A Sea of Unspoken Things

Micah picks James up in his truck. He asks if she is sure she wants to do this, and she replies that she is. They begin to make their way to Trentham Gorge, and James tentatively asks Micah if Ben could be Johnny’s son. With obvious hesitation, Micah tells her that Sadie has always adamantly maintained that Ben was the product of a one-night stand with a random logger. Johnny had once asked for a paternity test, but Sadie refused. Micah tells her that he has no idea if she’s telling the truth or not, but that he’s not sure why she would lie. James would love to have a nephew. She wonders what the truth is and thinks that it’s entirely possible that Sadie had kept the truth from Johnny out of spite. 

The two keep talking. Micah tells her that after she left, he spent some time driving around the West, living in his truck and camping. He returned home and started guiding, and now he knows he’ll never leave. He asks about James’s work, and she tells him about an upcoming show. 

James realizes that Johnny didn’t keep her informed about Micah because he didn’t want the two of them to be together or to maintain their connection. She wonders again how Johnny really died. She shares with Micah her confusion that Johnny didn’t have his camera with him on the day he died. Micah frowns at this and wonders if Johnny was just out observing. James is dubious. She asks about the day he found Johnny’s body. Micah looks visibly distraught as he tells her about it. He blames himself for waiting two days to go and check on him, but James feels that she is truly the one to blame. She should never have left Johnny alone in Six Rivers or helped him get a job with Quinn.

As they arrive at Trentham Gorge, it begins to rain heavily, and Micah gives James a raincoat. They make their way to the spot where Micah found Johnny, and James feels that the forest is alive. As they near her brother’s final resting place, James can feel his presence. Again, she hears a woman’s voice. Just as quickly as the sensations come, however, they fade, and James is left with more questions than answers about Johnny’s death.

The weather is too severe for James and Micah to make their way home that night, so Micah builds a fire and they decide to sleep in the back of his truck. Micah asks if James has been sensing Johnny’s presence again, and she responds that she didn’t know he was aware of that. He scoffs and tells her that Johnny had that kind of sixth sense about her, too; he always knew what she was feeling and when she was lying. He knew about Micah and James’s clandestine relationship long before James told him, he explains. James tells Micah that she has a partial feeling about what might have happened the day Johnny died, but that she can’t quite figure it out. She knows there was a woman with him in the woods, but she does not know who. Then, she thinks of the night Griffin died. She, Micah, and Johnny lied to protect Johnny and then never spoke of the event again. She and Micah grow quiet and then begin kissing. They are hesitant at first, but soon, there is an urgency to their actions. They take their clothes off, and they feel like they are teenagers again.

The next morning, James is sure she and Micah made a mistake by having sex. Micah is still asleep, and James looks out of the foggy truck windows and sees an owl. She is sure that it is subject 44, the most elusive of the project’s subjects and the reason Johnny spent so much time in the gorge. She read about this owl as she pored over all of Johnny’s project notes. Quickly, she finds a piece of paper and begins to sketch it. It flies away before she can finish, and she notices that Micah is awake, observing her. 

They discuss the previous night, and each is not sure whether it was a mistake. Micah pulls her arm toward him, looking at the scar that they both remember from when James gave herself the wound. Then, the talk turns to Johnny. Micah seems cagey as James asks about what he might have been involved in before he died. Micah appears to be tempering his reaction when she tells him she is sure that Johnny’s death was not an accident. She shows him the photograph of the pink backpack and is sure that Micah is hiding something. Finally, he tells her that the backpack belongs to Autumn, a high school student whom Johnny was mentoring. Nothing about that makes sense to James: She cannot understand why Johnny would have been out in the gorge with a teenager.

Two days pass since the night at the gorge, and Micah has not called or texted James. She thinks about their history together. They fell in love as teenagers but kept their relationship a secret from Johnny. The first time they had sex, Johnny called immediately after. He was intoxicated and had been in a car accident. They drove out to where he was, and after having Micah take Johnny home, James cut herself with a piece of the broken window and pretended she was the one driving. The ranger believed her, and the other driver in the accident had been drinking. She didn’t get in trouble, and no one knew Johnny had been there. This is how James got the scar on her arm. She reflects that she and Micah were always protecting Johnny. They never got to be truly together because they were always so focused on Johnny. 

James heads into town to buy groceries. Everyone is gathered for the high school soccer team’s upcoming game. Amelia’s son is one of the players, and she is going with the team for their last away match. James asks if they can talk when she returns. Hesitantly, she tells Amelia that James might not have been alone when he died. Amelia gives her a searching look and agrees. Again, James wonders what Amelia might know. She texts Olivia to see if she can come talk to her, and Olivia tells her to come over to the high school.

James asks Olivia about Autumn. Olivia explains that Autumn is an extremely gifted artist with a difficult home life. She has basically raised herself but didn’t struggle in school despite her situation. Olivia recognized her talent, and Johnny began to mentor her when her interest turned to photography. Olivia shows James some of Autumn’s photographs: They are of trees that look startlingly, hauntingly human. Autumn’s signature contains a small star that James recognizes from Johnny’s notes. One of his notebooks had a star like that and a note saying, “you changed my life” (152). 

Olivia tells her that Autumn had dated Ben, Sadie’s son. She broke up with him when she left for college, though. Johnny pulled some strings with CAS and got Autumn a scholarship to Byron, James’s alma mater. James wonders why Johnny didn’t ask her for help. Olivia has to leave, and James looks up Autumn’s Instagram account. She sees no evidence of Johnny on her photos and feels relieved that Johnny doesn’t seem to have done anything inappropriate. She reflects on the similarities between her and Autumn: Autumn, too, left for art school and hadn’t looked back. But then, she realizes that Autumn’s backpack was in a photograph taken in the gorge right before Johnny died.

James sits in the diner with Johnny’s laptop and phone. She has another vision of him in a neighboring booth but returns to the task at hand. She is looking for information about the nature of his relationship with Autumn, but she struggles to find anything concrete. There are no emails from Autumn, which James finds odd. Johnny’s account had her address saved, but he must have erased the messages. In his bank records, she finds no evidence that he visited her in San Francisco. She again comes across the mysterious $12,000 transaction, and she googles the vendor number. She finds that James made that payment to Byron, her alma mater and Autumn’s art school. 

Just then, Micah interrupts her. He sits down in the booth, looking over her piles of papers, the laptop, and the phone. She asks him if he thinks it’s odd that Johnny likely paid part of Autumn’s tuition, and Micah tells her that he doesn’t really understand much of what Johnny did. She considers this and then shares that she’s going to visit Josie in Fort Bragg. Micah offers to drive her, and she doesn’t refuse. He smiles and asks if they are okay, using “J,” James’s teenage nickname. Her heart floods with emotion as she tells him that they are.