“Hello?” she said as she caught up to him.
“Hey,” he said and kept walking, but he slowed down a beat, which she appreciated.
“I’m not with the show.” Her breath was short and fast, but she pasted on a smile and pretended she wasn’t about to pass out from overstimulation. “My name’s Emilie. You’re Jeremy Cox, right?”
“Usually,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Can I talk to you for a second? I won’t bring up Ralph Howell, swear.”
He glanced at her, the ghost of a smile on his lips. His eyes were alive now, not glazed over like they’d seemed during the interview.
Jeremy shrugged. “Thanks. He’s a private person. I ask people to leave him alone. They just can’t.”
Nodding, she said, “Right, right. Stevie and Lindsey all over again.”
He looked at her. “Who?”
She’d jogged in front of him and then stopped, which forced him to stop. She unzipped her hoodie to reveal her T-shirt underneath—a vintage Fleetwood Mac concert shirt, the one with the penguins and the baseball sleeves.
“Stevie Nicks. Lindsey Buckingham. Everybody wants to get the band back together.”
“Nice shirt,” he said. He had hazel eyes, like a summer forest—evergreen trees, rich earth, golden sunlight—and they lit up when he smiled or even almost smiled. She had a feeling there was a very different Jeremy Cox underneath the stone-faced TV persona.
“Thanks. Stevie Nicks is my lady and savior.”
His eyebrows slightly lifted. “She’s a little before your time, isn’t she?”
“Stevie Nicks transcends space and time,” she said. “Was that weird? I talk too much when I’m nervous. Or just in general. Can you say something weird so I’ll feel less awkward?”
“I’ve had impure thoughts about Ann Wilson,” he offered. She snorted a laugh. She’d been right. The true Jeremy Cox had peeked out from behind the façade, and she already liked the guy.
“Ann Wilson from Heart? No, that’s not weird. Awesome, but not weird.”
“I tried,” he said, and though he sounded apologetic, she could tell he was trying not to laugh at her.
“Anyway, thanks for letting me talk to you. I promise I won’t take up much of your time, Mr. Cox.”
“Call me Jeremy. You said you’re Emilie?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I’m down from Ohio. We used to be neighbors. I mean Ohio and West Virginia, not, like, you and me personally.”
“Are you going to tell me who’s missing, or do you want me to guess?” The question was abrupt, but she didn’t mind. She wanted to get this over with too.
“My half sister. Kidnapped.”
“Recently?”
“Twenty years ago. If it means anything to you, she was from West Virginia too.”
Clearly, it did mean something to him. “Anything for a fellow Mountaineer. Let’s find somewhere to talk.”
They decided to walk and talk along the trail that led to the other Forest Giants. It was an easy trail, and she was finally able to catch her breath.
“You ever been here before?” she asked Jeremy.
“Never,” he said. “Bit small for people to get lost in. You can hear the highway.”
Had he been in search-and-rescue so long that he judged forests not by their beauty but by how easy or hard it was to get lost in them?
“I almost came here this summer,” she said, pausing to study Little Elena, the daughter of the giant troll family. The figure sat on the ground, playing with a large stone like a toy race car. “Mom and I had this thing we did. Whenever someone died, we’d go into the woods. The first time, this sweet outdoor cat I’d been feeding got hit by a car. We buried him in the backyard, but I couldn’t stand to go back inside the house and act like everything was normal, you know? So Mom took me to a state park, and we walked. We walked until we were too tired to feel sad.” She started walking again, Jeremy right at her side. “Mom died in June. She’d wanted to see the giants, so I thought about coming here, but I couldn’t. Guess I’m doing it now.”
“It’s called ‘searching behavior,’ ” he said. “People who lose someone will find themselves walking for miles or driving for hours…Lots of theories on why. I think it’s guilt. Misplaced usually. We think we should have been able to stop it, but we can’t. Even after they’re gone, your body keeps trying to do something to help even though you can’t.”
His eyes scanned the woods around them as if searching for someone missing. Whoever they were, he didn’t find them and set off walking again. After a few minutes, they reached the last forest giant, Mama Loumari, who leaned back against a tree, her hand resting on her pregnant belly.
“So, tell me about your sister,” he said. “You said she was kidnapped twenty years ago? How old were you?”
“I was three when it happened. But I just learned about it. Technically she’s missing, presumed dead. Never found the body. You need to write this down?” She unzipped her backpack and removed the file she’d brought.
“No,” he said. “How do they know she’s dead if they’ve never found a body?”
“The police say she is. Legally she is. And her kidnapper’s body was found two days later, and my sister never came home, so…”
“How did the kidnapper die? Any chance she killed him?”
“It’s pretty gross. They assume he slipped and fell down a hill while fleeing the scene.”
“How is that gross?”
