I take another step, away from the sound of the river. There’s a sliver of light through the trees, and as I move, it disappears. And then there’s the noise: like water hitting something else. I move through the trees, closer and closer, until I’m upon it. It’s a green tent, the front flap moving in the wind. I throw it open, my hands shaking, and peer inside, into the darkness.
I wait for someone to speak, for a hand to reach out and grab me, but there’s nothing. I crawl inside, feeling for anything left behind. And then I hear heavy footsteps outside. A light shines on the outside of the fabric. My shadow, illuminated on the far side.
“Caleb?” I call, but no one responds.
I crawl back out of the tent, because someone’s here, and I’m running for him, for the shadow, but the light is in my eyes, and I can’t see who’s there.
Then the shadow’s edges take shape: He’s older, heavier, harder. It’s the man we saw on our hike. It’s his father. I hold up my arm to block the light, and my steps slow. A deep voice says, “No one by that name here.”
“Please,” I say, walking all the way up to him. “I need to talk to Caleb.” I’m shaking, because I’ve done it. I traced him back to this man, from the pieces left behind. I grab onto the front of his jacket—here, solid, the image of a photograph, brought to life.
He steps back, pries my hands off his jacket, looks me over again—this crazed girl dripping wet, who has dragged herself from the river, like a memory.
He shakes his head, sadly.
“I know he’s alive,” I say.
“Sweetheart, you need to get out of here.” He looks over his shoulder, and I know he’s there somewhere. I know it.
“Caleb!” I call. “I made a mistake. Your mom followed me.”
The man freezes, and that’s when I know I’ve won. His grip tightens on my arm and he drags me farther back into the woods. But I don’t understand. The trees close around us, and there’s no one here but us.
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” he hisses. He has pulled me out of sight, and I think I should be afraid, but I’m not—I’m too close. I’m driven forward, to see it through.
“I do,” I say back. “I know exactly what I’ve done. That’s why I’m here. I’m telling him. To run.” I hiccup, and he lets go of my arm.
I step back, and he looks down at what’s in my hand. What I have grabbed from my pocket and held out in front of me, the only thing I have left. Caleb’s Swiss Army knife.
He frowns. “I’m not going to hurt you. You need to go back,” he says. “Now.”
“I can’t go back.” He looks down at me then, as if just finally understanding what I’ve done to reach them. He turns his back on me, and starts moving, but he doesn’t object when I follow him. We’re on a trail, leading to a clearing. In the clearing, the sound changes, to rain on a roof.
There’s a small circle of metal trailers, not attached to cars. They’re rentals, I see. The door to one creaks open, the light behind silhouetting a figure. It moves down the steps, to the darkened shadows of the trees. A hood over it, to protect from the rain.
Standing in the shadows is a shape. The shape becomes human. Becomes real.
He lifts his face, to both of us. “Dad,” he says.
And then I’m standing across from a ghost. Except I’m not sure whether the ghost is him or me, because he looks at me like he’s never seen me before. Like he has no idea who this person is before him.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
But all I can think is, I’ve done it. He is here, exactly as I believed, as I hoped.
“I found you.” That’s the only thing there is. The only thing to say. I found him. When no one else believed it, or no one else could do it, I was the one who fit together the clues he left behind, who traced the beginning and end, to here.
But I don’t step any closer.
We are standing across from each other, and I am suddenly afraid. I thought I knew him, but the pieces I’ve discovered do not line up to the person I thought I knew.
“How?” he asks. He also does not move to come closer. In fact, I’m scared he might turn and run at any moment. That I’m not understanding something, that this Caleb was never meant to be found. That he’s already gone, somehow.
“Your mom had me cleaning out your room. I figured it out. I know what happened in that room.”
He cuts his eyes to his father.
“We have to go,” his father says.
But Caleb doesn’t move. “We can’t yet. You know that.”
“I’m getting the tent, Caleb, and then we’re going.” And then his father disappears back into the night, and Caleb turns back to the trailer. I pocket the knife, trailing after him—always a few steps behind.
“Caleb,” I say, “whatever happened to Sean, it doesn’t have to be like this.”
Inside now, he turns to me, and I see the shadow of the boy I knew in his expression. “You know me,” he says. “You know I didn’t do that.”
I also thought he was dead. He let me believe that. He made me believe that.
“I thought I knew you. I don’t. You ran. You let us all think…”
He shakes his head, everything pouring back. “Sean was hurting me. He was choking me. I’d confronted him about these papers I found—”
“In the library,” I say. “I have them.”
“You have them,” he repeats. “I accused him of framing my father. Of putting him in jail for something he didn’t do. My dad swore he didn’t do it, that he was nowhere near that house that day. He thought it had to be my mother, but nobody believed him, because there was a witness. Only when I looked up the witness, you know what I found?”
“Yes,” I said. “I know.”
“They must’ve been having an affair. It must’ve been their plan together. She convinced Sean to lie. They both set my father up to take the fall.”
“Oh,” I say. I know some of this, because I’ve followed his footsteps. But I didn’t know he suspected his mother had been the one to put his life in danger. I’m starting to understand why he left, why he couldn’t stay.
“He was angry. He was so angry, Jessa. I thought he would kill me. My mom came upstairs, and she pushed him off. And I used that letter opener to take a swipe at him, and he stumbled back. I didn’t even hit him. He stumbled back. Near the window.” He takes a deep breath. I know what comes next. The window screen is gone. The concrete has been painted.
“But he was okay. I swear he was okay. Until he lunged for the letter opener in my hand, and she pushed him.”
His mother, then, coming to his aid. As a mother would.
“She was helping me, Jessa. It was because of me. He was so furious. I’d never seen him so mad. I don’t know what he would’ve done if he thought I was going to tell the police or something.”
The day comes back into focus. “I was there,” I say.
“All the evidence pointed to me, so she decided. We weren’t going to tell. We couldn’t do anything for him. She said, we’ll say he left. And it was just like that. We said he left.”
“You said she kicked him out.”
“You had showed up. You saw my face. What could I say? So I made something up, but my mom thinks you know. She thinks I told you.”
“Oh.” The reason for her keeping such close watch. All along, she thought I knew more than I let on. She didn’t know she was leading me right to it, just as I did for her.