Chapter 30
chapter
thirty
DAISY
There’s no dramatic swell. None of the usual voiceover narration in my head. Just silence. The kind so complete it feels placed there. As if something invisible reached across the desert and pressed mute.
Beside me, Miles goes motionless. The muscles in his arm tense under my fingers. His breathing disappears.
Somewhere below us, the wash stretches silver-blue in the moonlight, winding between sandstone and brush like a scar carved into the earth.
I follow his gaze. And for one absurd, fleeting second, I think it’s…
There’s no fucking way. It’s gotta be a rock. A shadow. A tree. The trick your eyes play in unfamiliar dark.
But then it moves.
And every rational thought I’ve ever had evaporates.
The thing standing in the wash is big. Big enough to make the surrounding landscape feel scaled down. Seven feet tall, maybe more. Broad shoulders. Dark fur shifting to silver where moonlight catches. Long arms hanging loose at its sides. Calm radiating off it in waves.
The strangest part isn’t the size. It’s the presence. The feeling of standing near something deeply, profoundly alive. Something old enough to have stopped needing permission to exist.
Something aware. Not animal exactly, but definitely not human.
“Holy fuck,” I whisper.
The words vanish into night.
Miles doesn’t answer. I look at him, and something inside me breaks open. I have never seen anyone look like that. There are so many open emotions at once.
Grief. Love. Relief. Something inside him has spent years bracing for heartbreak, and suddenly, didn’t have to.
The radio crackles, startling me. Miles turns down the volume. It’s Jax.
Whispering. “Guys… you seeing this?”
Maya answers immediately. Her voice is smaller than I’ve ever heard it. I look toward where she’s camped out, spread out with monitors and screens up. “Yeah.”
Farther up the ridge, movement catches my eye.
Taylor and Owen are tiny against the ridge, illuminated by the moon as they lean against the 4Runner. Motionless, mouths agape, Taylor’s binoculars glued to her face.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the thing in the wash turn, and I whip my head back.
Its head lifts slowly.
At once, the silence shifts. As if we’ve crossed into someplace sacred, and nobody told us the rules.
It looks uphill toward us.
Toward all six of us scattered across stone and distance.
And some irrational, animal part of me knows.
It knows we’re here, and every tiny hair on my body rises.
Miles exhales once. Shaky. Broken. The sound wrecks me. It’s like a prayer. Like grief finally loosening its grip. But I keep my eyes fixed on the movement in the wash.
With its face lifted, moonlight catches the line of its face.
It’s not mean or angry, but not soft. It’s primitive.
Intelligence stripped of performance. An expression so unreadable it loops back around into human.
Eyes catching silvery gray. It’s ancient.
Like standing before something that has spent centuries watching people arrive loud, frightened, and temporary.
Taylor whispers, “Are we getting this?”
I glance toward the camera clipped to her rig. It’s recording light not on yet.
Her hand hovers over it, hesitating.
Jax’s drone hums somewhere overhead. Its recording light isn’t blinking either. It’s just picking up thermal signals now, waiting to switch to recording mode.
Miles’s camera hangs at his side. Powered and ready.
My camera and recorder are within easy reach in my backpack’s side pocket.
Every instinct of my former life lights up at once. My body is screaming at me. Record. Capture. Think of the headline. The episode. The thing people would kill for. The thing that changes everything.
My hand even twitches toward my phone in my back pocket. It’s like a reflex.
Then, the thing looks up again. Watching us.
A living thing standing quiet in moonlight. A thing that has somehow survived this long because people never knew for sure. And suddenly the impulse to record feels wrong.
Maya keys in. “Guys.”
I look towards her and Jax, standing a few football fields away, but visible in the light of Maya’s computer.
Jax’s voice cracks. “Holy shit.”
I see him inch closer to Maya in the light, Maya inching closer to him at the same time. They’re shoulder to shoulder, barely touching. He lifts his flight goggles, looking down at Maya, and she nods. Something in my chest squeezes.
Loud, chaotic, impulsive Jax. The internet gremlin and content machine. The drone’s light turns solid for maybe ten seconds, then it dips once before rising. Higher. Away. The red recording light never blinks.
Nobody says anything.
I look to Taylor next. Far above, I watch her lower binoculars. She freezes, then straightens her shoulders. Owen reaches over and grabs her phone from her hand, dropping it into the truck. He pulls the mounted camera down and unplugs it.
No explanation or resistance. Like he understands instinctively that proof and possession are cousins.
“I’m going dark,” Maya exhales shakily through static. I glance back towards her and her thermal camera light dies.
Silence rushes back.
Beside me, Miles hasn’t moved, still gazing into the wash.
His eyes are wet. Not quite crying, but close enough.
Slowly, carefully, he kneels. It’s like his body forgot how to stand under the weight of the moment. With one hand, his fingertips press against sandstone. With his other, he grabs mine. His head rests against my leg as I stand next to him. Steadying.
And I know. He isn’t seeing Bigfoot. Not really.
He’s seeing his mom, coming back from her hike, talking about what she thought she saw.
He’s seeing road trips. Sleeping bags. A version of himself that hoped hard enough to survive grief.
The family he built and kept safe. Who always rally around him. All of it here in the moonlight.
I look down at him, and our eyes lock. He’s wrecked, but at peace. Like a question inside him finally stopped screaming.
“I know,” I whisper. Because I do.
He nods once. Can’t speak.
The thing in the wash shifts again. Its attention moves over us one last time. From group to group. Patient and quiet.
It nods, then it turns. One glance over its shoulder. Then it’s gone, three long steps into silent shadows.
Simply swallowed by land that knew how to keep secrets long before people arrived.
Nobody speaks for several seconds. Maybe minutes.
The desert exhales around us and the wind returns.
The radio crackles.
