Lily breathed a sigh of relief when a sweeping, three-story log lodge—of course it was log, because what else could it possibly be—loomed into view around the curve of the road, its broad timber front porch wrapping around both sides of the massive structure like huge arms. A dozen smaller log cabins, crouched like baby ducks around their mother, sat tucked within cozy little clearings among the towering evergreens to the right of the main building. The road she’d so laboriously climbed ended in a small turnaround beside a split-log fence. A mud-streaked Kermit-green Jeep and a black pickup truck showing some wear in the rusted-out fenders sat on the hard-packed ground beyond the fence.
Lily edged through the opening in the fence and parked next to the big Dodge Ram. Before she shut off the motor, she closed the top on the convertible and rolled the windows up. Already the seats and the dash were covered by a fine layer of dust, and she could only imagine what it was going to look like in another few days. Not that she planned on driving up and down the mountain any more than she had to. As in not until she was headed…somewhere…in September.
That was a decision for another day.
Lily pocketed the key fob and her phone, climbed out, and stretched.
“Lily!”
Lily’s heart lifted, a flood of pleasure she hadn’t experienced in so long her throat tightened. Sarah hurried toward her, looking as she always did, a smiling picture of old-fashioned wholesome in a short-sleeved plaid shirt, faded jeans, and hiking boots, her honey-brown hair caught back in a ponytail, her smile so warm and welcoming Lily teared up for no reason she could imagine. Hurrying toward her oldest friend, she blinked the telltale moisture away. Then she was in Sarah’s arms, her head on Sarah’s shoulder, holding on as if Sarah might suddenly disappear as quickly as the morning mist.
“Oh my God,” Sarah whispered, her voice husky. “You’re here. You’re actually here.”
For just a moment, Lily could only nod. Swallowing around the unexpected and slightly embarrassing emotion, she forced her grip to loosen and pulled back to meet Sarah’s gaze. “I am. And you look amazing as always.”
Sarah held her at arm’s length, her hands smoothing down the fabric of Lily’s cotton shirt in a steady caress. “And you look as beautiful as ever, except maybe a little too skinny.”
Lily knew she was lying. She’d lost fifteen pounds and hadn’t been able to get rid of the dark circles under her eyes for months. But she took the compliment and pretended it was true. “I…”
A golden rocket accompanied by a joyous yelp shot past Sarah, and Lily staggered under the onslaught of two paws landing none too gently on her hip. She laughed. “Who are you?”
“Baily,” Sarah said, “get down.”
“Baily?” Lily rubbed the handsome golden retriever behind both ears. “This can’t be Baily. He can’t be more than…” She swallowed and looked at Sarah. “The last time I saw him he was three months old.”
“He’s almost three,” Sarah said quietly.
“I remember,” Lily said quietly. “You talked me into meeting you at the place you’d rented in the Catskills, and you’d just gotten him. Right before lockdown.” She took a tremulous breath. “Sometimes that seems like another lifetime.”
“I’m so sorry for everything you’ve been through,” Sarah said quietly, her hazel eyes warm with sympathy.
Lily forced a smile. “Well. Everyone had challenges, right? And we made it out the other side.”
Most of us. The words she didn’t say brought a barrage of images that she’d gotten better at pushing aside, but could never completely erase. Stretchers jammed head to foot, spilling out of the ER down every adjacent hallway, some holding bodies wrapped in white sheets waiting their turn to be delivered to the makeshift tent morgues in the parking lots outside the hospital. Twelve- to eighteen-hour shifts, understaffed and nearly overwhelmed, for weeks that became months and, unbelievably, years.
Sarah put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her. “You’re here now. Come on, let me show you the place. You’ll feel better when you’re settled in.”
“There is one thing I’m going to need,” Lily said quietly.
Sarah paused. “What?”
“A Jeep.”
Sarah burst out laughing. “Rough ride coming up?”
“Not entirely what I expected.” Lily fell into step, grateful she’d packed both pairs of running shoes when she’d left the apartment. The identifiable paths were really just pine-needle-strewn trails studded with rocks, smaller versions of what she’d just driven up. Considering what she’d seen of the terrain so far, she wouldn’t be making much use of the sandals she’d opted for that morning in deference to the projected temperatures. Although this far north, under the towering evergreens, the air was decidedly cooler than she’d expected. And…fresh. Another welcome change from the city. Another turn of the wheel between then and now.
