“So that’s how you feel about him? Like a brother?”

“What? No. Or…yes! Yes, like a long-lost brother who disappointed the entire family and…brought shame on our name.”

“Your name?”

“Metaphorically speaking. We don’t have the same last name.”

“Which means he’s not your brother.”

A breath gusted from my mouth. “You get the point.” But when I looked over at Charlie, his expression told me he did not get the point. “Anyway, listen, Charlie.” I took his hand in mine. “This situation is bound to bring up heightened emotions. I think we should all acknowledge that none of us are going to be on our best behavior during this journey, even though we’ll try our best. There’s no rule book for what we’re experiencing, right?”

“You’re right.” He gripped my hand tighter. “We just have to make it through this journey and get back home. And then everything will go back to normal. We’ll go back to normal.”

I smiled, but it felt forced. What about that statement rubbed me the wrong way? I didn’t know, and so I wrote it off as the heightened emotions I’d just spoken of. Tuck and I had always been up and down and all over the place and that was only going to get worse now.

Tuck rounded a bend a few hundred feet ahead and for a couple minutes was out of sight. When we reached the turn, I saw him hunkered down behind some bushes on the side of the road, holding a pair of binoculars that the sheriff must have given him. He looked over his shoulder and gestured for us to hurry to where he was. “Get down,” he said quietly when we caught up. “I hear horses up ahead.”

“Horses?” Charlie asked. “Are they dangerous?”

“Not the horses, but the people riding them might be. I think we should wait here and see who they belong to.”

“What if no one’s riding them?” Charlie asked. “What if they’re…abandoned horses?”

“Then we might have our next ride,” Tuck said.

“Can I see?” I asked. He lowered the binoculars and looked at me, his lips thinning so that I thought he was going to say no. But then he handed the binoculars to me and moved to the side so I could look through the foliage like he’d been doing.

I put the lenses to my face and moved the binoculars from one side of the road to the other. The road we’d been traveling had been barren of businesses for the last few miles, save for a few empty, unmanned vegetable stands, only farms visible way out on the horizon. But several businesses were situated up ahead, including a few streets that stretched in other directions. It appeared to be the outskirts of a small town.