Daniel didn’t turn, but I saw his ears lift. "I don’t need salt. I need a scent. She came out here, then she doubled back. I lost her at the fence, but there’s something else."
Beth bent down, poked a muddy boot print. "That’s a someone, not a something."
Daniel shook his head. "No. It’s a something. Human, but off." His boot snagged a loose stone and it tumbled away, lost in the undergrowth. "Henry, you getting anything on your phone?"
Henry was texting. "No service. Why do you think she ran out here? Isn’t that what she’d least want to do?"
The woods thickened as we walked, trees pressed together. The farther we went, the heavier the silence grew, muffled except for Daniel’s footfalls and Henry’s periodic sniffs. My brother wasn’t crying, but he wasn’t far from it.
We’d been searching for Alice for hours.
"Hold up," Daniel said, raising his hand. It was a cop’s gesture. He used to be the chief of police, and his body still remembered how to order a crowd even if we were the only idiots within five miles.
We stopped, all in a row, and listened. A squirrel darted across our path up ahead and disappeared into a nearby bush.Something colorful in the bush, not the squirrel or the plants, it was a color not found in nature.
"That’s not her," Daniel said. He took another step, and we all took three, clumped together like sheep behind a border collie.
Then Henry squatted, peering at the ground. He picked up something small and fuzzy and held it out. "Isn’t this…"
It was a scrap of orange yarn. Like the yarn Alice used to make her lopsided mittens, or the yarn that peeked from her bag when she came over for soup and Netflix.
I took the scrap and rolled it between my thumb and forefinger. "She was working on a scarf. Said she needed to finish it before the cold came." I looked at Daniel. "Do you think?—"
He nodded. "She’s leaving a trail." He didn’t sound hopeful, more like he wanted to believe it but also believed in statistics and the odds weren’t good.
Beth picked at the leaves and found another scrap, this one stuck to a prickle bush. "It goes that way," she said, pointing downhill.
"Let’s go," I said, but Henry was already moving, his scarf billowing behind him. I tried to keep up, but Daniel lengthened his stride and caught up to my brother with no effort. Beth and I jogged after, limbs numb from cold and nerves.
The scraps continued you on for some time. Every time we thought we’d lost the trail, we’d spot another one. My heart was racing with fear and anticipation. This trail was going to lead to something, I just knew it. I only hoped Alice would be happily waiting there at the end.
Even though that sounded too good to be true.
There was so much happening here. We could hope for the best, but we needed to be prepared for the worst. That thought entered my mind as we escaped a particularly thick patch of trees.
Up ahead… we found Alice near a little creek, huddled on a stone with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around her head. She was wearing an orange sweater, but the yarn had been pulled out on the bottom, probably to leave the bits of it we’d seen in the woods. Her sweatshirt was muddy, her face streaked with tears.
Henry got there first. He stopped, hands out like he’d spook her if he got too close. "Alice?" he said. "Hey, it’s me. You’re okay. I’m here."
She looked up. Her eyes were swollen, but her lips tried to form a smile. She let out a wobbly little gasp, not quite a laugh, and reached for him. Henry took his jacket off and wrapped her in it, then wrapped himself around her in a hug that said everything he wasn’t.
Alice clutched him like a life raft. “Grandma,” she rasped.
“It’s okay,” Henry said, but we didn’t know enough to be sure that was true.
Daniel scanned the trees, muscles tense like he expected wolves or worse. "Let’s get her back," he muttered.
Beth hung back, biting her lip. I joined her, and we watched as Henry talked soft nonsense to Alice, then gently lifted her off the stone and started leading her toward us. I expected her to walk, but she was trembling, so Henry, with a grunt, picked her up and cradled her. I never thought he’d be able to carry more thana large watermelon, let alone a person, but adrenaline makes people do weird things.
We all turned and followed Daniel back up the hill, retracing our steps. The path was harder now, mud slicked up and roots even more treacherous. Henry stumbled a few times but kept Alice steady, talking to her the whole way.
"You’re safe, you’re good, we got you, it’s fine, it’s all fine," he repeated, as if saying it enough would make it true.
Beth looked sideways at me. "She’s not okay," she whispered. "She’s not even close."
I nodded. "Can you do anything?"
She shook her head. "I don’t have anything that will help. She needs food and sleep.”
