The lumber store. In this middle-of-night hour she couldn’t read the orange banner that hung in the window. Still, she knew the words by heart: This community is supported by timber. Those same banners had been strung throughout town since the spotted owl days.
This store was the heart of the West End. In the summer it opened as early as three o’clock in the morning. And at that, men like her father were already there and waiting impatiently to get started on their day.
She eased her foot off the accelerator and coasted through a haze of fog. So often she’d sat in her dad’s pickup outside this store, waiting for him.
He’d been a cutter, her dad. A cutter was to an ordinary logger what a thoracic surgeon was to a general practitioner. The cream of the crop. He’d gone into the woods early, long before his buddies; alone. Always alone. His friends—other cutters—died so often it stopped being a surprise. But he’d loved strapping spurs onto his ankles, grabbing a rope, and scaling a two-hundred-foot-tall tree. Of course, it was an adventurer’s job. Near death every day and the money to match the risk.
They’d all known it was only a matter of time before it killed him.
She hit the gas too hard. The old truck lurched forward, bucked, and died. Julia started it up again, found first gear, and headed out to the old highway.
No wonder she’d stayed at the hospital so late. She’d told herself it was about the girl, about doing a great job, but that was only part of it. She’d been putting off going back to the house where there were too many memories.
She parked the truck and went inside. The house was full of shapes and shadows, all of which were familiar. Ellie had left the stairwell light on for her; it was the same thing Mom had always done, and the sight of it—that soft, golden light spilling down the worn oak stairs—filled her heart with longing. Her mother had always waited up for her. Never in this house had she gone to bed without a nighttime kiss. No matter how badly Mom and Dad were fighting, she always got her kiss from Mom. Julia was thirteen years old the first time she’d seen through the veil; at least that was how she now thought of it. In one day she’d gone from believing her family was happy to knowing the truth. Her mother had come in that night with bloodshot eyes and tearstained cheeks. Julia had only asked a few questions before Mom started to talk.
It’s your father, she’d whispered. I shouldn’t tell you, but …
Those next few words were like well-placed charges. They blew Julia’s family—and her world—apart. The worst part was, Mom never told Ellie the same things.
Julia went up the stairs. In the tiny second-floor bathroom that attached to her girlhood bedroom, she brushed her teeth, washed her face, and slipped into the silk pajamas she’d brought with her from Beverly Hills, then went into her old room.
There was a note on her pillow. In Ellie’s bold handwriting, it read: Meeting at Congregational church at six a.m. to discuss girl’s placement. Be ready to leave at 5:45.
Good. Her sister was working on it.
Julia stayed up another hour, filling out all the paperwork required to be appointed temporary foster parent for the child, then she climbed into bed and clicked off the light. She was asleep almost instantly.
At four o’clock she woke with a start.
For a second she didn’t know where she was. Then she saw the ballerina music box on her white desk and it all came back to her. She remembered her dream, too. She’d been a girl again—that girl. The scarecrow-thin, socially awkward daughter of Big Tom Cates.
She threw the covers off her and stumbled out of bed. Within minutes she was in her jogging clothes and outside, running down the old highway, past the entrance to the national park.
By five-fifteen she was back home, breathing hard, feeling like her grown-up self again.
Pale gray predawn light, as watery as everything else in this rain-forest climate, shone in flashlight beams through the stand of hemlock trees that grew along the river.
She didn’t decide to move, didn’t want to, but before she knew it, she was walking across the yard toward her father’s favorite fishing hole.
Move back, Little Bit. Outta my way. I can hardly concentrate on my fishin’ with you skulkin’ beside me.
No wonder she had moved away from here and stayed away. The memories were everywhere; like the trees, they seemed to draw nutrients from the land and the rain.
She turned and went back into the house.
Julia and Ellie were the first to arrive. They pulled up into a spot near the church’s front door and got out of the car.
Ellie started to say something, but the words were lost in the crunching sound of wheels on gravel. A snake of cars rolled into the parking lot, lining up side by side. Earl and Myra were the first people out of their car. Earl was in full dress uniform, but his wife had on fuzzy pink sweats. Her hair was up in rollers and covered by a bright scarf.