The Deep, Deep Snow by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-07-30T23:03:07+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

Looking back, I think of the search for Jeremiah in two phases. The beginning and the end.

I say that with the perspective of time, because like I told you, all of this happened more than ten years ago. I’m no longer the young twenty-five-year old I was then. I didn’t know it at the time, but with the arrest of Keith Whalen, the beginning was about to be over. There was never really a middle in this case, just years of nothingness. And the end—well, the end was still a long way into the future.

Six weeks after Jeremiah disappeared, school began again without him. Summer was over. Life was moving on for everyone in town. The FBI had left town three weeks earlier with the case still formally unsolved. There were no more volunteers filling up the motels. The media had long since let the mystery fall out of the headlines. News feeds the beast, and when there’s no news to report, the beast moves on to new territory.

It’s not like we were going to forget Jeremiah, but there comes a point in every investigation where there are simply no more clues, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t create them. You can keep the file open. You can pull it out every few months and read it again and try to think of things you’ve missed. And then you realize that all you can do is put the file back and wait. Wait for something to happen. Wait for a break in the case that might never come.

I could see all that ahead of us as I sat in the Nowhere Café that September night with Dad, Monica, and Adam. We were finally getting back to our old routines. I was texting Jeannie Samper about my next volunteer shift at the raptor center. Monica was reading spicy excerpts of a romance novel to Moody in his urn. Adam was flipping through the pages of a motorcycle magazine. Dad had his newspaper open to the crossword puzzle.

“A destination for the well-meaning traveler,” he announced to the three of us as he twirled a sharpened pencil in his hand. “Four letters. Anyone? Any ideas?”

I was the only one paying attention. “Do you have any of the letters, Dad?”

“I don’t.”

I thought hard about the clue, but that’s the worst way to solve a puzzle. You can’t force it, you have to let it come to you. Sooner or later, at the strangest times, the answers would pop into my head, long after they didn’t matter anymore.

A destination for the well-meaning traveler. I had nothing.

Dad waited until it was obvious that I couldn’t help him, and then he buried himself in the other clues of the crossword again. He looked oddly free. Ever since he’d decided not to run for reelection, a burden had been lifted from him. He no longer had anything to prove. It had been good for his mind, too, without the stress. He was a little sharper.

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