Page 35 of A Sea of Unspoken Things
“I was thinking that I’m sorry,” I whispered.
I wasn’t sure he could hear me over the roar of the truck, but he looked at me, his expression saying what he couldn’t. I could guess that it had been the worst moment of his life. And somehow, I was still glad that it had been him. That after Johnny had lain there alone for an entire day, it had been Micah who’d found him.
If there was fault to be had, I knew where it would land. Johnny never would have been out there if he hadn’t been working on the CAS project. He never would have been on the project if I hadn’t gone to San Francisco. And I wouldn’t have left Six Rivers if that night with Griffin Walker hadn’t happened.
It didn’t matter how we divvied up the blame. In the end, it landed on me.
Eleven
The rest of the drive to Trentham Gorge was quiet. Micah kept his attention on the road, driving the unpredictable route by memory. I surprised myself by realizing that even after all this time, I could have done the same.
He hadn’t said much after telling me about the day he found Johnny, and I didn’t ask more questions. I was afraid that his answers might give teeth to the pain already writhing inside of me. I was already walking a tightrope of what I wanted to know and what I didn’t. But it seemed to change by the day, the hour, even the minute. That was the way of grief, I was realizing. It was a barrage of pain that was so unbearable that it made you numb. And then out of nowhere, something made you feel again and the cycle started over from the beginning.
Raindrops dotted the windshield as we drove deep into the gorge, and after a while, I noticed Micah giving a series of concerned glances up to the darkening sky. I followed his gaze to the gray clouds visible through the canopy. If the weather didn’t hold, we’d have to stay the night. The roads we’d come down weren’t safe when there was runoff, and it wouldn’t be the first time we’d gotten stuck out here.
“Just like old times, right?” I said, my voice a little uneven.
The gorge was something like a rite of passage for teenagers in Six Rivers. Once you got to high school the legends about the place found their way to you, and before long a new generation of kids with their driver’s licenses were spending their Saturdays making the trip to the swimming hole.
I looked into the back of the truck, where Smoke was still curled up on the pallet bed that took up what little space there was. It looked like Micah had the camper stocked with gear and food, but that’s not what made me uneasy.
I reached over the back of the seat, my hand sinking into Smoke’s fur in an attempt to anchor myself. I’d honestly never liked the idea of being way out here in the middle of the night. The forest seemed to come alive in the dark, like I could feel its eyes following me. Hear its thoughts. That had been one of the things I was glad to leave behind.
When the rocky walls of the landscape began to pull apart outside my fogged window, I reached up, wiping it with the sleeve of my shirt. The cliffs that hugged the road gave way, opening into a huge, gaping vein chiseled into the earth.
From what I’d learned about the CAS project, this place made sense. Owls needed vast, biodiverse hunting grounds with plenty of prey and cover, and the gorge was just that. Towering walls rose up from the narrow ravine with a sea of trees on either side. Ferns grew in the maze of cracks on the cliff face, with boulders peeking out of the brush. The enormity of it all only grew greater the deeper we descended down the muddy road, the stones and tree trunks getting wider and taller by the second. It was beautiful, but that word in itself didn’t do it any kind of justice. The gorge was like an unraveling seam in the universe, a portal to a new realm where nothing else existed.
The farther we maneuvered down the switchbacks, the more I could feel it. Johnny seemed to press through the cracks in the truck, like the pressure of water leaking in. Way out here, there wasn’t a single soul to feel it, except me. I glanced at Micah from the corner ofmy eye, watching him carefully for any sign that he could sense it, too. But his attention was on the road.
He steered around the little rivulets dragging divots in the mud, and I tried not to count them as they multiplied, ignoring the fact that the rain was falling harder. Micah seemed to be doing the same, not bothering to acknowledge it when he finally had to turn on the windshield wipers.
Once the road began to level again, he pulled off at a gravel turnout, where a wooden marker was driven into the ground. When the engine cut off, the sound was replaced by the patter of rain on wet stone and the babble of water in the ravine. I stared out the window, eyes fixed on the trailhead.
“You want to wait and see if it lets up?” Micah leaned forward to look up through the top of the windshield. The fog was thickening, curling in the air until the deep, saturated colors of the forest paled.
I opened the door of the truck in answer, afraid that if I had any more time to sit and think about it, I might change my mind. My boots hit the ground and my eyes slowly lifted to the cliffs far above. They only seemed to reach farther away the more I looked at them.
When the crack of gravel sounded behind me, I flinched, turning to see Micah standing at my back. There was a blue raincoat in his hands, and he was already wearing his own black one, the hood pulled up over his beanie.
“I had an extra in the back.” He held the blue one out to me.
I took it, slipping my arms into the sleeves and zipping it up. The smell of him wrapped around me, like the warmth of summer piercing through the cold.
“Thanks.”
The rain was still picking up, the incessant tap of it hitting the canopy high above us in a sound that reminded me of waves pulling from the sand on a beach. Micah and I looked at each other, both thinking the same thing. There was no way we were getting out of here before nightfall.
There were many times that we’d either chosen to spend the nightor were forced to, drinking around a fire and camping in our cars. A night just like that one was when Griffin Walker died. That’s why I’d been so unnerved when Johnny had told me that this was one of the locations he had included in the project. I hadn’t understood why he’d ever want to return to this place.
I looked at Micah. “Did you ever come back here? After what happened to Griffin?”
His mouth pressed into a straight line. “Just once.”
I nodded, understanding. The day he’d come to find Johnny had been the first and only time he’d ever returned.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded. “Take me to where you found him. The exact spot.”