I take a fast shower throw on some clothes, and am in the driveway pulling my hair into a ponytail when Dad drives up.

Shopping with him is a fast affair It takes us ten minutes at one store to get a sleeping bag to replace the one I outgrew years ago—Amy will use that—and fifteen minutes at another to pick out an internal-frame pack that looks as if it will hold a lot more than I want to carry. I'm kind of stunned at the size of the checks he has to write, but he says they're part early happy birthday—my birthday's three weeks away—and part welcome-home gift.

Lunch is milkshakes and onion rings, which used to be our secret treat. Then Dad has to get back to his veterinary clinic. He tells me, "If you wouldn't mind getting a ride home with Meg, it will save me some driving."

"Isn't she working?" I ask.

"She has an appointment at a nursing home out this way and then is taking off early to get things ready for tomorrow."

"What's she doing at a nursing home?"

"She didn't say. Just called to suggest I drop you off there."

"I'M SUPPOSED TO meet Meg Thaler," I tell a man at the front desk.

"Dt Thaler?" he asks, and I almost say no before I remember she is one, a Ph.D. doctor "She got here just ahead of you," he says, gesturing down a long hall.

Spotting Meg toward the far end, I hurry and catch up with her as she pauses in a doorway. She gives me a smile while speaking to someone I can't see. "Miss Bottner?" she says.

"I wanted to let you know I'm here," I whisper "I'll wait in the lobby."

"Please stay," she tells me. "Miss Bottner?" she says again, stepping inside. "Katharina?"

Meg motions me into the room, where a woman sits at a window. Even though her back is toward us, she gives the impression of being very old. And when she reaches for the controls to make her wheelchair circle around, I see scars, darkened and puckered with age, stretching across fingers that strain to work the buttons.

Once she's facing our way, she urges, "Sit down, sit down. And tell me who you are. Someone said, but I do forget..."

"I'm Meg Thaler" Meg says, "and this is my stepdaughter Tess."

"Well, tell her to sit, too," the woman says.

There's only one visitor's chair so I take up a place on the floor where I can lean back against a bureau.

Meg says, "I work for the Forest Service, and one of my projects is locating the place where you grew up. It's probably the last undocumented homestead site in the Rattlesnake, and..."

Katharina Bottner listens attentively to the explanation, but when Meg says, "I was hoping you could tell me some landmarks to look out for" Katharina replies with, "Are you the girl come to give me my bath?"

Meg's cheeks turn a feint pink. "No," she says, and starts over with a simpler explanation.

Katharina interrupts to ask me, "And who are you again?"

"Tess Thaler" I say.

"And you?" she asks Meg.

"I'm Meg Thaler from the Forest Service." Meg touches Katharina's hand, and again I notice the scars. "Katharina, it would really help me to know about where you grew up. Do you remember if your parents farmed the land?"

Sudden humor sparkles in Katharina's eyes. "They certainly didn't run a store on it. Wouldn't have had any customers but wild animals."

Meg chuckles but pushes on. "Do you remember what buildings you had? Besides a house? A barn, perhaps?"

"Certainly we had a barn," Katharina says. "If I could, I'd ask Papa to show you." She halts, appearing puzzled, as though she's trying to pull together some thought. Then she shakes her head. "But I haven't seen him in a long time."

Meg waits a few moments, and then she says, "Your father was a violin player wasn't he?"

"I haven't seen him in a long time," Katharina repeats. She looks down at her hands. "He would have taught me to play, you know, only of course there was the dynamite. My own fault for wandering off. I'd been told."

"Dynamite?" Meg asks as I shudder at the image of a little kid being hurt by explosives. But Katharina is done talking about it. And when Meg tries to direct the conversation back to the homestead, Katharina starts talking about the young robins outside her window.

We thank her for seeing us and are saying good-bye when the puzzled expression returns to her face. Then it dissolves as she apparently finds the thought she was after "I do have something of Papa's you can look at."

She rolls her wheelchair to a closet, slides open the door and nods toward a shelf crammed with bags and boxes. "It's up there," she says, looking at me. "You'll have to move some things."

Meg motions for me to go ahead, and I'm about to ask what I should be looking for when I see the unmistakable shape of a violin case. I pull it down and set it on the bed. "Your father's?" I ask.

"That's what I said," Katharina answers.

"May I open it?"

"You won't see it unless you do."

As I ease back the worn, stiff latches, Meg says, "Tess is a violinist herself."

Katharina says, "Papa called it a fiddle."

The hinges squeak when I lift the lid, and the mingled scents of rosin, old wood, and decaying fabric rush out. The violin that rests on the case's crushed-velvet lining has one peg that looks different from the others, and two of its strings are missing.

"Will you play a piece?" Katharina asks.

I draw a finger over the instrument's curved, finely crackled surface, sad to have to tell her, "I'd like to, but this isn't in any shape to play."

"Oh." The single word is soft with disappointment.

"I'm sorry," I tell her "What kind of music did your father play?"

"Every kind you can name. Square-dance music and hymns and old-timey things like 'Go Tell Aunt Rhody.' One year when every one of our lambs lived right to market, Mama even bought him a book of music so he could learn some different pieces. That's when he learned 'Danny Boy.'" Katharina's eyes focus on a point in midair "What I liked best, though, were his woods sounds."

"What were those?" I ask.

"Oh, just one thing and another we'd heat Birds singing, owls, like that." Frowning, she looks at the instrument and makes a small humphing noise in her throat. "Well, put it away." She reaches for the buttons of her wheelchair "You'd better go now. I'm tired."

We're in the hall when Katharina calls us bade. "Girl," she says to me, "what's your name again?"

"Tess."

"Did you come here by train?"

"Come to...?" I hesitate, wondering if she means to the nursing home and not sure it's polite to call it that.

"To Montana, of course," she says. "Papa came by train, carrying that fiddle all the way from South Dakota."

"You were with him?"

"Why, he was just a boy. I wasn't even born!" She chuckles. "The idea!"