“So far, none of this fits the admittedly hazy picture I had of a state-sponsored camp for older teens,” Lily added. She hadn’t pictured the wildness of the mountains or the remoteness. And she definitely hadn’t expected to run into a forest ranger out in the middle of truly nowhere who kept turning up in her thoughts.
“You’re smiling,” Sarah teased. “It couldn’t have been that bad.”
“No,” Lily said. The ranger had been helpful, even if she hadn’t bothered to hide her opinion that Lily’s choice of vehicle and general judgment were questionable. As annoying as that had been, the encounter had left her energized in a way she hadn’t been for so long she’d forgotten the feeling. “No, it was fine.”
“Good. Come on, then, let’s walk down to the lake while we still have the place to ourselves.” Sarah linked her arm through Lily’s and led her down a twisting path through the pines. The lodge soon disappeared behind the dense wall of trees, while ahead, sunlight glinted on the mirror-surface of a lake that extended out of sight in every direction. A narrow strip of beach came into view, and flashes of red and orange, bright patches through the green, proved to be kayaks and canoes stacked on metal racks.
“How big is the lake?” Lily asked.
“Several hundred acres,” Sarah said. “Nathaniel Wingate, a shipping magnate from New York City, owned twelve thousand acres of forestland with something like six lakes all interconnected by navigable streams. He built the lodge as a hunting pavilion for family friends. The heirs eventually deeded almost all the land back to the state as part of the forest preserve.”
“And how much is officially part of the camp?”
“Just shy of five thousand acres, all wilderness preserve under the regulation of the DEC.”
“I had no idea how remote the place would feel.”
“That’s what makes this location perfect as a summer camp. It’s not that far from major highways, but we are in the middle of completely uninhabited land.” Sarah laughed. “I guess that seems a little daunting to a city girl, huh?”
“Funny,” Lily murmured, strolling down to the shore, “it doesn’t.”
Lily had never been much of an outdoors person. She’d grown up in Manhattan and lived there all her life, but it wasn’t hard to appreciate the natural beauty surrounding her. She took in the coffee-colored sand, studded here and there with small stones, that looked nothing like the beaches on Long Island or along the Atlantic where she’d vacationed as a child. Not a cell tower in sight. No rumble of trucks or the ever-present chorus of millions of people filling every street. Being physically cut off from the world as she had known it carried a remarkable sense of relief. Of…freedom.
She dipped a hand in the water. Clean, clear, and…really cold.
“People swim in this?” she called.
“It’s June,” Sarah said. “There’s still snowmelt in the high country feeding these lakes. But it will warm up soon enough.”
Despite the absence of sounds she’d grown used to in the city, it wasn’t really quiet. Stillness was not the same as emptiness. Looking out over the water, Lily picked out half a dozen different kinds of birdsong, the rustle of tree branches overhead, and even the hushed rippling of the lake against the shore. She glanced at Sarah.
“It’s so…different. Beautiful.”
Sarah’s smile was soft, the sunlight edging her hair in gold. “It is, isn’t it.”
“And you grew up with this every day.”
They turned to walk back up to the lodge, and Sarah said, “We lived only fifty miles or so from here, but at a higher elevation. Longer winters, but glorious springs. My parents made the trek down the mountain a few times a year for essential supplies, but we would go weeks at a time without seeing anyone else. They were busy cataloging animal and bird migrations, and documenting how changes in climate affected wildlife habitats and life cycles.”
“And you never thought about doing anything else? Being a naturalist?”
“Not for a minute.” Sarah paused in front of the lodge. “Same for you, right? Both your parents are doctors. Family tradition.”
Lily nodded. “You’re right. Family tradition.”
“How are they, your parents?”
“Tired, but for them, the last few years have just been business as usual. They met when they were both working for Doctors Without Borders in Uganda. War—and that’s what it felt like when the pandemic hit—was nothing new for them.” She glanced away. “I was the one who wasn’t prepared.”
