Page 61 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

Smoke’s fur was dusted white with ash, and I grabbed hold of his collar, dragging him back. Behind me, the cabin was lit up by the kitchen light, the back door cracked open. I yanked him toward it, trying to lead him in the opposite direction. But when the phone light landed on a flash of white in the fire pit, I stopped.

I kicked aside the fallen copper pine needles until I found it. Something pale that looked like a stone. I sank down, using the tip of my finger to unearth it, but when it lifted from the ashes, I could finally make out the smooth arc of its surface. It wasn’t a rock.

I turned it over in my fingers, but the moment I realized what it was, I dropped it. It was a bone.

Smoke pulled free of my grasp, bounding back toward the cabin, and I sank down to my knees, eyes squinting. There was another one, half uncovered in the ash from Smoke’s digging, but the shape of it was almost spherical, with angles and points. I picked up one of the wide flat stones that circled the fire pit and scraped the dirt until it was freed. I stared at it, blood running cold.

It was a small skull.

I turned it in the beam of my phone’s flashlight. Two large, empty eye sockets peered at me above the curve and point of a beak. My eyes focused past it, to the drifts of pine needles that filled the fire pit. I dropped the skull and it hit the rocks with a crack. Before I even realized what I was doing, I was raking through the ashes with my hands. And I couldn’t stop. I dug, ignoring the feeling of grit beneath my nails as my panting breaths fogged in the air around me. I could taste the ash on my tongue. Feel the bile climbing up my throat.

My fingers caught form after form, and I pulled them up, holding them in the light. Bones. There were dozens of them. More than that, even.

A small scream escaped my throat and I clambered back to my feet, staring down at them wordlessly. Josie had been right. Johnny was poaching. He had shot them in the forest, brought them back here, and burned them. Every single one.

I took a step backward, then another, that sick feeling uncurling inside me. Clumsily, my feet raced back toward the cabin, where the door had been pushed wide open by Smoke. He was standing in the kitchen when I made it inside, and I pressed my weight into the door, closing it. My dirty hand smeared on the glass as I pushed off of it, headed straight for the sink.

I scrubbed my hands beneath the scalding water, staring at my reflection in the window and trying to control my breathing. I could feel it all coming together, making a picture I couldn’t quite see. Likethe first lines of a drawing, the abstract forms that were only minutes from taking shape.

I turned off the faucet, hands still dripping as I slowly turned to face the hallway. Johnny’s bedroom door stood closed at the other end. I hadn’t dared cross the threshold since I’d gotten here. And why? Was it because I was afraid of facing the truth that he was really gone? Or was it because I was terrified of seeing Johnny—reallyseeing him?

I stared unblinking at the door. Usually, I tried to push Johnny’s presence away, gathering it up and shoving it deep down into the place it was coming from. But I could feel him seeping through the cracks in that door, spilling out into the hallway and filling the space. Like he was waiting for me.

When I couldn’t take it anymore, I opened it, walking straight toward the dresser and turning on the lamp. I pulled open the drawers and took out their contents, shaking the T-shirts loose for anything that might be hiding in their folds.

Johnny’s presence intensified around me, making the ache bloom in my chest. He was everywhere, like smoke sucking the air out of the room. But I didn’t stop. I opened the next drawer, and the next, until the dresser was empty. Then I was tugging back the sheets on his bed, feeling beneath the pillows. Then the mattress. I pulled out the storage boxes that were pushed beneath the frame and tore off their lids, not even knowing what I was looking for. I just needed something that felt like answers.

Smoke’s barking echoed out in the hall, a sharp, reverberating sound that made me wince. I ignored it, opening the chest at the foot of the bed and rifling through stacks of negatives and old camera gear. There were lenses carefully secured in their cases and boxes of bulbs. The mess littered the floor around me as I turned, looking for any sign of another hiding place.

I went to the desk next, rooting through the papers and letting the stacks topple to the floor before I was raking through the items onthe corkboard. But when I tore the loose papers from their pins, searching for the note I’d seen, it was gone.

You changed my life.

It was missing. The note from Autumn was missing.

When Smoke began to howl, I turned to him, anger changing the shape of my voice. “Smoke! Cut it out!”

I came around the corner of the wall to find him in front of the closet again, eyes boring into the door.

“What?” I was shouting now, on the verge of tears. “What do you want?”

I flung the door open and it slammed on its hinges before I turned on the light, shoving the jackets aside. Then I was tugging them from their hangers, furiously checking the pockets before I let them drop to the floor. But when I took Johnny’s blue plaid coat into my hands, another sob broke in my chest. I stared at it, fingers clutching it tight, and when I pressed it to my face, I had to lean into the doorjamb to keep myself on my feet.

I knew my brother. IthoughtI knew him. But everything that had happened since I got to Six Rivers told me I didn’t. I didn’t know why I was surprised. Johnny had always had secrets; I just didn’t want to see them. And now, standing in the aftermath of his life, all I could do was wait for the smoke to clear.

Maybe the truth was, Johnny had been showing me who he was for our entire lives. Maybe I’d just created a version of him in my mind that I could live with. But if he’d been lying and hiding from me before, he wasn’t now. Since the moment I came back, I’d been able to feel him reaching out to me. Trying to tell me something. Now, it was time to listen.

The idea swirled in my mind, making the nauseous feeling in my stomach swell. Slowly, I opened the coat, slipping an arm inside. When I pulled it on, a rush of cold bled through me.

The sound of rain falling outside filled the house, but when I looked to the window, there was only snow drifting in the air. A flash of bright light filled the dark cabin, followed by the crack oflightning, and I tried to root myself down into it, forgetting the world around me.

There was a click—the sound of the bulb overhead being turned on. But it was still dark in the closet. I reached up, pulling the string, and the yellow light flooded the small space. Instinctively, I moved forward, hand braced on the open door. I leaned into the feeling of Johnny’s movements, his position in the space around me. I stepped out of the mess that filled the hallway and fit myself inside the closet. The gleam of light on the barrel of the gun pulled my attention to the dark corner, but then I looked up, studying the ceiling. The bulb swung over my head, making the light bend and shift on the walls around me. I caught it with my fingers, and that’s when I saw it.

The wall above the door was missing its panels, creating a cubby between the exposed studs. It was the singularity of the color that gave it away. Immediately, I recognized what lay inside.

I reached up, fingers grasping at the edge, but the opening of the hollow was just out of reach. I pushed out into the hall and went to the kitchen, taking one of the wooden chairs from the table. When I got back to the closet, I kicked the pile of boots and jackets out of the way, making room to set it down. I was shaking all over when I pulled myself up to stand on it. Both hands lifted into the opening, taking hold of what was stowed there.

The backpack. Autumn’s backpack.