Jim and the kids made their final trip to Camp Nelson on a chilly Thursday in late October. Jim thought the occasion would mean more to the children if they were allowed to take off from school, and of course the trails would be less crowded on a weekday. He booked a suite in a nearby luxury hotel. They skirted the lodge, headed straight into mountains, and parked at a small trailhead. Mindy was out of the car before he’d cut the ignition. He leaned over and shook his son gently awake.
“Come on, buddy,” he said.
Mindy wandered over to the nearest sequoia and placed both hands on the trunk as though the tree needed her support. Jim fetched his wife’s urn from the trunk.
“Can I carry it?” Mindy called. “I want to be the one to carry it.”
She came running over. Jim smiled. Mindy was like her mother: eager to tackle the most difficult part of any new task.
“Button up your jacket first,” he said.
“Okay.”
“And be very careful.”
“I will,” she said. “I promise.”
They made the short hike up to an alpine lake Bonnie had called one of her greatest loves. The air was thin at this altitude, and Jim made an effort not to appear winded. When they reached the water, Mindy handed over the urn without his having to ask.
“There’s no place she’d rather be,” he said. “Especially on such a beautiful day.”
Mindy began crying, softly; Jim Jr. put a hand on her back, then started bawling himself. Jim took off his shoes, waded out into the lake, unscrewed the top of the urn, and let his wife’s ashes fall. Then they walked back to the car without saying a word.
* * *
Mindy sat in the back, staring out the window at the gorge below. Jim Jr. lasted just a few miles before he fell asleep. Jim focused his attention on a radio show about home repairs.
“Where are we going now?” Mindy asked.
“The hotel,” Jim said.
“Why can’t we stay at Mommy’s lodge?”
“Because it isn’t Mommy’s lodge anymore.”
“But why can’t we keep it?” she asked.
Jim switched off the radio, looked over his shoulder.
“We talked about this,” he said.
“I know,” Mindy said. “I know it was Mommy’s job. I know we can’t keep it as a business. But we could go there on weekends, like before. It could be our summer house.”
“Do you remember what it looked like the first time we visited? How it was all rundown and broken?”
“Yes,” Mindy said, though really she’d fallen for the place at first sight, like her mother.
“Well, that’s what happens when there isn’t somebody to take care of it all the time. A place that big needs attention every day. It needs somebody to clean the rooms and fix things when they break. Somebody to water the flowers in the summer and clear the snow in the winter.”
Mindy flashed on an idea, an idea that had been building since her mother’s death.
“I could do it,” she said.
“Do what?” Jim asked.
“Run the lodge. Water the flowers and clear the snow and clean the rooms.”
Jim hid his grin.
“What about school?” he asked.
“I don’t mean now,” she said. “When I’m eighteen. It could be my job.”
“With a brain like yours, you’ll be headed to college when you’re eighteen. You can be anything you want. A doctor. A lawyer. A professor.”
“But I hate school. And I want to run the lodge.”
“Honey, even if I agreed to hand the place over to you on your eighteenth birthday, who’s going to look after it in the meantime? It will go right back to the way it was before Mommy fixed it up.”
He was growing tense. He heard his voice begin to strain.
“So I’ll fix it back up,” Mindy said.
Jim knew he should stop. There was no point in reasoning with an eleven-year-old who would likely have a new obsession in a week’s time, but he felt inexplicably determined to close the subject, to know that he wouldn’t have to dodge her pleas tomorrow at breakfast, and then again the day after, and the day after that.
“With what money?” he asked. “Repairs on a place like that cost a fortune.”
Mindy thought it over.
“I’d pay you back,” she said. “Once the lodge was making money again. It wouldn’t take long at all.”
Jim’s patience cracked.
“Why?” he said. “Why in the world would you want to spend your life in the place that killed your mother?”
Mindy glared out from the backseat.
“This place didn’t kill Mommy,” she said. “Bruce Beauchamp did.”
Jim gathered himself.
“I know, honey,” he said. “It’s hard to explain. If she hadn’t been up here, if she’d stayed at home, then I would have been able to protect her. He wouldn’t have been able to—”
“But he did and you didn’t,” Mindy shouted. “And now he’s free and he’s going to come after us, and you can’t do anything about it.”
Jim Jr. startled awake. He sat staring at his father. Jim switched off radio, slowed to just below the speed limit.
“Listen,” he said, “Bruce Beauchamp is a coward. Only a coward would hurt a woman. He won’t come anywhere near us. It’s over, you understand?”
Mindy crossed her arms and threw herself back against her seat.
“I understand,” her brother said.
“Good,” Jim said.
He switched the radio back on. He hated to admit it, but Mindy had spooked him. He glanced in the rearview mirror as though Beauchamp might be tailing them, then patted his jacket to make sure the .9mm handgun he’d purchased after the trial was still tucked in its holster.