Or rather, I did. But was I so starved for adventure, for closure . . . for redemption, maybe, that I’d go out in the cold and snow to look for a ruined tower when no one but a crazy old guy who apparently lived in Josh’s hardware store even knew it existed? When the voice I heard was probably a loon? Yes. The sad thing was, yes. I was the loon. I’d passed Josh’s family’s cabin half an hour earlier. Since then, I’d been slogging through the woods where there was no path, where the roots of trees seemed to come alive beneath my feet, and the branches reached down to grab me with their stabbing, scratching fingers. Yes, some of the snow had melted, but that made it no less icy, no less slippery. I slid on a patch of ice and grabbed at a tree branch. It grabbed back, scratching my face. I touched my glove to my cheek and saw a wet spot on the black background. Blood. Ahead, I saw nothing but trees and more trees. Where was the tower? Did it even exist? If it did, I couldn’t see it.
