Baby Face Monster stood inside the mouth of his cave and practiced lowering his voice. He was thirty years old. His shoulders were broad. His head was the size of any grown man's. But his cheeks stayed round and pink, and his skin had never learned a single line. That was why he lived here, in the dark hollow of the forest, alone. That was why, when a stranger's footsteps had crunched up the slope an hour ago, he had bolted inside and hidden. He could still hear her out there. A woman. She was calling into the trees for someone named Dad. Her voice cracked on the second call. He pressed his bare back against the cold stone and looked down at his blue jeans, the only clothes he owned. He needed her to leave. He also, painfully, needed her to stay. If he stepped out and she laughed, or screamed, or spoke to him the way people spoke to toddlers, he would crawl back into the dark and never come out again. He rehearsed. "Ma'am. I can help you." Too soft. "Ma'am, I know these woods." Better. He tried to stand the way he thought a grown man stood: chest out, chin down. He tried a frown. On his face, a frown looked like a baby about to cry. He wiped it off. A branch snapped close to the entrance. Through the gap he saw her — the researcher, the one whose voice had been cracking. A white lab coat, muddy at the hem. Glasses fogged from the climb. She held a folded paper in one hand and a small flashlight in the other, and she was already lifting the beam toward the cave. He had no more time to practice. He stepped into the light before she could shine it on him. "Ma'am," he said. He kept his voice low. "Don't come closer yet. I don't want to scare you." Her flashlight jerked up anyway and caught his face. He watched her eyes do what every pair of eyes did. They started at his shoulders, traveled up his chest, and stopped at his cheeks. Her mouth opened. He waited for the laugh. It didn't come. She squinted, then tilted her head. "You're a man," she said. Not a question. A correction, like she was arguing with her own eyes. "Yes." "You live out here?" "Yes." She lowered the flashlight. She unfolded the paper and held it up so he could see. A photograph of a man with grey hair. "I'm Ellie Jamieson," she said. "I've been looking for my father for eleven days. Have you seen him?" Baby Face Monster looked at the picture. He had seen that man. A few years ago. Baby Face Monster knew the man had been a researcher. He drew a breath and gave her the first real answer of his adult life. "I have seen him before, years ago. I believe he was researching me. He had a camp setup not far from here.”

Ellie lowered the photograph. She took one small step toward him, and Baby Face Monster stepped back. The dim light at the cave's mouth slid off his shoulders and washed across his round cheeks. He saw her eyes flick to them, and his hand jerked up to cover his face before he could stop it. "Sorry," he said through his fingers. "Sorry. Give me a second." Ellie stopped walking. She clicked off her flashlight and slid it into her coat pocket. "Okay," she said. "I'll stay here." He turned his back to her and faced the deep hollow of the cave. His breath echoed off the stone. Every time she moved closer, the light moved with her, and his face lit up like a lantern. She would keep seeing the cheeks. She would keep having to correct herself. He could not talk about her father from behind his hand for the rest of his life. "I want to help you find him," he said to the dark. "But I can't stand in the light." "Then don't," Ellie said. "Come deeper in. I'll follow." He looked over his shoulder. She had already sat down on a flat rock near the entrance and was unlacing her muddy boots, like a person settling into a house. He did not understand it. Nobody had ever walked toward the dark part of him on purpose. He led her past the mouth of the cave into the wider hollow behind it, where the walls curved and the light thinned to almost nothing. He sat against the far wall. She sat across from him, close enough that he could hear her breathing, far enough that she was only a shape. "Better?" she asked. "Yes." "Good. Because I need to see you talk, not your hand." He laughed once, surprised. The sound bounced off the stone and came back to him. "Tell me about my dad," she said. "From here. Take your time." So he did. He told her about the camp the older man had set up near the ridge. He told her about the notebooks, the questions, the way her father had asked to shake his hand on the second day and had not flinched. He spoke without covering his face. In the near-dark, Ellie was only a voice and the shine of her glasses. She could not see his cheeks, and he could not see her seeing them. His voice steadied. His shoulders dropped. When he finished, Ellie was quiet a long moment. "He liked you," she said. "I can hear it in how you talk about him." "He did." "Then walk me out to the entrance," she said. "I need daylight to think." He stood. He followed her back toward the pale mouth of the cave. Halfway there, the light found his cheeks again, and this time he did not raise his hand. He kept walking. Ellie glanced back once and did not stop.

