Leaving Blythe River: A Novel (9 page)

Ethan slammed the door and went back to bed.

Twenty sleepless minutes later he got up, left Rufus closed into the bedroom, and found the big flashlight in the pantry. He let himself out into the cold night, searching a grid in the A-frame’s front yard.

A minute or two into his search he realized he didn’t have bear spray, and almost ran back inside. But just then the beam of his flashlight landed on the lollipop, its red wrapper bright and obvious against a thin dusting of snow.

He scooped it up and carried it back to his room, where he hid it in a balled-up pair of socks in his own dresser drawer.

He wished he could tell Glen about it.

He still never got to sleep.

Chapter Nine: Search

The day after his father disappeared

It wasn’t until Ethan was standing in front of Sam’s whitewashed board gate, wondering if it was too early to yell out to his neighbor, that he realized the weather felt strangely warm.

That nasty mule, Rebar, caught sight of Ethan and his dog from the far corral and laid his ears back. Ethan grabbed his dog’s collar. Just in case.

Right around the time Ethan was thinking he should wake Sam up if necessary, that his own situation was dire enough to warrant it, he saw the older man emerge from the tumbledown barn.

Ethan waved desperately, windmilling with both arms.

A smile broke onto old Sam’s face, and he approached the gate.

“Ethan,” he said, as though this were merely a pleasant visit. Then, when he got close enough to see Ethan’s face, “Uh-oh. You look pretty upset. Everything okay?”

“My father went out for a run yesterday morning and he’s still not back.”

“Damn. That’s not good, is it? You call anybody?”

“I tried to call Ranger Dave. But I only got a recording.”

“Where does your dad run?”

“He goes up into the mountains. Into the Blythe River Wilderness.”

“How far?”

“Farther than you’d think. He does twenty miles sometimes. Sometimes even more.”

“Damn. He training for a marathon or something?”

“Not exactly. He just does his own personal marathons as often as he can. The older he gets the harder he pushes.”

“That’s pretty extreme. Running on those steep mountain passes in the snow?”

“Well, that’s my dad for you.”

Sam shook his head and appeared to lose himself in thought for a moment.

“You sure he’s up there, though? You sure he didn’t go somewhere else
after
the run?”

“I can’t really be positive about much of anything,” Ethan said, feeling the panic buzz again. Feeling his utter lack of sleep. “But his truck is sitting right by the side of the house. Last time he tried to go into town it wouldn’t start. He was supposed to call for a tow into the repair shop in town when he got back from his run. So he couldn’t have just gone off to do errands or something. I really think something might’ve happened to him out there.”

“Yeah. That’s a worry,” Sam said, scratching one cheek through his rough, untrimmed beard. “Tell you what. You go back home. In case he calls or shows up. I’ll go get the rangers on this.”

“It’s only seven, though,” Ethan said. He glanced at his cheap plastic watch. It always hurt his stomach to look at that watch. He’d bought it quietly out of his allowance after the good one was stolen. His subconscious mind had never stopped associating one watch with the other. “Will their office even be open?”

“No, but you leave this to me. Dave’s an early riser. I know where he goes for coffee and breakfast in town.”

Then Sam turned and walked away, disappearing into the house, and Ethan didn’t know why. And he didn’t know if he was supposed to wait there at the gate. He stood frozen, wishing somebody would give him better directions. Or that he could be the kind of person who handles things correctly on his own. In moments of panic, frozen always seemed to be Ethan’s go-to status.

A moment later Sam reappeared, a ring of keys jingling in his hand.

“Well, go,” he called to Ethan as he headed for his battered pickup truck. It was one of those trucks with the huge, knobby tires, like tractor tires, and a suspension so high above the ground that Ethan would practically have needed a stepladder to get in. “I’ll take care of getting a search going.”

“Thanks!” Ethan called, feeling an easing in his belly. A moment of warmth, like the reaction to the word “help” on that awful night. Sam was going to help. Ethan was not in this moment alone.

He walked back up the steep road with Rufus, panting with his exertion. He actually felt a few beads of sweat break out on his forehead with the effort. Which was weird. It must have been nearly sixty already.

His neighbor’s huge cat tried to follow, but Ethan gave his dog permission to chase the cat away. He had enough problems without another run-in with Jone.

Halfway back to the A-frame, the feeling of inner warmth abandoned him. Partly because he realized he’d gone out without bear spray. But there was more. Sure, he had Sam to contact the rangers for him. To help launch a search party. But his father was lost. And the fact that somebody was about to search for him didn’t alleviate all the fear. In some ways it made it worse. Something could have happened to Noah out there. Now Ethan was in danger of finding out what it was.