“Did anyone else just have, like…” Jax sniffles. Actually sniffles. “…a life-changing experience?”
Taylor answers first. “Damn straight.”
Maya’s laugh echoes across the sandstone.
Wet around the edges.
Owen says nothing for so long I wonder if he passed out.
Then Taylor chimes in, “Owen says ‘yep.’”
Miles finally inhales.
A real breath.
His hand shakes as he keys up the radio.
“I don’t…” His voice breaks. The radio crackles in the silence. “I don’t think we tell anyone.”
He lets the line go quiet, and no one opens it up to argue or to agree. The answer feels obvious.
The truth belongs here.
To stone. To shadow. To silence.
Some things stop being true once turned into spectacle.
The walk to meet up with Jax and Maya feels unreal. Owen and Taylor plan to meet us at the Machine. The radios stay quiet.
The ridge glows pale under moonlight.
Miles keeps reaching for me absentmindedly.
My sleeve. My hand. The small of my back. Like he’s grounding himself. Checking that I’m still here.
As we walk the trail back to camp, stars spill violently across the sky. Cold air curls through sagebrush. Nobody hurries. Nobody needs to.
The Mystery Machine glows when it comes into view, yellow light spilling from the windows.
Home. Ridiculous, but right.
Once we’re inside, Jax grabs an entire bag of pretzels, curls up in a corner of the couch, and bursts into tears.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
Maya tosses him a blanket and sits next to him, laughing hard enough to nearly cry herself.
He wails through a mouthful of pretzels. “I just… I thought that if we ever actually found something, I'd be filming it. Or screaming. Or becoming internet-famous. But…” He wipes his face with the sleeve of his hoodie. “I just wanted to keep that moment. For us.”
That’s Jax. People think he's chaos, but somewhere beneath all the jokes and the endless stream of nonsense, Jax believes harder than any of us. In people. In moments. In memories. In being fully present no matter what.
And tonight, the one person who's spent years making sure nobody misses a moment chose not to press record. For the first time in his life, Jax wasn't worried about capturing the memory. He trusted himself to keep it. And maybe that's why he's crying into a bag of pretzels.
Jax smiles through tears, blanket around his shoulders, crumbs all over his shirt—every bit the weird, wonderful heart of this family. Maya puts an arm around him, and he lets his tears fall.
Miles stays near me, quiet in a way that feels full instead of distant, like his whole nervous system is still marinating in what we experienced. We give Maya and Jax space and sit on the steps of the RV, not ready to move on from what just happened.
Once the 4Runner pulls up, Taylor and Owen get out, but linger, not coming inside.
At first, I don’t think much of it. Taylor stands near the edge of camp, arms folded tight across her chest, staring out toward the ridge line like she’s trying to memorize it.
Wind slides down from the rock shelf, sharp and cold now that the adrenaline’s wearing off. She shivers once. Tiny. Barely visible. But Owen shrugs out of his jacket, steps beside her, and drapes it over her shoulders as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Taylor startles. It’s dark enough that I can’t see their faces, but silent enough that I can make out their conversation.
“I’m fine,” she says.
“You shake when you get cold.”
“I wasn’t cold.”
“Sure.” He steps back like he just offered her a piece of gum. Like none of this qualifies as intimacy.
Taylor’s still looking his way, her jaw dropped. Almost offended by how seen she was in that interaction—which, honestly, relatable. She grips the jacket closed anyway. Breathes deep. Finally, Owen looks out toward the dark.
“You don’t have to hold it together all the time.”
Something in Taylor’s posture shifts so subtly I almost miss it. Her chin dips.
“I’m fine,” she says.
“Mm-hmm.” Owen makes that annoying noise people make when they know you’re lying. He glances sideways at her. “Go sit down before you pass out.”
“Bossy.”
Owen scoffs quietly, a small smile tugging at his lips.
Then, quieter: “Come on, Tay.”
Taylor exhales hard through her nose. Protesting and petulant.
But she complies, turning to walk with Owen back toward the RV—toward us. She keeps the jacket on.
I turn back to Miles, feeling like I’m creeping on their moment.
My nerdy man sits there like he forgot what comes next, like he walked out of one life and into another.
I grab his hand, lead him inside, and have him sit in a desk chair while I grab drinks for everyone.
Owen helps me, grabbing a beer for himself and handing one to Miles.
No words. Just brother language. I sit down with a beer next to Miles, and everyone drinks in silence.
The RV settles around us slowly as everyone’s brains arrive back online, one piece at a time.
Outside, wind brushes softly against metal siding. The desert carries on. Keeping its secrets.
Jax has fully cocooned himself in a blanket now, still shell-shocked.
“I just want everyone to know,” he says thickly, “we’re bonded for life now. So, I think it only makes sense that we get matching tattoos.”
“Yes,” Taylor says.
“No,” Maya says at the same time.
“Absolutely not,” Owen mutters.
I laugh before I can stop myself. The sound slips out easier than it used to.
Miles glances over. A small, tired smile.
I look around. At the glass bottles clinking.
At Jax ascending to a new level of emotional vulnerability.
At Maya pretending she isn’t dying to collect everyone’s empty beer bottles and put them in the recycling.
At Taylor standing in borrowed warmth while Owen quietly makes sure she eats something, passing her pretzels one at a time.
I look at maps and radios and muddy boots piled by the door.
At this ridiculous, impossible family.
Found family stitched together under fluorescent light and exhaustion and impossible things.
I reach over and find Miles’s hand between us.
Across the RV, Owen clears his throat, breaking the silence. Everyone looks up and he takes a swig from his bottle. “So,” he says. Deadpan as ever. “That was fun.”
“What the hell do we do next?” Taylor says.
Owen shrugs, setting his drink down. “I might have an idea.”