I stared at the box, at the faded handwriting of my name. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I could smell sawdust. I could feel rough, calloused hands lifting me up. I could hear a deep voice humming a tune I could not quite remember. Fragments. That was all I had of him. Fragments, and the story everyone told, that he was a man who abandoned his family, a man who left nothing of value behind.
“Why do they want it if it is worthless?”
Mrs. Patterson shrugged.
“Gravel, I suppose. They own all the land around it. Your piece is just a hole in their map.”
But something in my gut twisted. If the land was truly worthless, why had this company been trying to buy it for years? Why was the offer for five thousand dollars when the land was supposedly just rocks and a cave? Why did the lawyer’s voice on the phone sound so eager, almost desperate?
“I need to see it first.”
The words came out before I could stop them. Lily looked at me, her eyes wide with surprise. Mrs. Patterson shook her head.
“Ethan, there is nothing to see. It is a two-day bus ride to get there. That is money you do not have. The smart move is to sign the papers, take the money, and get yourself into transitional housing.”
She was right. Every logical part of my brain knew she was right. But this land was the last thing connecting me to him, the last piece of a man I barely remembered. Selling it without ever seeing it felt like agreeing with everyone who had ever called him a deadbeat, a coward, a man who abandoned his family without looking back. It felt like selling his memory for a few months of rent.
“I’m going.”
My voice was firmer this time. I picked up the cardboard box. It was heavier than I expected. Mrs. Patterson looked at me for a long moment. The professional mask slipped, and I saw something else in her eyes. Exhaustion, maybe, or a tired kind of respect for a boy who refused to take the easy path.
“All right. It is your decision. Just be careful. The world outside this office is not always fair.”
I stood up, still holding Lily’s hand.
“I know. It hasn’t been fair inside it either.”
The Greyhound station smelled like diesel fuel and desperation. I bought one ticket to Pinewood Hollow, Montana, forty-three dollars, leaving me with four and change. Lily was supposed to stay at the group home. I had said goodbye to her that morning, promised I would call as soon as I got there, promised I would figure something out. She had nodded, her jaw set in that stubborn way she had, but she had not cried. She never cried. I was three hours into the first leg of the trip, somewhere in the flat, empty plains of Nebraska, when I heard a familiar cough from the seat behind me. I turned around. Lily was crouched in the space between the seats, her backpack clutched to her chest, looking at me with defiant eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
I grabbed her arm and pulled her into the seat beside me. She lifted her chin, that stubborn jaw set even harder.
“I am not letting you go alone. We made a promise, Ethan. We stay together. That is what we said. That is what we do.”
“Lily, if they find out you ran, they will—”
“What? Put me in another group home?”
She shook her head, her eyes fierce.
“No. I have been in seven different homes since I was three years old. Seven different families that did not want me. You are the only person who has ever stayed. So no, I am not letting you leave me behind.”
I wanted to be angry. I wanted to turn the bus around and send her back before she got in trouble, before she made everything more complicated than it already was. But I looked at her, at this girl who had been my responsibility and my reason for getting up every morning for twelve years, this girl who had learned not to cry because crying made you weak, this girl who had just thrown away everything to follow me into the unknown, and I could not do it.
“Okay. We stay together. Always.”
She leaned her head against my shoulder, and for the first time since the Hendersons, I saw her eyes glistening. Not from sadness this time, but from something else. Relief, maybe. Or hope.
“We have forty-seven dollars,” I said. “And no plan.”
“We have each other,” she whispered. “That is more than we’ve ever had.”
The bus drove on, carrying us toward a pile of rocks and a cave that everyone said was worthless. But they were wrong. We just did not know it yet.
The journey took two days. We watched America scroll past the grimy windows like a film strip of someone else’s life. Cities gave way to suburbs. Suburbs dissolved into farmland. Farmland buckled into hills, and hills rose into mountains that touched the clouds. The bus got emptier at every stop until it was just us, an old man who smelled like pipe tobacco and regret, and a woman in the back row knitting something purple that might have been a scarf. Lily slept against my shoulder for most of the second day. She had not slept well since we left, jerking awake at every stop, checking to make sure I was still there. It broke something in me, seeing that. Fifteen years old, and she still expected people to disappear in the middle of the night.
The bus pulled into Pinewood Hollow at four in the afternoon on a Thursday. The town was not much more than a wide spot in a narrow road. A gas station with a faded sign that had not been updated since the eighties. A general store with a wooden porch and rocking chairs that no one was sitting in. A diner with a flickering neon sign that said OPEN, though it looked like it might give up at any moment. A handful of houses with peeling paint and sagging porches, as if the whole town was slowly exhaling and settling into the earth. A cold mist hung over everything, muffling sound and color, turning the world into shades of gray and green and silence.
We stepped off the bus, and the driver gave us a look that said he thought we were making a terrible mistake. The door hissed closed behind us and the bus pulled away, leaving us alone in the oppressive quiet.
“Is this it?” Lily asked. Her voice was small. “This is it?”
We walked into the general store. A bell chimed overhead, a cheerful sound that felt out of place. The man behind the counter was old, maybe mid-seventies, his face a road map of wrinkles carved by decades of mountain wind and hard winters. His eyes were a pale, watery blue, and they watched us with the placid suspicion that small-town people reserve for outsiders.
“Help you?”
I pulled out the deed, unfolded it on the counter.
“I’m looking for a piece of land. Parcel 734. The old Carter property.”
The man squinted at the paper, then at me, then at Lily. A flicker of something crossed his weathered face. Recognition, maybe. Or memory.
“Carter,” he said slowly, like he was tasting the word. “Haven’t heard that name in years. You relation?”
“He was our grandfather.”
The man grunted. His eyes moved between us, assessing, calculating. Finally, he seemed to make a decision.
“That land is way up on the ridge. Nobody’s been up there in over a decade. The road is probably washed out by now. What do you want with a pile of rocks?”
“I just need to see it.”
He pulled out a scrap of paper and drew a crude map.
“Follow the main road north about three miles. You’ll see an old logging trail on your left, overgrown now. Follow it up as far as you can. The rest you walk.”
He sold us two bottles of water and some granola bars. Lily was looking at a display of candy bars with hungry eyes, so I bought her one too. As we were leaving, the old man called out.
“Name’s Walter. Seventy-four years old. Been running this store since Nixon was in office. If you need anything, you come back here.”
Then, quieter, his voice dropping low:
“And watch out for the people from Blackstone Mining. They’ve been sniffing around that land for years.”
“What do they want with it?” I asked.
Walter’s jaw tightened, and something dark flickered behind those pale eyes.
“That,” he said, “is a very good question.”
Leave a Comment