Conner’s SUV pulled up the driveway. Mary stopped him as he was walking out the door. “You forgot this,” she said and lifted his rucksack with all his hunting supplies, minus the rifle. Jonathan was lost for a moment and then took the rucksack from her hand, his charade momentarily interrupted like an actor forgetting his line for a split second. Mary looked at him, suspicious, knowing something was off. “What kind of hunter would you be without this?”
“Not much of one, I suppose.”
“I found it still locked away downstairs. You didn’t even bring it up. Were you not planning on taking it at all? No bullets, no knife, anything? You’re not even taking your tree stand.”
“Don’t use stands up there. We’ll be on foot.” He stared into her eyes and she stared back through his soul. He had no more lies left to give. The truth was too close, it was burning through his skin.
After a moment of looking into him, she said tenderly, “I hope you find peace out there.”
And because he could not lie anymore, he only said, “Me too.” He kissed her for what felt like the last time of their marriage and then walked out the door to the waiting Suburban. Maybe he was confronting it, but then maybe he was burying it deeper. He was confused. He no longer knew if what they were doing was right. He had lost sight of what was right long ago. He only knew what was wrong, particularly what was most wrong for himself and his family. Nothing in any of this was right, but the boy being found by the authorities would be the most wrong thing that could happen to him. Nobility and morality had been buried ten years ago; only half-truths and survival remained.
He loaded his rifle and gear into the back of Conner’s SUV. It was packed mostly with camping gear and the small inflatable raft – a tightly wrapped piece of canvas and rubber that could be hauled on a backpack – they would use to bring the coffin to the center of the lake before sinking it to the bottom. His stomach dropped as he shut the door and Conner started the engine. There was no turning back; they had stepped off the cliff and were being pulled by gravity toward their final destination.
The three were silent in the morning hours, contemplating their ugly purpose, feigning tiredness as an excuse not to speak. Conner’s SUV was new, a big Chevy Suburban outfitted nicely with leather and all the accoutrements of modern life, a testament to his success in the insurance industry. Money to spare and show. Jonathan knew he was the third wheel in this equation. Even in silence the unspoken, psychic connection between the Braddick brothers filled the space between them. Jonathan attempted small talk, trying to rekindle the friendly, jovial banter they’d enjoyed as children and young men, and Conner did his best to accommodate, while Michael stayed largely silent. Jonathan finally turned and watched the passing landscape, wondering what else lay beyond their grasp of reality. Michael turned on the radio and scanned through static to the self-assured voices and music that had been popular when they were kids.
“Sometimes I wonder if we’re just stuck in a time loop,” Michael finally said. “Same damn music has been playing for twenty years. It never disappears, just keeps playing on some other channel.”
He finally shut it off.
They stopped for coffee before getting on the Mass Pike. They drove west into New York and then shot straight as a bullet up I-80. It was the longest part of the trip, an easy five hours even with the sparse traffic. Albany was the last glimmer of civilization before the southern half of the state locked its doors and the land began to heave – first hills, then mountains where double-hitched tractor-trailers struggled up inclines and barreled down long, winding passages, nearly out of control. The hills just north of Albany were still colorful, filled with the red, orange and shades of brown that paint autumn. Farther north, along Lake George, the leaves fell away. The bare trees reached bone-gray branches into the sky, coating the mountains in a deadly dull pallor. In the old days, it would have been a thing of beauty to the three of them, the leafless trees making it easier to spot a deer. Now it just added to their desperation.
On a long, straight stretch of highway, as the engine climbed a lumbering incline, Conner told Michael to reach in the glove box. Michael pulled out some maps. He looked at them briefly and then unfolded one like a small accordion. Jonathan could see from the back seat hundreds of lightly colored lines lying on top of each other at varying degrees of separation, revealing the topography of the mountainous region around Pasternak. The map was marked with a line running west from a region of depressed elevation to a splotch of blue buried between two steep peaks.
“That’s the route we’re going to take, as best as I can figure it,” Conner said. “I used satellite images to find the location – our starting point. At least I think it is. Hard to tell, but I’m pretty sure I remembered it right.”
Jonathan sat up in his seat, poking his head between the two front seats so he could see over Michael’s broad shoulder. The route was traced with blue marker. The cabin was marked north of Pasternak at the edge of the negative depression of the Gulch. Not far from the cabin was an X – the body. From there the blue line followed the lowest country available to the lake. Even on the