When he got home, Ethan went through his father’s closet and took a quick inventory of his shoes. His father had brought five pairs with him to Blythe River. Which for a clotheshorse like Noah was quite a sacrifice.

The only ones missing were the trail runners.

Ethan called his mother in New York, where it was later. Still, even if he had been about to wake her up with the call, this felt plenty serious enough.

“Hi, honey,” she said when she picked up the phone. She’d obviously seen Ethan come up on the caller ID. “Early out there. Why not sleep in since it’s summer vacation? Everything okay?”

“No,” he said flatly.

“What’s up, Ethan?”

“Dad went out for a run yesterday morning and he’s still not back.”

Long silence.

“Did you call somebody?”

“My neighbor down the road is off finding the ranger. They’re going to get a search going, I guess.”

Another silence.

“Are you freaking out, Ethan?”

“Not exactly.”

“Good. Good boy. Because if you were all alone out there and freaking out, I’m not sure what I’d do. I’d be pretty desperate, being so far from you and all. I’m really glad you’re holding it together.”

“I did want to ask you a question, though. My neighbor asked if maybe he might’ve finished his run and then gone somewhere. You know. Maybe gone into town or something. I said he would’ve called me if he was going to be out all night.”

Another long silence, which Ethan hoped his mother would fill. She didn’t.

“He would. Right?”

“I would think so. Yeah. Yeah! Of course he would. He’s not
that
bad.” A brief pause that felt weighted to Ethan. “Then again, he does surprise you sometimes. You know. In the badness department.”

“So you’re not sure?”

“I don’t know how you can ever be a hundred percent sure about things like that. Things like . . . what people will do.”

Ethan pulled a deep breath. Brought out the big guns. The important information.

“You know that secondhand truck he bought? Well, the starter went out, or the battery died or something. So it’s stuck right here beside the house. So how would he have gotten into town? And the only shoes that are missing are his trail runners. So if he went into town some other way—and I have no idea how he could have done that—it means he didn’t even come home to change into better clothes. Into nice shoes.”

“Oh, God,” she said.

She didn’t go on to say more. But she didn’t really need to. Now she knew, too. She knew that Noah really was out there in the wilderness alone. And that Ethan was alone in the foothills. Waiting.

Ranger Dave showed up a few minutes later. How many minutes, Ethan found it impossible to judge.

The ranger took off his wide-brimmed hat at the door, as if feeling conciliatory for some unknown reason, and asked if he could come in. Ethan swung the door wide, his heart pounding.

They sat together at the tiny house’s only table.

“I have a lot of questions I need to ask,” Ranger Dave said.

“I hope I know the answers, but I’m not sure. I just know I woke up yesterday morning and he wasn’t here. He left a note on the table saying he’d gone running. He always does that. Leaves a note. That’s really all I know.”

“And you didn’t get concerned until after the sun went down?”

“No, sir.”

“Didn’t that strike you as a long run?”

“Not really. I mean, yes. I guess. When you think about it. But you have no idea how far he runs. Sometimes he does this combination of walking and running. And it can be more than twenty miles. It takes hours. So, yeah. It seemed long. He’s not usually gone literally all day. But he always says he’ll be hours and not to worry until the sun goes down.”

“Could he have gone somewhere else instead of the run? Or after the run?”

“I don’t think so. He’s really proud about clothes. He wears his trail running shoes out on a run, but he wouldn’t be caught dead in town with them. Besides. His truck won’t start. It’s broken down.”

Ranger Dave’s face warped into a frown.

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry to hear that.”

“He can afford to get it fixed.”

“That’s not what I mean. What I mean is, the truck is the most compelling reason to mount a search. The fact that it’s parked close to the trailhead. As opposed to someplace else. That usually indicates where a person started out on foot. But if it doesn’t start up and run . . .”

“If it doesn’t start up and run, how could he have gotten someplace else?”

“People get places without their own cars all the time.”

Ethan’s head felt a little swimmy. He groped around inside a sensation he couldn’t quite describe. There was some subtext in the conversation that he wasn’t properly decoding yet.

“Let me ask you a really important question,” Ranger Dave said. “Can you search this house right now and find me his wallet?”

Ethan’s heart fell. Because he already knew the answer. “No, sir. I can’t.”

“You know it isn’t here?”

“I know I can’t find it.”

“That doesn’t bode well for launching a search,” he said. Then, as if backing up in his head and listening to Ethan’s words again, he added, “What’s the difference? Why would you think not being able to find it is any different from its not being here?”

Ethan sighed, and said nothing for an embarrassing length of time. But the question wouldn’t go away. And the silence got too crushing.

“I heard him promise my mom on the phone that he would either hide his credit cards or take them with him every time he left me in the house alone. They think if they give me a moment’s chance I’ll try to jump on a plane and go home.”