Read Chapter 23: The Search

The sheriff’s name was Dale, and he moved like a man who’d spent his whole life in snow. He stood in the inn’s foyer with a steaming mug of coffee Maren had pressed into his hands, his thick wool jacket still dusted with flakes, and studied the map Julian had left behind on the front desk. His thumb traced the red circle at the end of the Ridgeline Trail.

“He went up there this morning?” Dale asked, not looking at her.

“Before the storm moved in,” Maren said. Her voice was steady, but her fingers were twisting the hem of her sweater. “He said he’d be back by nightfall. He’s not.”

Dale grunted. He pulled a radio from his belt and spoke into it, a clipped exchange of coordinates and checkpoints that Maren couldn’t quite follow. When he clicked off, he set the map down and finally met her eyes. “I’ve got a four-man crew assembling at the trailhead. We’ll go up on foot. Air’s no good in this—visibility’s near zero past the tree line.”

“I’m coming with you.”

Dale shook his head. “Ma’am, you’re not equipped for what’s up there. That spur’s seen two deaths in the last decade. Both hikers, both in weather like this. If your man got himself off trail, we’ll find him, but I can’t have a civilian slowing the search.”

“He’s not my man,” Maren said, and then felt the heat rise to her cheeks. “He’s my guest. And I’m the one who sent him up there. I gave him the map.”

Dale’s expression softened, just a fraction. “I understand. But the best thing you can do is stay here by the phone. If he finds shelter, he’ll find his way to a signal or a light. We’ll bring him back.”

Maren wanted to argue, but the practical part of her—the part that had run a kitchen during a fire alarm, that had managed a staff of fifteen during a Valentine’s Day rush—knew he was right. She nodded tightly and watched him go, the door swinging shut behind him with a gust of frigid air.

She stood in the empty foyer for a long moment. The inn was silent, the last of the retreat guests having gone to their rooms after the sheriff’s car had pulled into the drive. The fire in the parlor fireplace crackled, but its warmth didn’t reach her. She pulled out her phone and dialed Julian’s number for the tenth time that hour. Straight to voicemail.

She thought about the wooden bird in her pocket, the one he’d carved and left on the desk before he headed out. The same bird his father had carved for her grandmother decades ago. She pressed her thumb into the smooth grooves of its wings and stared at the map on the desk, at the red circle that had swallowed him whole.

The phone rang at two in the morning.

Maren had been dozing in a chair by the parlor fire, the bird still in her hand. She jolted upright and grabbed it before the second ring.

“We found him,” Dale said. His voice was clipped, tired. “He’s alive. Disoriented, mild hypothermia, but he’s walking. We’re bringing him down now. Should be at the inn in under an hour.”

Maren let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “What happened? Where was he?”

Dale paused. “He was at the edge of a cliff about half a mile past that spur. If he’d taken one more step in the dark, he wouldn’t have made it. He’s lucky one of my men spotted his flashlight before it gave out.”

She didn’t ask the question that was forming in her throat. She thanked him, hung up, and stood in the middle of the parlor with her hand pressed to her chest, feeling her heart hammer against her ribs.

When Julian came through the door, he looked like a ghost of himself.

His jacket was soaked through, the fabric crusted with ice at the shoulders. His cheeks were windburned, his lips pale, and there was a gash on his temple that had dried to a dark crust. His hands shook as he held them out toward the fire, and Maren had to stop herself from crossing the room and grabbing him by the shoulders.

Instead, she wrapped a thick wool blanket around him and guided him to the armchair closest to the hearth. He sank into it, his gaze fixed on the flames. Dale stood in the doorway, lingering a moment.

“We’ll file a report in the morning, Mr. Bell. Get some rest.” He gave Maren a look. “And maybe don’t send him up any more trails until the snow clears.”

Maren nodded, and the sheriff let himself out. The door clicked shut, and then it was just the two of them and the crackling fire.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Maren crouched beside the chair, close enough to see the tremble in Julian’s jaw.

“You want to tell me what happened?” she asked, her voice softer than she’d intended.

Julian shook his head. “I don’t—” He stopped, pressed his fingers to his eyes. “I found the cabin.”

“The cabin?”

“My father’s. Up on the ridge, near that unmarked spur. It was half-collapsed, in worse shape than I expected, but the door was still on its hinges and his stuff was still inside. A cot. A rusted stove. A box of ammunition and a fishing rod. It looked like he’d been there recently.”

Maren’s heart quickened. “How recently?”

Julian reached into his jacket and pulled out a crumpled, singed object. A leather-bound journal, the edges blackened as if it had been thrown into a fire and pulled out at the last moment. The cover was warped, the pages brittle, and the smell of smoke clung to it even from where Maren sat.

“The place was so cold I thought about lighting the stove,” Julian said, his voice low and raw. “But I found this under the mattress first. It was damp, and there was a hole in the roof, and the wind had been kicking up. I thought it was just a log, something old. But then I saw his name on the first page.”

He handed the journal to her. Maren took it carefully, cradling it like it was made of glass. The first page was dated—not decades ago, but recent. She squinted at the faded ink.

“Julian,” she said slowly, “these entries are from last winter.”

His eyes were red-rimmed, whether from the cold or something else she couldn’t tell. “I know.”

She flipped through a few more pages, scanning dates and fragments of sentences. Descriptions of the trail. Of a specific bird—a blue-headed vireo, she thought, her eyes catching the word *vireo*—and nests. Half the pages were missing, torn out, and the ones that remained were scorched at the edges.

“I found it beside the stove, like someone had tried to burn it,” Julian said. “Some of the pages caught, some didn’t. I don’t know if he did it or if something else did.”

Maren looked up at him. “Julian, he was here. Last year. That’s not that long ago.”

Julian’s face crumpled, and he looked away, toward the fire. “I thought he was dead,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’ve thought he was dead for twenty years. But he was here, Maren. He was here last year. And he left this behind because he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—come back to us.”

She didn’t know what to say. She could only watch the war of emotions play across his face—grief and fury and a terrible, swallowing hope.

He took a ragged breath. “If he was so close,” he said, “why didn’t he finish what he started? Why didn’t he come back?” He looked at her then, his eyes wet. “I’m terrified he might be dead after all. But I’m more terrified that he’s not, and he just didn’t want to come home to me.”

Maren reached out and took his hand. It was cold and rough, and his fingers curled around hers like he was drowning.

She looked down at the journal in her lap, the burst edges, the missing pages, the secrets it had almost taken with it. Then she thought of the wooden bird in her sweater pocket, of her grandmother’s half-finished story, of the red circle on the map.

“We’ll figure it out,” she said, though she had no idea how. “Together.”

Julian didn’t answer. He just held her hand and stared into the fire, and the snow kept falling outside the window like it meant to bury them all.