I park in the lot off Riley. We get out of the car, moving like prisoners on a death march. We don’t say much. What we say is out of necessity, things like “This way” and “Watch your step.” We’re not alone at the forest preserve. There are other people here, but it’s 7:00 a.m. and the path is far from crowded. This early in the morning, the people here are runners and bikers. They’re a different breed, almost aloof and detached as they slip on headphones and take off down the trail alone, lost in worlds of their own.
Lily and I move down the path at our own pace. We hang back, letting everyone else go first. We’re in no hurry. We don’t want to be here. It’s only of necessity that we are. We hold hands as we retrace Lily’s steps from the other day. We kick up pebbles as we walk, moving to the right as a biker comes soaring by, passing us on the left. The man rises to stand on the bike pedals as he passes, his calves like steel. Lily is jumpy. She doesn’t hear him approach. Only I do because he gives no warning. Lily doesn’t know he’s there until he’s directly beside her, and then she falls nervously back, her hand pulling from mine and going to her heart. “It’s okay,” I say. “It’s just a bike.” The biker doesn’t notice Lily’s reaction. He says nothing to us as he flies past, disappearing over a flat, wooden bridge and around a bend in the trees. I take Lily by the hand and we keep walking, watching the biker until we can’t see him anymore.
“Do you know where you were when you met up with Jake?” I ask Lily, my voice low in volume, looking down at the soft sunlight on her face. The sun is low, still rising. It’s beneath the treetops so that the light it gives off is subdued and serene. The trees are pretty this time of year, their color just barely starting to turn. Everything about this is serene except for the reason we’re here.
Lily looks around. She’s quiet, contemplative, trying to decide. The problem is that everything looks the exact same.
Lily knows this place well. If she can’t pin down an exact spot, no one can. The last marathon she ran, she trained here. That summer, it was her home away from home. Sometimes I came and ran with her, though I couldn’t keep up and I couldn’t run as far as she could. Inevitably, we got separated, which is how I know it’s almost impossible to get lost if you stay on the trail, which is a loop. Eventually you come back to where you started. Lily knows this trail like the back of her hand, and yet, except for the obvious landmarks—where it crosses the street, the part of it that overlooks the creek, or where it runs parallel to train tracks—it’s indistinguishable. You can’t tell one tree from the next.
“Maybe up here somewhere. It looked something like that,” Lily says. She points at an unmarked trail sitting just off the main trail, where the trees part ways and a small beaten path leads into the woods, disappearing. There are a vast number of unmarked trails that crisscross the forest preserve. I remember seeing them before. They’re the kind of thing that don’t get much, if any, foot traffic. They’re not on the map and they don’t always connect to any of the main trails. I know with 100 percent certainty that, if it wasn’t for Jake, Lily would never have stepped foot on one. She’s much more shrewd than that. She has good judgment. She would have stayed on the main trail, where there are people and where she wouldn’t get lost. But Jake is a friend and she didn’t have any reason to believe he couldn’t be trusted. He led her to believe there was something worth seeing down the more remote path. He took advantage of this, of her, of her trust in him. He led her away somewhere he knew he wouldn’t be seen.
“Do you think this is the path you took?” I ask gently.
“Maybe,” she says. Lily takes a closer look, trying to decide. I know she’s trying. She shakes her head, disappointed in herself. “It all looks the same, Christian,” she says.
“I know. It all looks the same to me too. Would you remember if we walked a little ways in?” I ask. From here, the trail aggressively thins so that only one person can pass through at a time.
“Maybe,” she says, but I can sense her hesitation. It’s darker down the trail, chilling in light of what’s happened. “I could try.”
“You sure?” I ask, and she nods. I don’t want to make her do anything she doesn’t want to do.
“I’ll be right behind you,” I say. I hold the tree branches back with a hand and let Lily go first. We have to walk single file. I don’t know that I want Lily to go first because I’m afraid of what we’ll find. I don’t want her to see something she can’t handle seeing. I want to see it first, so I can prepare her and protect her from it. But I also don’t want to lose her if she’s the one following behind.
The terrain is uneven. Lily has to use her hands to clear the brush as she walks. “I don’t remember it being this wooded,” she says.
“Maybe this isn’t the right path.”
“I don’t know. Jake went first and I followed. Maybe that’s why I don’t remember. He was blocking my view of it.” Lily followed him blindly into the woods. Jake is a big guy, something like six foot one and two hundred and ten pounds. His body would have filled the path.
He would have easily overpowered Lily.
“You want to go a little further?”
“Maybe,” she says. “Just a little.”
Lily walks awhile further. After some time, she stops walking and decides, “I don’t think this is it.”
“No?” I ask. “It still doesn’t look familiar?”
“I just remember that after a while, there was a clearing in the trees. I don’t see it.”
“Could the clearing be further down?”
“I don’t remember going this far.”
“Okay,” I say.
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for, babe. Let’s go back. We’ll try another path. We’ll keep looking. It’s fine.”
What are we looking for exactly? I don’t know. A body, blood, the bloody rock, or maybe nothing more than peace of mind.
I hang back and let Lily pass in front of me. We follow the footpath back to the main trail. From there, we walk further along the trail until we come to another one of these unmarked paths about a quarter mile down.
“What about this one?” I ask.
“Maybe.” Again it’s hard to tell. This one looks no different from the last. But we try. Same as last time, I let Lily go first and I follow behind. This path is different in that it isn’t narrow for long. A hundred feet into the trail, it widens so that Lily and I can walk side by side. It’s better this way. I like having her by my side.