Sarah’s arm came around her shoulders. “No one was. Or at least almost no one.”
Lily took a deep breath and forced a smile. “Well, we’re winning now, aren’t we.”
“We are.” Sarah squeezed and let her go. “And it’s time for R and R.”
The sound of laughter, high-pitched, excited, floated down from the row of cabins on the crest above the lodge.
“You’ve already got campers in residence,” Lily said, happy for the diversion. She really didn’t want to talk about things that couldn’t be changed. Just the opposite. She was so ready for some kind of change. She just didn’t know what it would be.
“A few kids arrived last night. Most will be coming in today.” Sarah grinned. “Be prepared for a day of chaos.”
“Right,” Lily said. “I could really do with a cup of coffee. I don’t suppose…”
“Please,” Sarah said. “Does the sun rise in the east? Come on inside. It was the next stop, anyhow.”
Sarah led Lily through the double carved oak front doors into the great room, as large as a cathedral with the soaring two-and-a-half-story-high ceiling, hung in the upper reaches with huge swinging chandeliers. The stone floors held at least a dozen oversized leather sofas and chairs, plus low chunky wood tables gathered into separate seating areas. Two staircases climbed the side walls to a balcony and rooms above. The river rock fireplace, wider than one of the rooms in her apartment on the Upper East Side, occupied the far end of the room. The logs stacked on the hearth were easily a foot in diameter and six times as long. The air smelled faintly and not unpleasantly of woodsmoke, a little bit of lemon, and pine—the real kind, not the cloying scent that came in a bottle or from those horrid things on the dash in the taxis in the city.
“Wow,” Lily said, craning her neck to take it all in. “I feel…small.”
“Wait until it’s crammed with teenagers—you’ll wish it was three times as big.”
Lily laughed.
“Kitchen’s back here—the meal hours are posted on the bulletin board. Coffee, juice, water and the like, plus snacks are always available.”
The kitchen, which was really a euphemism for the enormous commercial cooking area at the rear of the lodge, spanned the entire width of the building with two eight-burner stoves, gleaming stainless steel pots and pans hanging from iron hooks above the stone-topped counters in the center of the room. A man and several women who were busy organizing canned and dry goods on stainless steel racks along one wall looked over as they walked in.
The oldest of the three, a fiftyish redhead with a sturdy body and sharp brown eyes, wiped her hands on her crisp white cargo pants and strode over with an extended hand. “Good morning. I’m Clara Maguire, chief cook and bottle washer here. You must be one of the parents.”
Laughing, Lily took her strong, wide hand. “Lily Davenport. A pleasure to meet you. And no, I’m not one of the parents.”
Sarah said, “Lily’s our new camp doctor.”
“Ah, delighted to meet you, and an improvement I’ll wager over the last doctor.”
Lily glanced at Sarah.
Sarah shrugged. “Archie McIntosh was a delight, but a bit of a grump.”
“I can’t promise anything before morning coffee, but I’ll do my best,” Lily said with a smile.
Sarah and the other two chefs, who introduced themselves as Juan Ramirez and Nancy Li, laughed as well.
“We’re just grabbing coffee, and we’ll be out of your way,” Sarah said.
The coffee station came equipped with three large stainless steel urns, and Lily helped herself to a white ceramic mug and filled it with, as she discovered, exceptionally good coffee.
“I’ll show you our med station first,” Sarah said, leading the way out of the kitchen. “We’ve got a bedroom ready for you upstairs here, but it’s only a short walk to the clinic if you have to see anyone at night.”
“Does that happen often?” Lily’s stomach gave a lurch, an altogether too familiar feeling. The sensation of being awakened after only a few minutes’ sleep with yet another emergency washed over her. She wondered when, if ever, that automatic response would disappear.
“Oh,” Sarah said, apparently not having noticed Lily’s reaction, “we get the usual common ailments—bumps and bruises, contact dermatitis, common colds. Nothing too serious.”
Exactly what Lily wanted to hear. Staffing a walk-in clinic for three months should not be too demanding. “I guess we’re not really that far from civilization, if for some reason we have a true emergency.”
“And we have the rangers, if we need any kind of EMT support.”
