Be safe, Shadow. Wait for me. And if you meet Kieran Holt, tell him I’ll never forget my promise.
Chapter 1
Maheengun County, Minnesota, 1996
Alex unlocked the cabin door with a strange, nearly painful feeling of deja vu.
As she stepped into the living room, the tightness in her throat grew almost unbearable. She stood very still for several moments, eyes closed, remembering, imagining familiar smells perfectly preserved over all these years. The lilac perfume her grandmother had favored; a hint of the tobacco Granddad had used in his pipe. And a thousand scents less easily defined.
Your imagination, Alex, she thought. Granddad had been gone a very long time, Grandmother as well. They’d willed the cabin to her when they passed away thirteen years ago. Caretakers and renters had kept the place running; the last tenant had moved out before winter, but the cabin had yet to be reclaimed by its rightful owner. Her grandparents’ things were boxed away just like her memories, waiting to be released again.
She’d wondered how much the memories would hurt. But the ache was already fading, impossible to sustain. The last hurdle had been passed.
Alex let out her breath and watched it plume. The air was cold; she’d need to get the stove going. Late February in Minnesota wasn’t like California’s mild winters. But she hadn’t been back to California in a very long time.
She tossed her bags down on the old plaid sofabed and walked into the smaller bedroom at the rear of the cabin. Her bedroom now, as it had been when she was a child coming for summer visits. And her mother’s before that. The white lace coverlet on the bed was the same, and so was the antique furniture, though there were darken squares on the walls where old photos had once hung and been removed.
The bedsprings squeaked as she sat down. She smiled briefly, remembering how she’d loved to jump up and down just to see how much she could make them groan. And then she shrugged out of her backpack and pulled out her personal journal, balancing it on her lap. The pen shook a little in her fingers, just for an instant. Dear Mother, she wrote carefully. I’m home. Home. A real home after so many years of wandering;
The place she’d dreamed of when she was out in the wilds of Alaska and Montana and Idaho, on her belly in the dirt or snow, tracking wolves. The one childhood fantasy she’d allowed herself. The single connection to the past she hadn’t severed.
The last haven where she’d ever truly believed in miracles.
Alex set down the journal and went to the tiny closet. Boxes were stacked nearly to the ceiling. All the little things that had belonged to her grandparents, packed away by someone she’d never met.
Hers now. She pulled one box from the stack and pried open the dusty cardboard flaps.
There was no rhyme or reason to what lay in the box. Granddad’s pipe was wrapped in several layers of yellowing tissue; she put it against her nose. The faded, earthy scent almost brought tears to her eyes. Under the pipe was a floral print box, stacked with Grandmother’s pressed flowers. And pushed into the corner…
Alex lifted out the stuffed animal and held it to her chest. The fake fur was matted, though the toy wolf had hardly been played with at all. Granddad had given it to her the summer after the accident, when she came out of the hospital for the first time. The summer she’d wanted so badly to find Shadow again, and the boy.
Of course she never had. She’d been too weak from the operations, too blind with grief, and Granddad had tried to console her with this.
She stared into the closet and stroked the stiff synthetic fur over and over. It wouldn’t have made any difference even if Granddad hadn’t died. She’d never have found Shadow or the boy again. And yet she could almost feel them here, as if that magical summer were only yesterday.
She didn’t believe in magic anymore. And yet… and yet she almost had to struggle against an absurd desire to believe again. It was safe to do that here, enveloped in a cocoon of memories.