“Daddy?”
“He’s hurt,” Grant says.
Her voice kicks up an octave. “Daddy?”
“It’s gonna be okay,” Grant says, though he has no idea if there’s even a shred of truth to the statement.
“I want my daddy.”
“He can’t hear you right now, Paige.”
“Is he dead?”
That possibility hasn’t occurred to Grant until this moment.
“Touch him,” she cries. “Make him answer.”
Grant turns his attention to the front seat. His father is upside down, still buckled in, a string of blood dripping from the corner of his mouth onto the roof. The boy reaches out, touches his father’s shoulder.
“Dad?”
His father makes no response.
Grant strains to hear if he’s breathing, but the noise of the spinning tires and the hiss of the dying engine make it impossible to tell.
“Dad,” he whispers. “Wake up.”
“Is he alive?” Paige begs.
“I don’t know.”
She begins to cry.
Hysterical.
“It’s gonna be all right,” Grant says.
“No,” she screams.
Grant leans in closer. He will never forget the smell of blood.
“Dad,” he whispers. “It’s Grant.”
His father’s hands still clench around the steering wheel. “Please do something if ... if you’re okay. If you can hear me. Just make a sound.”
He will never recover from the silence.
“What’s happening, Grant?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is Daddy okay?”
The tears are coming. Grant tries to hold back the sob, but there’s no stopping it. He lies on the glass-covered roof and cries with his sister for a long time.
# # #
The engine has gone silent.
The last spinning wheel creaked to a halt.
Cold mountain air streams in through the busted windows.
Grant has unbuckled his sister and helped her out of the seat, and now they lie side-by-side on the roof, huddled together and shivering.
The air becomes redolent of wet evergreen trees. Rain is falling, pattering on the pine-needled floor of the forest and on the Impala’s undercarriage.
The headlight dims away, now just a feeble swath of light.
The boy has no concept of how long they’ve been upended on this mountainside.
“Can you check Dad again?” Paige asks.
“I can’t move my leg anymore.”
“Why?”
“It hurts a lot and it’s stiff.”
In the darkness, the boy finds his sister’s hand and holds it.
“Do you think Daddy’s dead?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Are we going to die?”
“Someone will find us.”
“But what if they don’t come?”
“Then I’ll crawl up the mountain and find someone myself.”
“But your leg is hurt.”
“I can do it if I have to.”
“What’s it called,” she says, “when you don’t have a mom or a dad?”
“Orphan.”
Grant braces against another push of fear-fueled emotion. So many questions springing up he feels like he’s drowning.
Where will they live?
Who will pay for their food?
Their clothes?
Will he have to get a job?
Who will make them go to bed?
Who will fix their meals?
Make them eat good food?
Who will make them go to school?
“Is that what we are now, Grant?” Paige asks. “Are we orphans?”
“No, we’re brother and sister, Paige.”
“What if—”
“No matter what happens, I’ll take care of you.”
“But you’re only seven.”
“So?”
“You don’t even know how to add.”
“But you do. And I can do the other stuff. We can help each other. Like how Mom and Dad did.”
Grant turns over in the dark, his face inches away from Paige’s. Her breath smells faintly of spearmint gum. It warms his face sweetly.
“Don’t be scared, Paige.”
“But I am.” Her voice breaks.
“I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Swear.”
“I swear to you, Paige. I’ll protect you.”
“Will we still live in our house?”
“Of course. Where else would we live? It’ll be just like it was only I’ll be taking care of you.”
She draws in a labored wheeze.
“It hurts when I breathe.”
“Then don’t breathe hard.”
Grant wants to call out to their father again, but he fears it might upset her.
“I’m cold, Grant.”
“Me too.”
“How long until someone finds us?”
“They’ll be here soon. Do you want to hear a story while we wait?”
“No.”
“Not even your favorite?”
“Which one?”
“The one about the crazy scientist in the castle on the hill.”
“It’s too scary.”
“You always say that. But this one’s different.”
Through the windshield, the beam of light has weakened such that it only offers a yellowed patch of illumination on the nearest tree.
“How is it different?”
“I can’t just tell you. It’ll ruin it.”
“Okay.” Paige moves in closer.
Outside, the headlight expires.
Pitch black inside the car now.
The rain is falling harder, and for a moment, Grant is paralyzed by the horror of it all.
“Come on,” Paige says.
She nudges him in the dark.
Grant begins, his voice unsteady: “Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Paige.”
“Just like me?”
“Just like you. And she had an older brother named Grant.”
“Just like you.”
He blinks through the tears reforming in his eyes.
Fights through the tremor in his voice.
Don’t cry.
The mantra for a lifetime.
“Yes, just like me.”
“Did they have parents?”
Everything inside the car is terribly still, but the woods around them have become alive in the silence. Rain pelts the carpet of leaves on the forest floor. Things snap in the darkness. The hoot of a lonesome owl goes unanswered.
The world outside is huge—so many things for a little boy to be afraid of.
“No. Paige and Grant lived in a beautiful house all by themselves, and they were very brave.”
THIRTY-ONE YEARS LATER
Chapter 1
“Where’d you go for lunch?” Sophie asked.
Grant shook his head as he typed Benjamin Seymour and Seattle into the Google query box.
“I’m not playing this game.”
“Come on. Don’t make me go through your receipts.”
“Will my participation in this conversation make it end sooner?”
“The Panda Express at Northgate?”
“Nope.”
“Subway?”
Grant frowned at his partner across the border fence that divided their desks into equal surface areas—two messy inboxes, stacks of files, blank narrative forms, expense reports, a shared, miniature artificial Christmas tree.
“Subway it was.” Sophie scribbled on a pad. She looked good today—a charcoal-colored pantsuit with a lavender blouse and a matching necklace, turquoise with silver fringing. She was of African and Native American descent. Sometimes, Grant thought he could see the Cherokee lineage in her dark almond eyes and hair so purely straight and black it shimmered like the blued steel of his service carry, an H&K P2000. They’d been working together since Benington had transferred to the North precinct two years ago.
“What are you writing down?” Grant asked.
“Keep in mind I haven’t adjusted for wherever you eat on the weekends, but so far this year, I have seventy-nine documented visits to Subway.”