A snow squall began to rock us back and forth. We were about sixty feet above the mountainside—no surviving a fall of that height—and I imagined what it must have been like that horrible day that lift had broken and people went tumbling to the ground.
Stacey interrupted my morbid thoughts. “I saw on Facebook that Cabot Lumber is expanding,” she said.
“Makes sense. Cabot just lost a major competitor. I can introduce you to the Night Watchmen après ski if you want.”
“I don’t want to meet any of the people you told me about. Let’s have all our meals in our room.”
“Fine by me.” The cold stung my teeth when I smiled.
“I also saw on Facebook that Dyer was getting fan mail.”
“That’s no surprise, either. He did what a lot of people dream of doing. Logan Dyer acted out a bunch of collective fantasies.”
“You said he wanted to be a hero.”
As we neared the top of the lift, I spotted the ski patrol shack where I had met Josh Davidson, Adam Langstrom’s only friend in the world, according to his mom. I hadn’t heard whether Amber had held a funeral for her son. If so, it must have been a lonely affair.
“Do you believe in conspiracies, Stace?”
“What, like Area 51?”
“I’m talking about in real life.”
“I think there’s a lot about what goes on in the world I’m glad I don’t know.”
“I wish I felt the same.”
We pushed the safety bar up. As we slid clear, Stacey turned in the direction of the nearest trail.
“Wait,” I said.
I reached down and unfastened my boots from my skis.
“I’ve got to go do something first,” I said.
“You should have taken a leak at the bottom.”
I propped my skis over my shoulder. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes! How much coffee did you drink this morning?”
I smiled and waved and began to hike up above the chairlift, heading in the direction of the old Ghost Lift. My father’s dog tags bounced against my sternum. I had decided to keep them as my own amulet of protection. They had been with me the day Carrie Michaud’s knife went astray, and I had no better explanation for my deliverance.
This close to the summit, the trees were all stunted or disfigured from the high winds and cold. It was a deceiving landscape. A white spruce might be eighty years old yet no taller than a Christmas tree.
I kept climbing until I saw the cairn of stones poking up from the snowdrifts, the spot that marked the summit. I paused in the lee of the wind and looked out at the white landscape at my feet. Over the past two weeks, when I had thought ahead to this moment of farewell, I had imagined having a clear view of the mountains—a panorama from Bigelow to Saddleback—but it was not to be.
The wind rose to a full-throated howl as I reached into my jacket for the tin I had brought with me from the funeral home in Augusta. It was hard to imagine that an entire human life could be contained in something so small. Without ceremony, I unscrewed the top and tossed my father’s earthly remains into the air. The wind caught the sooty ashes and bits of bone and blew them out among the snowflakes, over the wild land he had once called home.
Author’s Note
There is no Widowmaker Ski Resort, but East Kennebago mountain, where I have set so much of the action in this novel, is very real and remains largely forested and undeveloped (long may it remain so). Nor does a Fenris Unchained Wolf Refuge exist, although I drew inspiration from the former Loki Clan Rescue, which I had the good fortune to visit before its demise. That sanctuary, I should add, has been reborn as part of the New England Wolf Advocacy Rescue Center, whose work I support. As I noted in my first book in the Mike Bowditch saga, The Poacher’s Son, the villages of Flagstaff and Dead River were razed in 1949 to make way for a reservoir (i.e., Flagstaff Lake) for the Central Maine Power Company; I have resurrected these ghost towns again, in memoriam. In fact, many of the locations in this novel are fictional and should not be confused with actual places. That goes for the characters as well.
I owe a debt of thanks to the following people who each helped, in his or her way, to bring this book to life: My agent, Ann Rittenberg.
Everyone at Minotaur Books, in particular Charlie Spicer, Andrew Martin, Sarah Melnyk, Paul Hochman, April Osborn, David Rotstein (for another rocking cover), and my copy editor, Carol Edwards.
The Maine Warden Service, especially Cpl. John MacDonald, Wdn. Troy Thibodeau, and Wdn. Scott Stevens.
Detective Sgt. Bruce Coffin (Ret.), of the Portland Police Department.
Nancy Marshall, Maine’s best publicist.
Steve Smith, Esq., for information about the laws and policies pertaining to the prosecution and punishment of sexual offenders in the state of Maine.
Dave Perry, for giving me a night tour of the Sugarloaf ski slopes via snow cat.
Lee Kantar, of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, for taking me along on a helicopter ride as part of the department’s 2012 aerial survey of moose in the North Woods.
Ron Joseph.
Dr. James Marshall.
Greg Drummond, Master Maine Guide and proprietor of Claybrook Mountain Lodge.