She unclasped the thin gold chain with two interlocking hearts from her wrist. It was a cheap drugstore friendship bracelet, but it was the most valuable thing she owned. Alice had given it to her for their last birthday together when their parents forgot.
She had been wearing it for fifteen years.
Until this morning.
She set it inside the casket. The chain pooled against the satin in a loose coil.
She closed the lid. The latch clicked. She straightened and stepped back.
Bear’s hand found the small of her back.
The funeral director moved forward and gestured to the two men standing by the straps. They took hold and began to lower the casket. The mechanism made a soft grinding sound, metal on metal, and the straps played out in controlled increments. The casket descended in small jerks, inch by inch, until it reached the bottom of the grave with a soft thud.
Greta felt that sound in the pit of her stomach.
The straps were pulled free. One of the men picked up a shovel from where it leaned against the pile of earth beside the grave. He scooped a load of dirt and held it a moment, looking at the officiant, and the officiant nodded.
As the dirt hit the casket, a small hand found hers. She looked down at Oliver. A little boy who had already seen too much sorrow and fear in his short life. Someone else who never knew her sister, here solely because he knew and loved her.
She squeezed his hand.
He looked up with a small, gap-toothed smile and squeezed back.
“I’m so sorry,” Nessie said as she hurried to gather her son. “He insisted he had to come and I turned my back for one second?—”
“It’s okay.” She smiled down at his dark head. “Thank you for coming, Oliver.”
“I’m sorry about your sister,” he said with so much sincerity, her throat slammed closed. She couldn’t respond, so she just nodded and patted his shoulder before Nessie led him back to Jax.
As dirt landed on the casket, the crowd began to fracture until it was just her, Bear, and the workers left.
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t stand here watching that hole fill. She turned to him. “I need to go up.”
He looked at her. Then past her at the tree line above the cemetery, where a forest service trail cut up the ridge in a steep diagonal, visible as a pale scar through the pines. He looked back at her face.
“Okay.”
They left the dogs with Jax and Nessie. Greta crouched and got both hands into Atlas’s fur and held him for five seconds—his body warm and solid under her palms, his breathing steady—then stood and walked away without looking back. Atlas made a sound low in his throat, not quite a whine, and Nessie’s voice went soft and soothing behind her. When she glanced over her shoulder halfway to the tree line, Atlas was still watching her, his ears flat against his head, his body tense in Nessie’s grip. King all but yanked Jax off his feet, trying to lunge after them.
The trail started at a wooden post with a faded marker nailed to it:Summit Ridge Trail, 2.4 miles, elevation gain 1200 feet.The first switchback came within fifty yards, the path cutting sharply left and climbing through loose shale under a thin layer of pine duff.
Greta hit it at a pace that was too fast for the terrain and exactly right for not thinking.
Her flats slipped on the wet rock. She caught herself with one hand on a pine trunk and kept going.
The trail steepened. The switchbacks came closer together, cutting back and forth across the face of the ridge in tight zigzags that made her calves burn and her lungs pull hard for air. The pines crowded in on both sides, their trunks dark with rain, their branches dripping onto the trail. The smell was sharp and clean.
Her flats were ruined within the first quarter mile. The soles had no tread, the leather uppers were soaked through and caked with mud, but she didn’t care. She pushed harder, taking the trail at a pace that made her breath come short and ragged, hauling herself up the steeper sections with both hands grabbing for trunks and branches.
Bear kept up. She didn’t look back at him, but she could hear the steady rhythm of his breathing, the occasional grunt when his foot slipped, the rustle of his jacket as he grabbed for a handhold. He didn’t tell her to slow down. Didn’t ask if she was okay. Just followed.
The trail broke out of the trees at forty minutes and opened onto a wide granite shelf that jutted out over the valley like something someone had forgotten to finish. The stone was pale gray and smooth, scoured by wind and rain into gentle curves, and it ran flat for thirty feet before dropping off into nothing. Behind the shelf, the ridge continued upward, but here there was just open air and the long drop to the valley floor.
Greta walked to the lip of the shelf and stopped.
Below, the cemetery was visible as a small dark rectangle in the pale grass, the iron fence a thin black line around its perimeter. The fresh grave was a darker square at the far end, raw earth against the green. Beyond the cemetery, Solace spread out in a loose grid of streets and buildings, small and tidy from this height. Beyond Solace, the Bitterroots rose in long ridges, their peaks invisible in the gray overcast. The sky was building weather at its edges — darker clouds piling up in the west, the kind that would bring rain by evening.
The wind came across the shelf in steady gusts, pulling at her jacket, tugging strands of hair loose from where she’d pinned them back that morning. One strand came across her face and stuck to her cheek. She didn’t move to fix it.
