It was almost six years since she’d stood on the balcony of that old faded-green Victorian house in Astoria with the train of her wedding dress wrapped around her body in the wind blowing off the ocean. Brendan had found her there like that, fresh tears in her eyes as she looked down at the beautiful rows of white chairs on the rain-soaked lawn below, each holding a puddle of water the size of a dinner plate. The storm had been unexpected, and the pink roses she’d woven so carefully through the archway were drooping and limp in the downpour. Brendan had found her there, and he’d married her there, on that terrible, wonderful gray afternoon. He’d squeezed the pastor and the six-person wedding party onto the creaking balcony in a little circle around the two of them, while the guests crowded in behind the glass door and gathered at the open kitchen window to witness nuptials that were barely audible over the sound of raindrops peppering the porch roof.
Annie’s eyes burned, and she blinked furiously as the flow of traffic picked up. When the congestion was behind her and the engine humming again, she risked a look at her reflection in the visor mirror. Her eyes were red and her cheeks were flaming. Add that to the waves of copper hair spilling over her shoulders and the golden freckles sprinkled across her skin, and she looked red all over. Annie flipped the visor shut and shook her head. No. She wouldnotcry again today. Twice was enough. There would be no more tears spilled over that two-timing—
Beeeeeeeeeeep.
Annie jerked the wheel right, swerving around a shredded piece of blown tire and narrowly missing the Subaru next to her, whose driver directed her back into her lane with both horn and middle finger.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, lifting a hand in apology as the Jeep bounced onto the bridge that spanned the wide river. It sang under the Wagoneeras Annie shot across it, toward the sign that announcedWELCOME TO WASHINGTON. The moment she passed it, she blew out the breath she’d been holding. So long, Oregon.
Far below in the water, two speedboats raced west toward the bridge, twin streaks of white foam spreading in their wakes. Beyond them was the open river, lined in frilly green cottonwoods, and the great, impossibly blue hills of the gorge. One after another, they folded into the distance beneath the sharp, white steeple of Mount Hood, and Annie drank the view in greedily as the tires bumped over the end of the bridge and landed back on solid ground.
She left the interstate for the narrow highway, and mile after mile passed beneath the tires of the Jeep. Around every sweeping curve, Annie expected to come upon a town, or at least a rural home or two, but this road seemed determined not to acknowledge mankind at all as she flew alone through the deep green corridor with tall, unbroken forest on both sides.
It was darker here, where the woods shadowed the highway, leaving just tiny patches of sunlight winking like stars on the pavement. Annie looked left and right, peering through the host of fir trunks flashing by. They were endless, thousands and thousands of evergreens that stood like a silent army, their pointed tips high out of sight no matter how she craned her neck to peer through the window.
No wonder. No wonder Dad had always laughed whenever people claimed Bend was the most beautiful town in the Pacific Northwest. He had known better. He had grown up near here, just west of the mountain.
Yes, Bend was beautiful, and they had their fair share of pines and waterfalls and stony mountains, but this… she had never seen a wilderness quite like this. The only word that came to mind wasexquisite.
A hawk swooped from bough to bough across the road, and Annie blinked her way out of hypnosis, the spell broken. She’d lost herself for a minute there, a glorious minute in which her troubles had slipped from the front of her mind and she had managed to forget. But there itwas again, worse than before, that blasted lump in her throat that just wouldn’t go down.
Annie stared at the steepening grade of the empty road ahead. The engine was starting to whine, and around the next curving switchback, her ears popped. This must be it, the ascent toward the mountain.
Up ahead, a sign promised a scenic overlook, and Annie tapped the brakes, swinging the Jeep around the curve and pulling it off the road onto a wide gravel shoulder edged by a guardrail, beyond which lay an alpine meadow and the snowcapped summit of Mount St. Helens.
Annie eased to a stop, turned the key, and withdrew it from the ignition. For a long, silent minute, she sat with her hands on the steering wheel as the engine creaked and settled. Four hours. She’d put four hours and two hundred miles between herself and Brendan, but she hadn’t managed to put one inch of distance between her heart and the pain of his betrayal.
Without warning, the sob she had been fighting burst out. Tears sprang into her eyes, and Annie wept like a child, furious and without restraint, slamming the heels of her hands into the steering wheel again and again, until her palms sang with pain.
When the tears were spent and all that remained was the empty ache, she leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes, drained by her outburst.
She was tempted to stay right there, to cave into exhaustion and fall asleep in the Jeep, but she forced her eyes open. She needed to get to town, settle in, and get her bearings before starting the new job tomorrow.
A throaty engine rose in pitch on the road behind her, and Annie watched in the rearview mirror as a log truck rumbled past, the gust of wind in its wake rattling the windows of the Jeep. When the sound died, she unbuckled her seat belt and stepped out of the car.
With the tears still wet on her cheeks, Annie walked to the guardrail and rested her hands there, the metal cool against the tingling skin of her palms. She pulled in the first truly deep breath she’d taken that day,crisp and clean and faintly scented with the white feathery blossoms hanging out here and there over the guardrail on spindly limbs. Dotting the field before her were the first of the spring’s wildflowers, red and purple, just now breaking like butterflies through their green cocoons, and beyond them, the majestic, ruined summit of Mount St. Helens.
Annie lifted her burning eyes to the hills. Somewhere in that wilderness was the tiny town of Lake Lumin, the place where she would attempt to put herself back together.
The woods had brought her to life once before, and they could do it again. Someday, perhaps when she least expected it, she would feel that familiar flicker, the pilot light sparking into being somewhere under the deep dark hole that Brendan had left in her chest.
Hope.
Chapter 2ANNIE
Annie stopped on the sidewalk, blinking up through the drizzle at the rain-streaked sign swinging from the lintel over her head.
LAKE LUMIN MUNICIPAL DEPT.
She glanced down at the note in her hand, double-checking the address written in Allen’s dark scrawl, then looked back up at the sign just as a hanging drop of water fell, missing the brim of her hat by centimeters and landing squarely between her eyes.
401 Hughes Street.
It was the right address, but the building didn’t look like any visitor center she’d ever seen. It was small and indiscriminate, with just one mirrored window bouncing her reflection right back at her. Maybe Allen had been off by a digit or two.
Annie took a step back, swiping at her forehead as she glanced at the storefronts left and right of 401. Bigfoot Pies & Pastries, and a nondescript bookstore. Neither looked remotely like a business that would serve as headquarters for a game warden, so, with a sigh, Annie pushedthrough the door of 401, sending a silver bell tinkling as she stepped into a warm office.
A sandy-haired young officer sat alone behind a counter, spinning slow circles in his desk chair. He caught himself by the lip of the counter and straightened out to face her with bright blue eyes. “Can I help you?”
