Agent Reed.
They stood there watching him like a silent jury.
“We’re here so you can take us to Jeremiah,” I said. “Don’t you think it’s about time, Adam? It’s time for him to come home. Tell us where he is.”
Adam tried to say something, but nothing came out of his mouth. He swallowed hard. He sucked his upper lip between his teeth and bit down. He blinked over and over, until he blinked out a single tear that ran down his red cheeks. His fingers clenched into fists.
“Please, Adam. Take us there.”
He staggered away from me through the drifts. He didn’t run; he knew there was nowhere to go. No one said a word. The Sloans were quiet. So was Agent Reed. No one made any attempt to stop him. I followed in his footsteps. We hiked through the clearing and back into the trees and down to the turnaround at the end of the dirt road. Adam went to his car. I saw him freeze outside the driver’s door. He squeezed his head with both hands, as if he could shut out the memories flooding through his mind. Then he looked back at me, and our eyes met, and he gave me an expression that must be like a drowning man when his lungs run out of air.
Adam got in his car. I got in mine. I knew where we were going.
The two of us headed down the dirt road in tandem back toward Witch Tree. Adam drove slowly, letting me trail behind him in the ruts his car made. We went around a sharp curve. Then another. And another. And then, ahead of us, the road straightened for half a mile. At the end of the straightaway was a swooping S curve with a sign warning drivers to slow down.
I heard the roar of the engine in front of me. Adam accelerated his cruiser like a jet unleashing its engines on the runway. His tires squealed, and the car fishtailed as he built up speed. Snow shot up in clouds behind him. I thought for a moment he was trying to escape, but he wasn’t. The reality of what he was doing dawned on me, and I lowered my window and shouted.
“No, no, no, don’t do it!”
He was too far away to hear me. I sped up, too, but I couldn’t catch him. Adam rocketed down the straightaway. His brake lights never flashed, not once. The bend of the S-curve loomed ahead of him, but he didn’t slow down or turn the wheel. The cruiser burst through the snow and took flight, shooting off the road, lifting off the ground and jolting to a lethal stop an instant later as it slammed into the trees beyond the curve. I heard the tortured squeal of metal and the shatter of glass.
I brought my own car to a stop, and I got out and ran. The shoulder of the road dipped down to the frozen creek ten feet below me. I half slid, half fell into the valley. Adam’s car was upside down among the trees, its tires still spinning. Steam hissed into the air. I pushed toward the wreck and squatted to look inside, but the front seat was empty. I peered through the skeletal branches and saw Adam crumpled on the ground not far away. He’d gone through the windshield like a bullet. When I reached him, I knew that he was already dead. His face was ribboned with blood. His head was snapped sideways like a broken doll. He was warm, but he was gone.
I listened to the loud, fast, in-and-out of my own breathing. My sweat was wet and cold, and my feet inside my boots were soaked. Around me, the forest continued its winter sleep, undisturbed. There was nothing but me and the trees and the snow and the creek, but I wasn’t alone. I had the strangest feeling of someone being with me, of someone who’d been waiting for me to arrive. I turned around in a slow circle. No one was there. But squeezed among the oaks and pines was a stand of birch trees, their bark flaking away like old paint, their black-and-white trunks rooted in the ground like the legs of elephants. One of the thick birches called to me, and I fought through the snow to get to it.
That was when I saw the sign.
A cross had been carved into the trunk.
Ten years ago, it must have been invisible among the summer foliage, just two slim gashes cut out of the bark. But it had grown along with the tree. As the trunk bulged and thickened, so did the cross, begging for someone to notice it and understand what it was.
My body felt enveloped by a warm glow even among the frigid cold. The earth at my feet felt sacred.
Someone was buried below me, and I knew who it was.
Chapter Forty-Six
Ten years after Jeremiah Sloan disappeared, we finally brought him home.
With the help of propane fires and insulated blankets, we melted the frost in the ground and dug carefully through the soft soil at the base of the birch tree. Three feet down, we found the skeleton of a child. Adam had buried Jeremiah with his arms folded across his chest. If it was possible for bones to look peaceful, then his body looked as if it had been at peace all this time.
His Sunday suit had long ago disintegrated, leaving behind only the leather and rusted buckle of his belt and the rubber remnants of the sneakers on his feet. He still wore his backpack. Parts of it — the zippers, the thick vinyl, the plastic-encased pockets — had survived the freezing, thawing, moisture, and bugs. His badminton racket was caked with dirt but otherwise intact. His dead cell phone was safely locked inside a zippered pocket and a boy-proof indestructible case. Agent Reed took it for analysis by the FBI team. If any photos could be retrieved from Jeremiah’s phone, I wanted his parents to have them.
We were at the scene for most of three days. The time was reverent for all of us. The Sloans were there, all three of them, when we brought their boy into the light again. We kept the media away, so that they could have a private moment with him. From where I was, I saw Adrian whisper something to his brother, and I was pretty sure he said Welcome back. Ellen and Dennis held hands and hugged each other fiercely. The love of that moment wouldn’t last, but for a little while anyway they cried the tears of a family that had been reunited.
On the last day, as Jeremiah was brought back to Everywhere, I thought about the first day when he disappeared. Strange as it sounds, my father had been right all along. He hadn’t believed in a stranger abduction. He’d had faith that the people here were basically good and that we would find an innocent explanation at the heart of the mystery. And we did.
Sadly, it came without a happy ending.
Three weeks later, Jeremiah finally had his funeral, and we all got to say goodbye. It seemed as if the whole state came. Thousands of people braved the cold for hours to pay their respects. The bend in the road where he’d waited for us to find him became a shrine, covered over with flowers freezing into brittle china. His face and smile no longer haunted us from missing-person photos the way they had for years. He had a permanent home.
Before the public service, the Sloans held a small memorial of their own at their church. They wanted to say thank you to the town and to the police for never giving up hope. The minister spoke. Ellen, Dennis, and Adrian spoke. And then they went from person to person to shake every hand. We all cried, but the tears were cathartic, letting go of ten years of pain.
When Ellen came to me, she slipped something into my hand. I looked at my palm and saw a smooth, flat stone, the kind of stone you’d place among the rocks of a cairn to honor the dead.
“I kept this stone in my pocket every day for the past ten years,” Ellen whispered to me. “It came from Jeremiah’s room. I swore I would never let go of it until we found him. And now we have, thanks to you. I want you to keep it.”
I tried to say something, but I had no words.
Ellen kissed my cheek, and she moved on.
It was a day of closure for all of us. Lucas was there, apologizing to the Sloans for what his grandfather had done. Dennis Sloan wrapped him up in a bear hug and told him that God hadn’t wanted Paul Nadler to be alone when he died, and that was why he’d brought Jeremiah to him.