The next morning Ellie came back to the cave with a paper bag of bread and a thermos. Baby Face Monster met her at the entrance this time. He had decided to stand in the light. He had decided to talk about her father like a man would talk, not from behind a hand, not from the dark. He wanted her to leave today sure of what he was. "I made a list," he said. "Places he mentioned. Trails he asked about." "Good," Ellie said. She sat on the flat rock and poured coffee into the thermos cup. "Tell me." He started to speak. His hands went up on their own. They chopped the air in front of his chest, palms open, fingers spread wide, the way a boy explains a bug he found. He heard his own voice rise at the end of every sentence like a question. He pointed at nothing. He rocked on his heels. He watched Ellie's eyes drop to his hands, then to his face, then to his hands again. She did not smile. She was working to keep her face still. That was worse than a smile. He stopped talking. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his blue jeans. "Keep going," Ellie said gently. "I'm listening." "You're watching," he said. "You're watching me flap around like a kid." She did not deny it. She set the cup down. "Your voice was fine. It's just—your hands." He turned away from her. His face burned. He had spent a night rehearsing sentences and had forgotten his own arms. Every gesture he owned belonged to the boy his face had trapped him as. He had no adult movements to reach for. He had never stood next to grown men long enough to copy them. He walked back into the cave. Against the far wall, propped where he had left it years ago, was a carved wooden cane. Ellie's father had leaned on it the week he stayed at the ridge. He had forgotten it when he left. Baby Face Monster had kept it because it was the only thing the man had touched that stayed behind. He brought it out into the light. He set the tip on the stone and rested both hands on the curved handle, the way the older man used to when he listened. "Ask me again," he said. Ellie's eyes moved to the cane. Something in her face softened and steadied at the same time. He spoke. His hands stayed on the wood. The cane held them down. His voice came out lower, slower, because his body had nothing to flail with. He told her about the trail her father had walked, the questions he had asked, the notebook he had filled. He did not point. He did not rock. When he finished, Ellie was writing. "That," she said without looking up, "was a man talking to me." He kept his hands on the handle so she would not see them shake.

Ellie closed her notebook. She looked at the cane in his hands, then up at his face. "Take me there," she said. "To the camp. I need to see it." He had known she would ask. He had dreaded it since the first day. He nodded once and started walking. He kept the cane in front of him and matched his steps to its tap on the ground. It slowed him down. That was the point. A grown man did not run ahead of a woman through the trees. The ridge trail took an hour. He did not talk much. He named a fork her father had liked. He pointed out a stump where the man had eaten lunch. He used the cane to point, not his finger. Ellie walked behind him and wrote things down. They came through a stand of thin pines and the camp was there. He stopped at the edge. The tent still stood, but it was wrong. The canvas was torn in long strips down one side. Patches hung loose. Papers lay scattered in the dirt, curled and stained by rain. A shirt hung from a branch, bleached grey by years of sun. A tin cup lay on its side by a black ring of old fire stones. Animals had been through everything. Small bones and scat marked the ground. Ellie stopped beside him. She did not speak. "He never came back for it," Baby Face Monster said. He kept his voice low and even. He kept both hands on the cane. "I told you he left. I thought he left." Ellie walked forward. She knelt by the papers. She picked one up, then another. Her hand started to shake. She set them down. She went to the tent. She pulled back the torn flap. He watched her shoulders. He watched them lock. She stayed inside a long time. When she came out, her face was wet and her mouth was closed hard. She walked past him to the fire ring and sat down in the dirt. "How long," she said. "Years," he said. "I don't know how many. I never came up here after that first week. I thought he had gone home to you." "You said he left." "He said he was leaving. He packed in the morning. I went back to the cave." He tightened his grip on the wood. "I should have checked. I'm sorry." Ellie put her hands over her face. She cried without sound. He did not go to her. He did not know if she wanted him near. He stood where he was and held the cane straight and waited, the way her father used to wait when someone needed a minute. After a while she lowered her hands. She looked at him across the dead fire. "Help me bury him," she said. "Yes," he said.

Ellie sat by the dead fire and did not move. Baby Face Monster stood with the cane and watched her back shake. He knew he had to go to her. He also knew he did not know how. A grown man would hold her. A grown man would say the right words. If he did it wrong, she would look up and see a bald child in blue jeans trying to pat a crying woman, and every careful thing he had built with her these past days would break. He set the cane against the tent pole. He needed his hands free. He walked to her slowly, the way her father had walked in the mornings when his knees hurt. He stopped a step behind her. "Ellie." She did not turn. He knelt. Not beside her, not yet. Behind her, a small distance, so she would not have to look at his face. He remembered how she had done this for him in the cave. She had sat in the dark so he could speak. He could give her the same thing now. He could be a voice without a face. "You don't have to talk," he said. "I'm here. I'll stay here." She drew a breath that shook. "He liked this spot," Baby Face Monster said. He kept his voice low and level. "He said the pines cut the wind. He made coffee here every morning. He said you took yours black." Ellie made a small sound. Not a laugh. Close to one. "He talked about you," he said. "A lot. He said you were smarter than him. He was proud of that." She turned her head. Not all the way. Just enough that he saw the side of her face, wet, red. She reached back without looking. Her hand found his sleeve and held it. He did not move. He let her hold the cloth. He kept his other hand flat on his knee where she could see it was still. He did not pat her. He did not rock. He did not say anything a child would say. They stayed like that for a long time. The wind moved the torn canvas. A paper lifted and settled. When she let go of his sleeve, she wiped her face with the heel of her hand and stood up. She looked down at him kneeling in the dirt and did not flinch at the size of him, at the smoothness of his face. "Thank you," she said. "We'll start in the morning. I need a shovel." "I have one at the cave," he said. She nodded. She walked to the tent and began, slowly, to gather her father's papers into a stack. He picked up the cane and stood. His hands were steady. She had not looked at him like a child. She had looked at him like a man who had stayed.