In an Instant(59)
I’m very proud of him and have become his silent cheerleader, coaching from the sidelines and watching out for him, whispering encouragement and applauding his courage as he looks behind every tree and rock in search of my brother.
He’s not going to find him. Every inch he canvasses has been canvassed before. Burns was thorough in his search. For a week after the search was called off, he still sent his team to scour the area until it was obvious Oz wasn’t going to be found. Wherever my brother’s body is, it’s long gone from where it was, carried off by animals or the elements or both. The rest of him, who he was, is no longer part of this world. I know it with the same certainty as I know someday I will no longer be here as well. There’s impermanence to this state, disquiet that cannot last.
Each afternoon, Vance retraces his steps and climbs back up the cliff to my dad, pride radiating as he tells him how it went. It’s hard to believe it’s been less than a week since Vance was a puddle of pill-popping self-pity huddled on his bed. His body has regained its strength, his skin glows, and he no longer trembles from withdrawal. Except for his ears, fingers, and hair, he almost looks like he used to.
My dad doesn’t even look close to what he used to. He’s given up on shaving and looks like a woolly mountain man. His dark rust beard is peppered with gray and grows all the way up his cheeks and down his neck. His once-thick muscles have turned soft, and he’s lost at least thirty pounds. But mostly it is his face that’s changed—the set of his features and jaw—a transformation on the inside that radiates outward.
Before the accident, my dad was one of those men who are hardy and infinitely capable, the guy people looked to when they needed a tire changed or a couch hauled up a flight of stairs or a car lifted off a toddler. It wasn’t so much his size as his confidence: a sureness in his handsome, blunt face that screamed of competence. He no longer looks like that, the vitality he had suddenly missing, as though the muscles in his cheeks have atrophied or gravity has gotten stronger, and looking at him this way makes me horribly sad.
I watch as he takes another swig from the bottle, then mumbles something incoherent.
The way I view alcohol is that it makes you more of whatever you already are. Happy drunks are happy people made happier; nasty drunks, the opposite. My dad is a sad drunk, a grief-stricken, woeful wretch, his eyes glassy and his jaw locked tight as he holds back the tears that threaten to tumble out.
He reaches for the phone, and his fingers struggle with the keys, but finally he manages to dial our number.
My mom and Chloe are at the concert. On the third ring, Mo, who is kitten sitting, picks up. “Miller residence,” she says.
Without a word, my dad hangs up, then balls the sheets in his hands and buries his face in the fabric to muffle his cries.
More of what you are, that’s what alcohol does. And for someone with a guilty conscience, it transforms you into your worst nightmare: everything you regret and everything you hate about yourself exaggerated, until you want to claw out of your skin or disappear permanently into oblivion.
72
Mo’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel as she creeps up the winding road toward Big Bear. She’s had her license three months but has never driven farther than two towns away. It’s a gray day, the sky threatening rain but holding its load. It’s been almost two months since the accident, and the ski season is nearly over. Only a smattering of snow remains along the roads, along with the manmade swaths of white that wind down the mountains, delineating the few ski runs still open.
The temperature gauge on her BMW steadily declines as she rises, dropping from sixty-four at the base to fifty-two when she finally pulls into the sheriff’s station just before noon.
“Maureen, it’s nice to meet you,” Burns says.
The captain looks good. Without thick layers of clothing and worry, he’s more youthful than the last time I saw him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t stop in to say hello when you were in the hospital,” he says.
“I wouldn’t have wanted you to. I’m glad all your efforts went into looking for Oz.”
“Wish we would have found him. Bothers me that he’s still out there. Though I understand Jack Miller and Vance have taken over the search.”
Mo’s eyes widen in surprise. Chloe told Mo that my dad went to the cabin to recuperate and to get away from my mom. Everyone assumes he went alone. Now Mo knows Vance is with him, a strange duo. And they’re looking for Oz, even stranger. The question is what she will do with the information. In true Mo style, her face reveals nothing.
“So I understand you have some questions about that day,” Burns says.
“Just about some of the pieces that are missing.”
“Can I ask why?”
Mo hesitates, still unsure herself. “History is getting blurred,” she says finally. “All of us that were there that day remember it slightly different—not just from different perspectives but with different facts—and I want to get it straight. I’m not sure why, but it’s important to me.”
“Makes it easier to understand,” Burns says, matter of fact. “Helps me when I write a case report for the same reason. Takes the emotion out of it and boils it down to what it really is: usually rotten luck, coincidence, bad decisions, and sometimes lousy people.”
Mo nods, relief on her face that he gets it.