Heartwood

Valerie writes that she knows her mother will want to know the truth if she doesn’t survive. Still, she struggles to place the events in the right order. It is difficult to tell her story. She notes her dwindling food supply but adds that she knows that water is more important. She tries to eat a small grub but cannot bring herself to do it. She knows she should supplement her meager stores but knows nothing about foraging. Because of a lacerated foot, she is scared to stray too far from her campsite, even to search for food. Her thoughts wander, and she reflects on how she came to hike the trail: She has always been an introvert and wanted an opportunity to “heal.” She is also not squeamish, and this quality served her well in her nursing career. She recalls the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and then snaps herself back to the present. She manages to eat several grubs. She hears a plane and tries to flag it down, but it passes by her. Her anger mounts—toward the plane, toward the situation, and toward “him.”

Cody asks Santo about Gregory. Santo explains that Gregory was neither likable nor objectionable. He accepted Santo’s presence on Sparrow’s hike and was polite to him. He did his best to support Sparrow in every way that he could, but the couple did “bicker[],” and Sparrow began to want to spend increasingly more time on the trail and less on her pit stops with Gregory.

The fourth day of the search is bright and clear, the best kind of weather for rescue operations. There is to be a press conference that day, and Bev is chagrined to learn that Gregory will be representing the family. She cannot help but feel that his long-sleeved shirt in spite of the heat, his “trimmed beard,” and his reserved manner will not appear sympathetic. Valerie’s parents seem to love Gregory, however, and Bev tries to keep her mind open.

The tip line gets a message from a caller who met Sparrow on the hike and was suspicious of her hiking partner, Santo. The caller brings up his size and race multiple times.

After the press conference, Bev learns that one of the planes spotted a shiny object that might be Valerie’s space blanket. Excited, Bev instructs the pilot to refuel and head back out. Then, she alerts the warden whose search quadrant the blanket was spotted in. He agrees to send his team to search on the ground.

Lena goes out at dawn to forage. She thinks about her daughter, Christine, and ex-husband, Roger. She and Roger met as undergraduates. They were kindred spirits, but things soured after they got married. Lena became pregnant, which ended her plans to attend graduate school and her career aspirations even as Roger was still free to pursue his dreams. They eventually divorced, and Lena focused all her energy on parenting. She was never able to be a traditionally loving mother to Christine, but she studied her with a “scientist’s attention.”

She recalls the difficulty of the COVID-19 pandemic: Although she did not mind the solitude, she was upset by the way that the lockdown upended her routine. She especially hated the period during which community residents were not allowed to leave their rooms. It was during the pandemic that she reached out to her friend TerribleSilence on Reddit, and she turns to him again now to discuss Valerie’s disappearance. She learns from him that there is a top-secret military training facility near where Valerie disappeared. He thinks that someone from that facility might have hurt her. Lena finds this scenario plausible, as her own daughter was once “abducted” (it later emerges that she eloped). She learns that TerribleSilence went searching for Valerie and was escorted away from the facility by one of its military staffers. The two agree that something must be done.

The shiny object was not a space blanket but a thermos that did not belong to Valerie. Feeling despondent, Bev decides that she wants to head to the search area. It is unorthodox to do so, but she will take Rob, and the two will look for Valerie. This means leaving someone else in charge, but Bev thinks that Mike will be able to handle running things for a few hours in their absence.

She and Rob head out. When they reach the search area, they find the search team tired and dispirited. They learn that while the dogs did pick up Valerie’s scent, they then lost it. As they stand talking, Bev notices the approach of three military men. They are from the nearby training facility and have been sent to help with the search. Bev knows that the facility conducts advanced training for soldiers likely to be taken captive in battle. She is wary of the men but accepts their help willingly; though aware of the rumors that swirl around the place, she doesn’t typically pay them much attention. Nevertheless, despite Bev’s efforts to discourage journalists and bloggers from making more of the facility than they should, there are accusations that the facility played a role in Valerie’s disappearance.

The search area for missing hiker Valerie Gillis includes a “black site,” a secret military training facility called a SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape school). The school holds “war games,” hyper-realistic training sessions meant to mimic the experience of enemy capture. Because this experience is extremely stressful for its participants and because the school’s operations are shadowy, Gareth Marsh, writing for the Portland Packet, believes that the game wardens should focus more of their energy on whether this school might have a connection to Valerie’s disappearance.

Valerie writes that she didn’t even see the real danger when it arrived. A young man approached, told Valerie that they were not safe, and instructed her to follow him. Thinking he needed help, she did. He led her on a chase through the woods, threw her pack into a ravine because he said “they” were tracking him through her, and eventually directed her to a clearing that contained a tarp and a supply bag hanging from a tree. By that point, Valerie had cut her leg and was dehydrated and exhausted. He explained that there was a secret military training facility nearby that was working on a plan to permanently darken the earth, and he said that he was avoiding its “Night Army.” Valerie realized that the man had a mental illness, but he tied her to him with a length of rope and went to sleep, leaving her unable to escape.