Part 2
“Show me where he meant to go,” Jack said.
Nora set down the cup, knelt beside the stove, and worked her fingers beneath the third floorboard from the left. The plank lifted on a bent-nail hinge. From the hollow beneath it she drew a dented blue cashbox, a county map folded into quarters, and a ring holding two small keys. On the map, a pencil line ran east toward Del Norte. A second line followed an older logging spur, and beside it Daniel Avery had written one name and phone number: Maria Alvarez.
It was the first fact Jack had not expected. “Who’s Maria?”
Nora put the keys on top of the box. “My mother’s sister.”
“Does she know you’re here?”
“She knows where the land is.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Nora’s chin came up. “She and Dad had a fight in July. She said he shouldn’t keep me up here after Mom died. He told her we weren’t leaving because someone with a checkbook wanted our road.”
Church shifted closer, the emergency blanket whispering around his shoulders. “What road?”
Nora opened the cashbox. Inside lay the deed, which named Daniel and Leah Avery as joint tenants with right of survivorship, her birth certificate sealed in a plastic sleeve, a small address book, three photographs, and a packet held together with a black binder clip. A sealed envelope with Nora’s name on it lay face down beneath the papers; she placed her palm over it and left it there. The top page of the packet was titled Memorandum of Option to Purchase. It claimed a temporary right of survey as well as an option on the land. The next was a letter from a company called High Mesa Lodging.
Jack knew engines and leases, not land law, but the wording made the sale sound settled.
“They want the lower meadow,” Nora said. “They can’t reach the resort parcel from the highway without it. Mr. Voss told Dad it was only an access road. Dad said roads grow parking lots.”
“Did your father sign this?”
“No.” She tapped the signature without touching it. “That isn’t how he makes the D in Daniel.”
The document was dated twelve days earlier, three days before Daniel disappeared. A notary block filled the bottom of the page.
“Mr. Voss brought another copy after Dad left,” Nora continued. “He said the agreement was filed and a survey crew would come back. He wanted to know where Dad kept the originals.”
Jack’s jaw tightened. “You told him?”
“I told him Dad had gone to his lawyer. That wasn’t true yet, but I wanted him to leave.”
“Did he?”
“After he looked through the window.”
Earl sat on the floor beside the crooked corner, his large hands hanging between his knees. “Why didn’t you go to your aunt when your dad didn’t come home?”
Nora glanced at the door. “A survey truck pulled the phone line down in August. Dad was going to fix it after we sold firewood. There’s no cell signal here. The Forest Service shed has an emergency radio outside, but when I walked toward it on the second day, I heard an engine and saw Mr. Voss’s truck.”
She folded the map smaller, following familiar creases. “If I went with him, he’d know nobody was guarding the house. If I left before Dad came back, he wouldn’t know where I was.”
“How much food did you have?” Church asked.
“Enough if he came back. Less if he didn’t.”
Earl’s crackers, the diluted soup, the empty cup: Jack saw them again with different weight. He wanted to tell her that she would never ration another meal and that Voss would never cross the property line. He said neither.
“We’ll help search,” he said. “And the minute I can reach a signal, I’m calling the county rescue team.”
Nora’s face closed. “No.”
“Your father may be hurt.”
“They’ll call child services.”
“They should.”
She looked at him as if he had changed shape. “Then they’ll take me away.”
Jack leaned his forearms on his knees so they were nearer eye level. “Nora, I won’t lie to you. You can’t stay here alone. Not because Voss says so. Because the roof leaks, the road is buried, and you have one can of soup left.”
“Six cans.”
“That doesn’t improve the math.”
“Maria will sell the land.”
“Do you know that?”
“Dad said she always wanted us to move.”
“Calling rescue doesn’t give anyone the right to sell your land.”
Nora stared at him. “I’m still the one who has to pack.”
Jack let that sit. “Before I make a call, I’ll tell you exactly who I’m calling and what I’ll say. I won’t take the box. I won’t tell Voss anything. But I am going to call for people trained to find your dad.”
Nora gathered the papers into the cashbox with quick, exact movements. “I thought you were different.”
“You met me forty minutes ago.”
“You came in when I told you to.”
“Because you were right.”
“I’m right now.”
Jack looked at the patched wall, the stove, and the child who had managed each until strangers arrived. “I know what strangers can do when they take over. I’m still not leaving your dad out there just so you won’t be mad at me.”
She put the box back under the plank. This time the wood struck the floor harder than it needed to.
They spent the night feeding the stove in shifts. Nora lay on the cot beneath Earl’s improvised drain but did not sleep; whenever Jack opened his eyes, hers reflected the firelight. Near two in the morning, the snow slackened enough for Earl and Marco to reach the motorcycles. They forced Church’s buckled pannier open with a tire iron and returned with the first-aid kit, two sleeping bags, more food, and his satellite phone wrapped in a dry shirt.
The phone would not turn on. Church removed its battery and warmed it inside his base layer while Jack checked Marco’s feet. Nora watched from the cot, one hand beneath her cheek.
“That thing calls people?” she asked.
“If it wakes up,” Church said.
“And you’re still going to do it?”
Jack did not make her ask him. “Yes.”
At dawn, Church held the satellite phone at the open door until it locked onto a signal. Jack showed Nora the emergency number on the screen, then made the call from the threshold. He gave the dispatcher their names, the approximate coordinates from the map, the condition of his riders, and Daniel Avery’s route and nine-day absence. He also said there was an eleven-year-old child alone at the cabin and that she feared a man involved in a land purchase.
Nora stood within arm’s reach throughout the call, silent.
The dispatcher told them a tracked rescue team could reach the lower road once visibility improved. A sheriff’s deputy and a caseworker from the county Department of Human Services would come with them. Search crews would begin on Daniel’s likely route.
Jack ended the call and set the phone on the crate where Nora could see it.
“You told them everything,” she said.
“Everything the rescue team needed. Not the box.”
“You didn’t tell them about the floor.”
“That belongs to you.”
She turned away. For the next two hours she addressed only Earl and Church, and only when something practical required it.
By late morning, the wind had dropped. Snow still fell, but vertically now, softening the world instead of driving through it. A mechanical hum rose from the road below. Between the trees, three white lights appeared in a line and climbed toward the cabin.
Nora stood beside Jack at the window. The glass was old enough to bend each light into a wavering star.
“You said you’d help me find him.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
She watched the lights approach her house. “No. You called the people who are going to take me away…”
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