Page 134 of The Five Year Lie

He’ll just play dumb, maybe. File a missing person report.

But she’s probably hysterical, imagining Buzz and me dead in a ditch.

I can’t think about her yet. Soon, but not yet. And I’ve finally reached the turnoff, which is signed for Pitch Pine Road, just as the man in the hardware store said.

It’s a narrow road, with tall pines on either side. Truth in advertising. After a hundred exhausting paces, it levels out a little, and the road turns to dirt.

This is it. He has to be up here somewhere.

Then I hear a truck engine, and it’s the most beautiful sound. I step into the trees and wait for it to pass.

“Mama? Are you hiding?”

Yes.I hitch him up a little higher and then lie. “The road is narrow,” I say over my shoulder. “No sidewalk. I want to stay safe.”

Someday I’ll stop lying to my child.

The hardware store truck rumbles slowly past us. There isn’t as much lumber in the back now. I wish I knew how long it’s been since he turned up this road. It couldn’t be more than fifteen or twenty minutes. He couldn’t have driven that far.

“Mama, I can walk now,” Buzz says as soon as we’re back on the road.

“Oh glory be,” I say, and he laughs as he slides down my back.

We walk ten more minutes before we come to the first driveway. But there’s a very elaborate sign on the tree:THE WILSONS, with a lucky horseshoe hammered below their name.

That can’t be it. And I know I haven’t gone far enough. We press on.

48

Later, I won’t remember these last few miles. It probably takes us two hours in the heat, the hill growing steeper again as we climb. We pass maybe a dozen driveways. Not a single one of them beckons to me. Some are so quiet and buttoned-up that it’s clear nobody is home.

From one, arguing voices rise up. We hurry past without discussion.

And then, just up ahead, the road suddenly forks into two final driveways, with two last mailboxes on display. One hasCARTERscrawled onto the metal.

The other mailbox is newer. Plain white metal. “That one,” I whisper. But I’m not feeling confident. And we can’t see the house from the road. “Stick close,” I say to Buzz.

He holds my hand as if it were a Monday morning at preschool. We creep along the curving gravel driveway. The corner of a tidy log cabin comes into view. There’s a single folding chair on the porch, a water bottle beside it. A red Jeep sits in the driveway.

I feel dizzy with expectation. But I could still be wrong. This is probably a stranger’s house.

There’s no name on the house, no ornamentation of any kind, unless we’re counting a sign that saysBEWARE OF THE DOG.

But I don’t even see a dog.

“Buzz, can you wait behind that big tree?” I ask quietly, pointing at a thick trunk. “I’m going to knock on the door.”

I haven’t even thought about what I might say if his face appears in front of me. I haven’t allowed myself to plan for that.

And now I realize I’m terrified. I don’t know what I’ll do if he’s not here. And I don’t even know what I’ll do if he is.

“Okay,” Buzz says, going along with the millionth weird thing I’ve asked him to do.

I nudge him into the shadows, behind a fat oak. “I won’t leave your sight, I promise. Watch me.”

He nods.

With a deep breath, I turn to face the house. I feel a bone-deep certainty that he’s here. But I don’t trust myself anymore. Maybe it’s just the desperation talking. I take maybe three slow steps toward the porch.