Seven-year legal waiting period

The Seven-year legal waiting period is Indiana’s rule for treating a missing person as legally alive until evidence of biological death emerges or seven years have passed since the last evidence of life. In the novel, it is more than a deadline: it holds the Pickett estate, the brothers’ home, and their choices in suspension while the family confronts the possibility that Russell Pickett is already dead.

The rule and its legal meaning

An administrator of the Pickett family’s affairs explains the rule to Aza Holmes when she asks who will care for Davis Pickett and Noah Pickett. The administrator says Russell is legally alive because Indiana law considers a person alive until either biological evidence of death appears or seven years elapse from the last evidence of life. The administrator believes Russell is both legally and biologically living, but presents the legal status as the answer the law can provide.

That answer differs from Aza’s concern. She is asking whether anyone will actually look after the brothers, not who has formal responsibility for them. The administrator identifies separate legal arrangements: the administrator handles the family’s financial affairs, a house manager looks after the home, and Davis, declared an emancipated minor, is his brother’s legal guardian. The distinction between legal provision and personal care makes the waiting period part of a broader tension between what the family’s arrangements guarantee on paper and what the brothers need in practice.

The estate held in suspense

The seven-year period matters because Russell’s will directs his estate to benefit Tua, his pet tuatara, until her death; afterward, the wealth is to go to a trust benefiting tuatara more generally. The public announcement of this plan makes the consequences of Russell’s legal status unusually stark. If he is considered alive, the estate does not pass as it would after his death; if his death is established, Davis and Noah risk losing the house and the resources tied to their father’s fortune.

When Aza learns where Russell may be, she decides to tell Davis rather than the police. She fears that a police discovery of a dead Russell would mean that the house would no longer belong to the brothers and would instead pass under the arrangement benefiting Tua. The seven-year wait therefore gives the brothers a possible period in which to remain in their home, but it also makes silence a choice with consequences for their knowledge of their father’s fate.

Choosing truth over the waiting period

After Aza tells Davis, he asks what to do and repeatedly returns to the question while lying beside her on a musty couch. Aza tells him that he has seven years before Russell would be legally presumed dead under the rule, and frames that span as enough time to build a new life. Davis says they have nobody now. Aza cannot promise that he can count on her, so she points instead to his brother: he has Noah.

Later, Davis and Noah tell police where to look. Aza’s mother observes that they could have waited seven years before Russell was declared dead, preserving seven more years in the house, but that they chose not to leave their father underground. Their decision brings the rule’s abstract timeline into direct conflict with filial duty: the brothers give up the advantage of delay rather than let the possibility of their father’s body remain unaddressed.

Discovery and significance

A month later, a television report says Russell’s body has been found in an offshoot of the Pogue’s Run tunnel. Authorities have not positively identified him, but sources close to the investigation believe the body is his and say he likely died of exposure within a few days of disappearing. The report says police found the body after an anonymous tip. Aza immediately texts Davis with condolences and assures him that neither she nor Daisy Ramirez tipped off the police; her mother says Davis and Noah were the ones who told officers where to search.

The discovery brings the long legal interval into collision with biological evidence, while the report’s uncertainty preserves a distinction between what authorities suspect and what they have officially confirmed. The rule has allowed Aza to imagine that the brothers might keep their home for seven years, but it cannot settle the human question of whether they should leave their father undiscovered. Their choice makes the waiting period a measure not only of legal time but also of the cost of postponing the truth.