Light slanted through the tall windows, catching dust motesin their beams. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m in over my head here,” Hudson said finally. “I’m not sure I can make this place what Dad saw it could be. I let it go for so long.”
“You’ve been busy running the Bowie empire.”
Beyond the double-paned glass, sun spilled over Copper Mountain’s slopes. “Sometimes I think about it.”
“About what?”
“Running.” Hudson’s reflection ghosted against the window. “Walking away from all this. The lodge. The resort.” He pressed his palm to the cold glass. “Some mornings I wake up feeling the weight of it. Like I’m buried under this place, suffocating.”
Something cold slithered down Jericho’s spine. His throat closed.
Hudson must have caught his expression in the glass. “Hey, sorry. Bad choice of words.”
“No.” Jericho’s voice came rough. “I get it.” He watched a snowboarder catch air off a jump. “Truth is, I’m still there, sometimes.”
The lift chairs swung empty against the deepening blue sky.
“The nightmares are ... fewer. But they still happen.” He sighed. “And they’re almost all the same. I’m back on that mountain, freezing, searching, Orlando circling. I know Gunther is under all that snow. I can see his beacon signal blinking. Only...” He swallowed. “Only I can’t reach him. The snow keeps getting deeper, and my probe never hits, and Orlando’s barking somewhere in the distance, but I can’t—”
His chest squeezed. Even now, he could smell the sharp pine-and-snow scent of that day, feel the hammering of his heart as they’d searched.
“We never found him.”
Hudson turned. “Oh no. You’re kidding.”
“Too much snow. And he got separated from his beacon...” He watched as a family skied down the lower runs, into the trees.“Orlando couldn’t find him, and I think ... well, I sort of stopped trusting him.” His gaze fell on the ridge above the bowl, the thick rim of snow. “Maybe he doesn’t trust me either. I don’t know.”
“Could be that’s the problem. He won’t follow, because you won’t lead.”
Jericho raised an eyebrow.
His brother lifted a shoulder. “I remember you once telling me that emotion travels down a dog’s lead. If you are scared to lead, he’s going to be unsure too.”
Huh. Jericho watched a final skier carve down the slope, their form silhouetted against the darkening sky. “Maybe you’re right.” He turned to face Hudson. “Fact is, if I take a close look, I’ve been sort of leading myself in circles for a while now. Maybe ... well, what was it that Pastor Neil said today?”
Hudson cocked his head. “Um, that the men’s Bible study is meeting at his house this week?”
Jericho gave him a look. “No, the sermon.”
“From Ezekiel—the bit about God promising to replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh and a new spirit?”
Right, he remembered that too. But, “No, something about a rock.”
“Oh. Psalm 61:2. ‘From the end of the earth I call to You, when my heart is overwhelmed and weak;Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.’”
“Impressive.”
“It’s what happens when you go to church.” Hudson clapped him on the shoulder. “Actually, that was one of Mom’s verses. She had it in the kitchen, in the window that overlooked Denali.”
Now he remembered.
“But you’re right. Maybe that’s the answer,” Hudson said.
“To what?”
“To being overwhelmed—to look up.”
Right.“Nowyousound like Dad,” Jericho said.
