Smoke blurred the edge of the mountaintops to the west. Mount Griffin rose from the mist, green on the north slope with a slow-burning char on the south. When she finally convinced crews to start thinning the pines, she would salvage a few trunks to mill into floorboards for her home. If she ever stayed still long enough to own a home. The grooves the beetles carved would feel better under bare feet than the slick linoleum in her one-bedroom apartment.
From the mountaintop, home felt distant, as if it might not be there when she came down. Time moved more slowly in the woods, sliding by like the lazy flow of pine sap. As a child, she used to imagine the outside world slipping away as she leapt from rock to rock through the ferny woods surrounding her home. The pine and beech trees had been her friends. They had guarded her, swallowed her secrets whole.
It was her turn to protect the forest.
Silence enveloped the summit, an island of stone floating in the low-hanging clouds. If only time would stop. Right here. Right now. The fires would stall, the beetles would stop their assault, and Cadie would remain at the top of the world, where she could hide from gravity.
She tried to quell the twisting in her gut that reminded her the fires presented an opportunity. If they proved to be a bigger threat than expected, and if Cadie’s research stopped an inferno, it would transform her career, her future. She did not want to want that fire, but a small voice inside called out to the flames. Come if you dare.
Cadie selected a potato-sized stone from the ledge and dusted it against her thigh. She pressed her tongue to the rock, leaving a wet oval to reveal its hidden mineral life. The dull grays and browns of New Hampshire granite burst into streaks of silver and layers of radiant amber at the touch of her saliva. A creamy, jagged vein glowed in the sunlight. The oval shrank as wind sucked the light from the rock until it reverted to its flat finish. The iridescence of veiled colors fizzed on her tongue. Her mouth watered.
She tucked the stone in the bottom of her backpack, cradling it in the center of the tambourine she carried to scare off bears. It’s just one stone, she told herself each time. When she built her own house someday, the rocks she’d collected would form the skirt around her hearth. Stolen pieces of every mountain she hiked, markers of time. The stack of stones—at least thirty by now—formed a cairn in her apartment. She often wondered if the dilapidated building could bear the weight, or if one day it would all come crashing down.
Her cell phone buzzed against the granite slab as a text came through.
It’s Daniela. They found him.
The minerals on her tongue turned to acid. She read and reread the words until they became a jumble of illegible letters, and the screen powered down. She hurled a rock off the ledge and held her breath until it struck the slope below, unleashing a torrent of cascading stone. This couldn’t be happening.
I’m home. I need you here, Daniela texted again. They’re questioning my dad.
Cadie imagined the text message in Daniela’s childhood voice and didn’t restrain the sob that burst out with decades of compressed guilt. More than twenty-five years had passed since she had spoken to Daniela Garcia. If she acknowledged Daniela, Cadie would no longer be able to pretend that long-ago summer had never happened. The fiction of Cadie’s childhood, rewritten and edited so she could sleep at night, would come undone. The single gunshot echoed in her mind.
Or she could stay on her mountaintop and turn off her phone. She could hide for a little longer, at least until the fires got too close. She put her head between her knees and stared down at the fissures in the slab. She scratched a rock on the surface of the ledge, leaving white letters next to her wood samples. Cadie was here. It felt childish, but she traced over the letters until they stood out in bold blocks. Cadie was here.
Horizontal lines in the granite recorded time, a hundred thousand years between lines of crystallized minerals. Climbing her mountains meant traveling through time, treading on scars of each millennia. Unknowable catastrophic events had bent the stone, folding time in on itself. Moments that were never meant to touch, fused together in geological history.
She imagined the panic in Daniela’s dark eyes. As much as Cadie wanted to hide in the woods, the ferocity of the bond Cadie once shared with Daniela swelled in her chest, shaming her for wanting to abandon her friend again, as she had done so many years ago.
Her thumbs felt thick and clumsy as she typed a response.
On my way to the cottage. Meet me at 9 tonight? The tacky layer of sap, which felt like part of her skin after four days of climbing trees, stuck to the screen as she typed. She added three rocks to a cairn someone else had built. An offering. A prayer. The chilled morning air telegraphed the metallic peal of mineral against mineral, broadcasting her location into the valley.
Daniela—like the forest—had been her ally, her friend, a keeper of her secrets. Cadie had played everything like a grand adventure back then. Until the game became real. Maybe she had always hoped the truth would rise one day. Or maybe she had convinced herself that the deeper she hid in the woods, the more gently she walked this Earth, the more likely their secret would stay where they left it—where they left him. Buried in the woods.
2
THAT SUMMER
The warped floorboards in the kitchen played like a piano under Cadie’s feet. If she maintained her rhythm and bounced from the long board in front of the sink to the short plank behind her father’s chair to the narrow strip in the middle of the room, she could coax the melody of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” out of the moaning, creaking wood.
Standing at the threshold between the kitchen and the hallway, Cadie mapped her route across the kitchen, seeking out the stiff, mute boards that promised silent passage to the door on the other side of the room. Thin light filtered through the muslin curtains at a familiar angle. Six thirty A.M.
Cadie often stole mornings while her parents slept to practice in case she ever needed to escape from something. What she would need to escape from, she did not know yet. Notice your surroundings. Know your escape route. Like Sherlock Holmes. With six leaps, she landed in front of the screen door and eased it open enough to squeeze her torso through. If she opened it one inch too far, the squeak would alert her parents.
Outside, a frothy mist hung over the lake. She tiptoed out to the end of the rickety pier and sat, letting her feet dip into the tepid water. At first Cadie didn’t notice the boat, half obscured by the fog. But as it crept closer, the small vessel broke through the gauzy curtain. A yellow rowboat, drifting alone with no captain, no passengers. She stood up to see inside. Maybe someone lay on the bottom. A lost child. Maybe a murderer ready to jump out and grab her. Pressing up on her toes, stretching as far as she dared over the water, she still couldn’t see inside.
The boat floated closer, closer, then passed by her pier on the barely noticeable current without pause.
The morning sun infused the mist with a creamy, molten glow. Pressure swelled inside Cadie’s rib cage. A longing rippled through her muscles and clung to her bones, pulling her toward the boat as if the universe needed her to act. If she hesitated, if she went inside to ask permission, it would be gone. Disappeared into the clouds, like a dream she would never remember. She peeled off her pajama top and shorts and looked back at the house. Her toes curled around the edge of the warped gray boards, clinging to the rules she always obeyed.