from water to rock to earth and back again. I began to pace off the area. I started tracing the bank from one end of the clearing to the other. I watched for a hidden cranny, someplace a letter could be secreted away to wait for an eager hand to claim it. Nothing jumped out at me on the shoreline. I walked inland about a dozen feet, then turned back in the opposite direction, hoping to find what I’d come for. Nothing again, and I repeated the drill on the other side of the clearing.
While I searched, I thought again about Jacob and Naomi, about the wedding that would be unfolding that very day. A small service—only family and those in the church hierarchy would be invited to the ceremony. Afterward, I assumed there would be a larger reception at the ranch. I wondered if anyone had replaced the missing tiles in the kitchen floor, if all traces of the atrocity were wiped away. Even if they had, I doubted that anyone could ever forget what happened there.
I quickened my pace. Where would Laurel have left a final note for Myles? Maybe this was all in vain. Maybe there was no final letter. Maybe they’d said their goodbyes on Saturday. Maybe that was the explanation for their emotional meeting.
From somewhere far away, I heard the call of an owl, a long, haunting cry that echoed through the forest into the clearing and seemed to bounce off the cold earth. An hour after I started, I faced defeat. I reluctantly headed toward the road where I’d left the Suburban. How foolish I’ve been, I thought. How obsessed. Why can’t I stop digging for bodies? Why can’t I accept that this case is over and done with?
In that instant, everything changed.
I would have missed it except for the fawn-gray squirrel that scurried past and ran up the side of a box elder tree. I stopped to watch, laughed when it jumped from one limb to another, and at first, I didn’t recognize what I was looking at pinned to the trunk maybe ten feet up. In the summer, foliage would have hidden it. Even with the leaves fallen, it was barely visible.
A large rock at the base of the tree had a flat top, and I climbed up. I thought about Laurel doing the same wearing her long prairie dress, how she must have held the skirt up or she would have tripped. I had to stretch to reach the weathered wooden board and push it to the side. The nail the board hung from resisted, but I shifted it out of the way and uncovered a hole in the tree, one that a bird might nest in. Instead, I saw something white inside. While still standing on the rock I read the front of the envelope: My Dearest Myles.
The writing was familiar—I knew it had to be written by the same hand as the letters I’d read that night at the shelter in which Laurel recounted how she’d been torn from Myles and given, assigned as one might property, to Jacob. Only this letter differed in many ways. This was an apology, and a plea.
I am sorry for our argument. I should have understood your point of view, that I wasn’t free to leave with you, and that you had to go. It must be hard for you to have only these few stolen minutes together, the two of us separated by days and even weeks at times. I understand that you need more in life. I understand that you have to make plans to leave Alber.
While I say that, I plead with you one last time to take me with you. I tell you that it isn’t safe for me here. It is only a matter of time before he tells. I know you hope your leaving will protect me, but I fear that isn’t true. I know he has been watching me. I know he knows about us. And I know that he will not keep our secret. Myles, I am in grave danger. Please, don’t leave without me.
My love, each night, I say my final prayer: that somehow, some way, we can be together.
The letter went on for three pages, Laurel pleading with Myles to meet her at the river the following day, that fateful Monday afternoon, to make plans for their escape. I thought about how if Myles had gotten the letter and agreed, they might have