street, completely unaware that a car was trying to pass them. “Which one’s yours?”
She pointed at a kid with red shaggy hair. “That one there.”
The driver of the car gently tapped the horn until the boys moved and Amelia gave an exasperated sigh.
“I know this probably isn’t the time,” I said, wrapping my arms around the bulging tote. “But since you’ll be gone for the next few days…”
Amelia turned to me, giving me her full attention. “What is it?”
“I just wanted to know if you had any reason to think that Johnny wasn’t alone out at the gorge when he died?”
I managed to get all the words out in one go, but the question clearly caught her off guard. She tucked the walkie-talkie under her arm, taking a step toward me.
Her voice lowered to a discreet volume. “How do you mean?”
“I’m not really sure, I guess. I’ve just been going through everything for the CAS project, and I’m having a hard time accounting for what exactly he was doing out there.”
“From what I’ve gathered, Johnny made pretty regular trips to the gorge for the study.”
“He did. But he didn’t have his camera or his field notes. They’re all still at the house.”
She fell quiet, eyes focused on the pavement beneath our feet as she considered it. “Do you have reason to believe he wasn’t alone?” She turned the question back to me.
I bit the inside of my cheek. I wasn’t willing to tell a law enforcement official that I thought my thirty-seven-year-old brother might have had the habit of taking his eighteen-year-old protégé out to a remote location overnight to work with him.
“No,” I lied. “But if there’s any chance that someone saw what happened, or…”
Amelia didn’t quite look convinced. She was watching me more closely now, her eyes roaming over the details of my face.
A horn honked behind me and she sighed, giving someone a discreet wave. “Why don’t we sit down and chat when I get back? How’s that?”
I nodded, but that curiosity in her gaze made me uneasy.
“Thanks,” I said, a little unevenly. “I appreciate it.”
Amelia’s walkie-talkie beeped before a pulse of static came through and a man’s voice cut in and out. She frowned, staring at it.
“Sorry.” She gave me an apologetic look. “I think they’re rounding everyone up.”
I managed a smile. “No problem.”
“I’ll give you a call in a few days.”
I watched her go, clutching the tote to my chest before I took out my phone, checking the time. It was only a little after three p.m. , which meant that the school was just about to get out. I pulled up my text messages with Olivia, fingers fumbling over the words as I typed.
Hey, are you still at the school?
I hit send. It took only a few seconds for the three dots to appear ahead of Olivia’s reply.
Yep! Need something?
Do you mind if I come by?
Not at all. See you in a few.
I slid the phone back into my pocket, finding Amelia in the crowd again. I was suddenly unsure if I should have said anything at all or if I hadn’t really said enough. There was part of me that felt like I’d just walked into some kind of trap. Something about Amelia’s response felt as if she knew I was hiding something, but I wasn’t ready to tell her about the photograph of the backpack. Not yet.
My mind went back to the night I’d gone to her office, replaying that conversation in my mind. What was it she’d said? That she had a working theory ? Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember her actually saying that she believed Johnny’s death was an accident.