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Wren hands me one side of a giant pair of scissors. She keeps the other.

“Ready?” she asks.

I don’t know what to say, so I nod. We cut the ribbon. The crowd cheers. Brody, perched on the roof of the visitor center like a weathervane, cheers loudest of all.

And the people of Screaming Woods walk into my forest.

As I pass the gate, James steps out from behind a hay bale with his camera. He’s wearing a tourism office lanyard and a very careful expression.

“Ranger Ashford.” He clears his throat. “Could I get one photo of the two of you at the trailhead? For the council report.” He glances at Wren. “Only if you both say yes. Exactly as you are.”

Wren raises her eyebrows at me. She’s leaving it up to me.

A month ago, I’d have walked away. Today, I look at the crowd streaming into the trees, and I look at her, and I don’t mind being seen.

“Yes,” I say.

James takes the photo. Then he lowers the camera and looks at it for a second, and his whole face softens.

“That’s a good one,” he says quietly, and walks away.

They love it.

I walk the loop all morning, and everywhere I go, I hear it. Kids shrieking at the frogs in the wet section. Grandparents reading the trail signs out loud. A woman with a walker stops at the boardwalk and says, “Oh, look, they made it flat,” and her daughter cries a little.

At the creek crossing, a little boy runs along the kid-height rail, slapping every post with his palm. His dad doesn’t have to lift him up. He can see the water all by himself.

Wren drew that rail after I fixed the fence for Molly. We built it together. Now there’s a line of kids waiting to use it.

My chest tightens, but I keep walking before anybody notices.

Halfway up the south loop, a tourist in a brand-new hiking hat stops me and points north. He’s got a map on his phone, the old one, with the north loop circled in red.

“Hey, Ranger,” he says. “What’s up there? Everybody online says there’s a big secret.”

I look at the map. I think about the bowl, and the dark of the moon, and a moth landing on Wren’s shoulder like she belonged there.

“A landslide,” I tell him. “Half a hillside came down this summer. It’s closed for good.”

He deflates a little. “Oh. Bummer.”

“The Lookout’s up ahead,” I say. “Best view in the county.”

He brightens and heads off up the trail. I watch him go. Then I look north, just for a second, at the dark line of old trees above the slide.

Another visitor peels off at the trail junction toward the north gate. I follow and catch up with him there. He’s trying the double-locked gate.

“I drove six hours,” he says. “Just for this.”

I point to the permanent closure notice. “Still closed. Even if you drove seven.”

He gives me a dirty look but heads back toward the Lookout. I stay until he’s past the junction.

Nobody is going to find them. I’ll make sure of it.

The squirrel strikes at noon.

The bakery has a stall by the trailhead, selling apple hand pies, and the squirrel with the torn ear drops out of a pine tree, lands on the table, grabs a whole pie in its teeth, and sprints off into the forest dragging it like a sleeping bag.