Page 81 of Silent Bones

The further he got from the home, the tighter his chest felt. Dale hadn’t lied. But he’d left just enough out, like a man recounting a storm and forgetting to mention the bodies it left behind. The whole conversation replayed like a puzzle he couldn’t quite see all at once. Dale’s talk about balance, the backcountry tipping back, how nature settles what people disturb. The talk about nature correcting itself, “letting things settle,” “not interfering”—what did he really mean? There were layers in those words.

He had met dozens of old rangers over the years, guys who smoked too much, cursed too loud, and told stories with more venom than wisdom. But Dale? Dale was clean-edged. Like a knife that had been sharpened often but never drawn.

Noah drove past a downed tree where moss had overtaken the bark completely. Noah considered it. The shape was still there, a memory of the log, but it had softened, blurred into the forest around it. A hiker would have to really look to know anything had fallen.

Noah muttered to himself. “Nature doesn’t bury the past. It grows over it.”

He flicked open his phone, opened the camera roll. Scrolled to the photo he’d taken of the topo map in Dale’s cabin.

There it was: “WLFCE-407” barely visible in pencil, tucked near the slope line on the southern edge of Wallface. Not a DEC designation. Not an official trail.

He zoomed in further, trying to make out the contour pattern around the mark. It matched the zone where casualties had been logged in a late-season incident, the one just before Dale’s retirement. An area that had triggered a small landslide. An incident with no formal follow-up.

The sky darkened as he neared the edge of town. High Peaks’ lights flickered in the distance, smeared gold across the water. He turned off the main road, then followed it as it snaked through the woods and pulled up in front of his cabin by the water.

He sat there for a moment, engine ticking as it cooled, then leaned across and grabbed the notebook from the glove compartment.

He flipped to a blank page, uncapped his pen, and wrote without thinking.

FORMER RANGER DALE THURSTON, RETIRED

INCIDENT 407-F

“NATURE CORRECTS ITSELF”

NO CONFESSION, NO GUILT, NO ACCUSATION

Noah exhaled, but he didn’t relax.

20

Noah sat at the edge of the dock with a half-drunk cup of coffee cooling in his hand, the sunrise melting orange across the lake like slow oil. The water was still, except for the occasional ripple from a passing loon and the dip of a fishing line cast from a boat across the bay. He hadn’t slept fully. Just a few short hours of restless dozing, punctuated by flashes of the teens’ dead faces.

He sipped the coffee. Bitter. Cold.

Beside him, a folder of printed case photos lay in a loose pile, close-up shots from the campsite: claw marks on nylon, slashes in tree bark, tufts of fur caught in the brush. He picked one up, studied the image. The fur looked convincing under the right lighting, tangled with blood and dew. But even in the photo, something felt off. Too... placed.

He turned to the next photo: a sapling, snapped low, bark peeled like skin. Another: the tent’s edge, shredded diagonally in deep gouges. And another: a wide shot of the firepit, one of the bodies half-submerged beyond it, like someone had tried to flee but didn’t make it far.

Noah rubbed his eyes. The scene had screamed chaos at first glance, an ambush, a frenzy, but the longer he sat with it, the more composed it seemed. Calculated, even. Almost like someone had wanted it to appear wild.

He thought about Callie, about how she'd looked when she left the other night. She was trying to stay in control, but the cracks were showing.

It was all too much smoke. Too many shadows pretending to be something solid.

Noah set the photos aside and pulled his phone from the pocket of his hoodie. Two new messages.

The first was from McKenzie:

CALL ME WHEN YOU WAKE UP.

The second was from Addie.Come to the lab.

Noah stared at the message for a beat, heart hitching. Addie didn’t do drama. If she said “come,” it wasn’t a maybe.

Noah stood, bones creaking, the lake mist curling around his legs. The rising sun lit the water like a warning flare.

He tossed the cold coffee into the grass, grabbed his coat, and headed out.