Ranger

For one second, not more, something genuine came through.

I heard it.

I remember it exactly.

It was a small break in a flat surface, and then it smoothed over, and he was lying again.

I have thought for four years about what that break was.

I have not come to a conclusion I'm satisfied with.

My best guess is that somewhere inside the thing he had become, there was still a piece of Dale Riley that had loved someone once, and that when he borrowed the shape of a grief to use against us, that piece remembered what real grief had felt like, and for a second it surfaced.

That's the part that keeps me up at night.

Not the violence.

Not the years.

Not the eleven families who buried empty caskets while Dale was living in their mountains.

The thing that keeps me up is that he was still, in some residual way, a person.

Not a whole person.

Not most of a person.

But enough of one that when he reached for a piece of grief to manipulate three strangers in a shelter, he touched something real.

I don't know what to do with that.

I don't think there is anything to do with it.

I've decided to stop trying.

The last time I drove past the trailhead to Elk Pass was in September of 2025.

The sign was up.