“Here,” he called. She trailed after him and crouched at the place he indicated. “The fragment was caught between these rocks.” He looked up at the mountain. “The plane must have hit there, at the sheerest point of the slope. There wouldn’t have been anything above the tree line to keep the wreckage from scattering and falling or sliding down into the lake. Except here. ”
Here. Joey set down the fragment carefully and began to search among the boulders, sifting through layers of pine needles and humus. She heard Luke working beside her, grateful for his presence, for the matter-of-fact detachment that reminded her of her purpose. There would be time for emotions later.
They found other pieces of metal, twisted and dull, as they worked their way down toward the shore of the lake. Joey gathered them into a neat pile, like a burial cairn, and returned to the search. Luke called a halt at noon, and they sat at the lake’s edge, close but not touching, their reflections dwarfed by that of the mountain above.
“It’s not enough,” Joey said quietly.
Luke tossed a stone into the crystal water, and Joey watched the ripples arc outward until they disappeared. “You need to be certain,” he said.
She looked at him across the narrow span of earth and rock that separated them. He understood. She could have reached out and touched him, asked him to hold her in this lonely place, and he would have understood. But she wrapped her arms around herself tightly and got to her feet, kicking more stones into the lake.
“This is your world, Luke,” she said. “You’ve been right about a lot of things. But I never realized how hard it would be to make your world give up its secrets.”
“Joey—”
She shook her head and began to walk along the shore, Luke like a shadow at her heels. The hollow ache in her chest grew more intense as the day waned. She felt the wilderness as a living thing, rejecting her, mocking her, refusing to yield what she must have. It had taken her parents, but it would give her nothing in return.
Something wild rose in Joey then. She flung her head back and stared into the setting sun. She opened her heart and her senses and set aside the rationality she had lived by all her life.
Listen to me, she told the forests and peaks and clear water Let me find them, let me be free, and I’ll give you whatever you demand.
“Joey.” Luke’s low voice shook her from the spell she had woven about herself, and she jerked around to face him. His eyes were unreadable, his expression as stark as the mountain itself. “It’s time to make camp. Tomorrow—”
“No, Luke. Not yet.” Joey looked through him and beyond, her feet moving before she recognized the strange certainty that drove her. She retraced her steps one by one, letting her eyes search without focusing until they caught the glint of dying sunlight on metal.
The plaque was half-buried in pebbles and silt, traces of brightness still visible through the rust Joey knelt and dug it out, rinsing it in lake water with gentle hands.
She traced the engraved words, still readable, with a trembling finger. To Jameson Randall, beloved husband and father.
” ‘Free as Nature first made man…’ ”
Joey felt the warmth of Luke’s breath as he knelt beside her. He read the quote like a eulogy, his fingertips brushing over hers.
“It was a gift,” she whispered, her throat suddenly full and tight. “The plane was a gift from my mother, after Dad’s old one gave out. She saved up for it for years. I remember when we gave it to him, and she had this plaque installed in the cockpit.
Words failed, and she bent over the plaque and held it tightly to her chest. I found you, she said silently. I found you. She looked out over the water and thought of her parents, sleeping beneath that still and lovely surface.
Warmth wrapped around her, real and certain. Luke pulled her back against his chest and enfolded her in his arms while the years melted away and she became a child again. She heard her parents’ voices, their last words to her so long ago.