“I went from five-four to five-nine. I put on twenty-five pounds when we were missing. Jeremy put on thirty and was almost six feet tall by the time we left. That happens to teenagers, but not when you’re starving. If we were hunting out there, where were the bones? Dad never found a single deer carcass, a dead rabbit, not even a snare or a spear or the remnants of a cooking fire.”
“People have hidden out in the woods. That guy in that park in Oregon—”
“Yeah, but no one was looking for him. As soon as they started looking, they found him in a day. God, I would kill to remember…” He ran a hand through his hair, exhaled hard. “ ‘We are saddened to report that all avenues of discovery have been exhausted in the search for Ralph Howell and Jeremy Cox. There will be no further searches of the area. We ask everyone to keep the Cox and the Howell families in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you.’ ”
It sounded like he was reading from a cue card.
“What was that?”
“On June thirtieth, the police announced they were ending the search to find us. Their tactful way of saying they thought we were already dead.”
He pulled a sheet of paper out from under the map, a photocopy of the news story.
“Your dad kept this?”
“He kept it all. He never stopped searching. But where the hell were we?”
She was hesitant to say it, but she thought he could handle it. He was already asking the questions.
“Searching behavior,” she said softly.
“What?”
“Jeremy told me about a thing called ‘searching behavior.’ When people are grieving someone they lost, they’ll go on long walks or long drives. Even when someone’s died, they’ll search because they feel like they have to do something. He said a lot of the time, it’s guilt.” She ran her hands over the whole of the map, the size of a kitchen table for four. “That’s a lot of searching.”
“A lot of searching, a lot of guilt?” he asked her.
She wanted to say yes, but this time, she managed to keep her mouth shut.
“He should’ve been furious with me. I went missing for six months. Not six hours. Six months. I talked back to Mom, and he slapped me and ripped up my sketchbook. I got back from being lost, and he didn’t even yell at me. All he said was ‘You’re home. It’s over. Let’s pretend it never happened. Don’t look back.’ And he never hit me again.”
For the first time since she came into the kitchen, Rafe met her eyes.
Then he looked past her, over her shoulder. She turned around in her chair.
“Did I miss a meeting?” Jeremy stood in the doorway, arms crossed in front of his bare chest. He had on hiking pants but nothing else. His rust-colored hair was slicked back with water.
She looked at Rafe, who was looking at Jeremy. Staring, in fact. Well, even she could see Jeremy had very, very nice arms. The shoulders weren’t bad either, even she had to admit that.
“You got up early,” Emilie said into the awkward silence.
“I had bizarre dreams,” Jeremy said.
“Me too,” she said.
Rafe looked up at them both, brow furrowed.
“You too?” Emilie asked him.
Rafe nodded. “We were all in a ship. The front, whatever it’s called, was carved with a dragon.”
Emilie sat up straighter, now more awake than if she’d had a gallon of iced coffee.
“We were sailing toward the edge of the world.”
Jeremy said, “And we were going to fall off.”
It was quiet a moment, then Rafe said, “We wanted to fall off.”
Silence filled the kitchen. Emilie cuddled Fritz to her chest for comfort. Jeremy put his hands on her shoulders. Rafe rested his chin on his fist. His blue eyes were open wide in confusion and wonder.
In a church whisper, Emilie said, “Mom was in my dream. She kissed me goodbye and told me she was proud of me.”
“Mum was in mine. She said, ‘Have fun, my love, but watch your back.’ ”
They both looked at Rafe.
“Dad was there,” he said so softly it was almost like he was confessing to a crime.
“What did he say?” Jeremy asked.
“He said he’d never forgive me if I left Mom.”
Emilie was afraid to ask, but one of them had to say it. “What are you going to do?”
Rafe looked down at the table without answering, then met Jeremy’s eyes again and said, “We don’t need the maps, do we?”
“I never actually said we did. All we need is you.”
