Meg, looking stern, waits for Amy's explanation.

Amy shows her a canister of pepper spray. "Pop forgot this. I wanted to take it to him."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you'd have taken it instead of letting me go." Amy's voice becomes a whisper and her eyes plead. "I wanted to help Pop with the hawk. It needed a chance like we gave Midnight."

I see an unspoken signal go between Meg and Dad, and Dad says, "Amy, why don't you and I start back to camp?"

"Let's give them a few minutes," Meg tells me. "Your father will know what to say, both about her good intentions and about the risk she took running off alone."

"Dad's good at knowing what to say," I agree.

Only Dad's talk must not go quite the way we anticipate, because when Meg and I get back to camp we find Amy in angry tears. This time because of me.

"Pop says you're going back to New York," she says. Are you?"

"Probably," I tell her.

"Then I hate you. You promised to stay."

For a moment she looks as if she's considering disappearing into the woods again, but she catches Meg's warning glance and goes only as far as the bank above Rattlesnake Creek.

"I'll go talk to her" I say.

"HEY," I SAY, dropping down next to her "You don't really hate me, do you?"

"Yes. You promised."

"You know I didn't."

She sniffs. "Is your mom making you go?"

"No."

"Then why?" she demands. "If you can stay here, why don't you?"

"Because right now I belong where I can learn to be the best musician I can be."

She considers that and then asks, "But what if you mess up again?"

"I don't know," I answer "I might. But you wouldn't want me not to try, would you? To have less courage than you showed tonight?"

"You mean taking the pepper spray to Pop?"

"No. I mean wanting to help the hawk even though you knew it might die and make you sad like you were for Midnight. That was pretty brave."

Amy sniffs again. "I guess." She wipes her nose on her sleeve. "Mom got pretty mad at me."

"You scared her."

"Yeah." She looks sideways at me. "I don't really hate you."

"I know. And even after I leave, it won't be like we'll never see each other again. I'm going to come home every vacation from now on. And between vacations we can e-mail."

She asks, "Can I visit you in New York?"

"I'd love you to. I'll take you to school with me."

"Good!" Amy says. "I can meet Ben."

"Say," Dad calls, "is this a private conversation?"

"No, come on!" I call back.

He and Meg join us just as the evening sky deepens into the last shades of twilight.

We spend a few minutes planning our hike home and then we grow quiet as two owls begin calling to each other across the gulch. I'm about to try answering them when a muted splash alerts us to the dark shape of a beaver gliding through the water below. Suddenly it dives from sight, its tail slapping hard against the water and making a loud thwack that cracks the air.

I don't know which of us say, "Wow!" Maybe all of us. I add, "I've never heard that before."

***

THE DAY after we come out of the woods, I begin preparations for my return to New York. Not that I will go right away—I've decided to spend the rest of the summer with Dad, Meg, and Amy. But I have to let everyone know what I'm doing.

Mom, when I call her says, "I knew you'd come to your senses. I'll telephone Mr. Stubner."

"Please don't," I tell her "I'd like to start handling more things like that for myself." Then I add, "And I'd like to start deciding more things for myself too, especially about my music."

"We'll see," she says. "When the time comes—"

"Mom, the time already came, only I didn't know it. From now on, some things really do have to be different."

I wait to hear if I'm asking to return on terms Mom won't accept. I can imagine her saying, If that's what you're expecting, you'd better stay where you are.

But instead, after a long, long pause, she says, "We'll work things out, Tess. Together" Then she adds, "I've missed you."

I call Mr. Stubner next. He tells me to enjoy my holiday and please bring him back a quart of huckleberries. He's always wanted to try some.

Ben's and my conversations are private. We have so many that I have to put in some hours at the clinic to pay for my share. And Ben calls me even more than I call him. He hasn't gotten another girlfriend. He wants to see me in my pearl-colored, shape-fitting formal. He's working on a new composition that he's going to call "Tess."

I think Amy's forgotten about wanting violin lessons, which is probably just as well. Drums, I'm thinking, might be more her style. Anyway, she's on to a new project. After I buy my phone card, Amy and I spend four dollars of our joint kennel-cleaning earnings on ice-cream cones, and we put the rest in a jar she labels, TRIP TO NEW YORK.

Of all the things I'm doing, though, what I enjoy the most is playing my violin again. And every time I play it, I become more certain that I've made the right choice, even though I don't know where my choice will eventually lead.

The morning I take my violin out to the nursing home, Meg and I walk in to find at least thirty people gathered in the activity room. Mostly they're nursing-home residents, but Dad and Amy are there, and also Mr. and Mrs. Dreyden, whom I've invited. I give my old violin teacher a big hug And I hug Mrs. Armitage, who accompanied me at my first recital. I invited her to be a guest, but she said she'd rather accompany me again.

One of the nurses tells me, "We thought Katharina understood that it was you who'd be here, but for the last hour she's been telling everyone her father was coming to play."

Katharina, though, looks at me with only the briefest flicker of puzzlement before her face clears. She says, "I knew you'd come back."

"Meg and I have lots to tell you," I say. "We found where you used to live and we've brought you pictures. But first, would you like to hear some music?"

"I wouldn't be out here if I didn't," she answers.

I begin with several old melodies that I think the nursing-home residents might know, and I'm pleased to see feet tapping and even a few people singing.

Katharina listens with pleasure lighting her face, and when I stop, she says, "Just like Papa. I always did like his music best."

"I'll end," I say, "with a rather long piece. It's the violin concerto called Summer by composer Antonio Vivaldi."

I nod to Mrs. Armitage, pull my bow in the first downstroke, and hear the first note go out just right. And then I'm off and flying through the concerto's marvelous beginning.

And even though I'm caught up in the sound, some part of me is aware that my audience is caught up with me. I can feel my music reaching out to them, and, closing my eyes, I know that's exactly how I want it.