Chapter 5 - Day Four
By day four, hunger changed everything.
Your thoughts slow.
Your legs become heavy.
Every hill feels twice as steep.
Noah stopped asking when we would get home.
That scared me more than his crying.
I kept talking.
About Claire.
Baseball.
His classmates.
Anything.
Then we found water.
A narrow stream.
We treated it as safely as circumstances allowed and rested.
That afternoon, Noah slipped.
I caught him before he fell down a rocky slope, but I tore my palm open against stone.
He stared at the blood.
“Dad!”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
Neither of us was.
That evening, while gathering branches, I discovered another object.
A torn piece of paper trapped beneath a rock.
Part of a printed map.
A red circle marked a location approximately six miles away.
On the back was handwriting.
Melissa’s.
IF THEY CHANGE THE PLAN, GO HERE.
I stared at it.
“They?”
Noah asked.
“I don’t know.”
The original note said:
Don’t come looking for us.
This second message suggested Melissa had prepared for something going wrong.
Maybe she hadn’t willingly abandoned us.
May you like
Or maybe different members of my family had different plans.
Either way, we finally had a destination.