“The rangers,” Lily echoed, instantly picturing the dark-haired officer in the Jeep. “I guess I don’t really know what they do.”
“Pretty much anything that needs doing in the district. Fire control, search and rescue, land conservation, education.” She pushed open the big front doors. “And of course, riding herd on all the hikers, hunters, and fishing nuts.”
Lily followed Sarah out onto the wide front porch and slowed as a familiar vehicle came into sight over the crest of the road and pulled around to the front of the lodge.
The Ranger, as she’d come to think of her, stepped from the Jeep and stopped abruptly, locking eyes with her.
“Chase,” Sarah called down. “What’s the occasion?”
Chase stared up at the blonde on the top step next to her sister. She’d wondered if they’d meet again, and the quick surge of anticipation announced she’d been more than just hoping. She removed her sunglasses and slid them into her chest pocket. “Natalie said there was a meeting.”
“Oh,” Sarah said. “I expected her and Rob.”
Chase shrugged, still watching Lily Davenport, who had narrowed her eyes as if trying to work out some kind of puzzle. Thinking about her, maybe? Yeah. Right. Even her ego didn’t extend that far. Before Sarah could get wind of her interest in Lily, she got herself moving and headed for the porch.
“Lily,” Sarah said, “this is…”
“We’ve met,” Lily said in a tone that gave nothing away. “I’m afraid I never did get your name.”
“That would be Chase,” Chase said, extending a hand. Lily’s was soft and warm and firm as she gripped it for an instant and then let go.
“You’ve met?” Sarah said with a question in her voice.
Lily smiled. “Yes. On the…the road coming up here.”
Chase caught that tiny bit of irritation in her voice again and rather liked it. Far more interesting than the often false notes from women who desired to please or make a good impression.
“Lily—” Chase stopped. “Ms. Davenport was having a little trouble with her BMW.”
“Not what I’d call trouble,” Lily put in instantly. “Just checking my directions.”
Chase didn’t bother to hide a smirk, and Lily’s brows drew together in a little frown. Definitely still a little irritated.
Sarah looked from one to the other. “I don’t know why I expected you might recognize each other. Chase, you must have been, what, ten the last time you saw her?”
Chase shot Sarah a look. “Sorry?”
“Lily is my friend from college. The two of you met at the funeral,” she ended quietly after a moment’s hesitation.
“Oh,” Lily said quickly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you earlier. I never did get a good look—the sun and…” She made an exasperated sound. “I couldn’t see your name tag earlier.”
“I don’t remember you from before either,” Chase said, feeling at a loss and unaccountably uncomfortable. Her mother’s funeral was fifteen years in the past, but still not something she liked to think about. And finding out Lily and Sarah were friends—hell, too many complications, not that she expected anything to happen, of course. “So you’re one of the parents?”
Lily gave a quick laugh. The frown lines disappeared to be replaced by a sparkle in her eyes, the irises that Chase could see now were green, a true green like meadow grass at the first breath of spring. Beautiful.
“Why does everyone assume that? Do I look that motherly?”
“Not even a little,” Chase said before she could stop herself. “Not how I would describe you, at least.”
A brow arched this time. A light brown, nearly blond brow that set off her eyes perfectly. “Hmm. Now I’m curious.”
“Some other time,” Chase said. Sarah was watching the conversation with slightly too much interest. She’d gotten pretty good at hiding her feelings, but her older sister had always been able to read her, and she didn’t really want Sarah thinking she had any interest in her oldest friend. Sarah made it all too clear how she felt about Chase’s love life, or as Sarah called it with a fair amount of sarcasm, her fickle sex life.
“Lily,” Sarah interjected, “is our camp medic for the season.”
“Dr. Davenport, then,” Chase said. “Apologies.”
“Lily is fine,” Lily said, back to her neutral tone and unrevealing expression.
“I expect I’ll see you around, then,” Chase said, looking for any hint of interest and not seeing one.
“I was just giving Lily the tour,” Sarah said in a way that suggested Chase was dismissed.
“I’ll go see what Clara’s cooking while I wait on Natalie.” Chase bounded up the stairs and paused by Lily’s side, close enough she could catch Lily’s scent—something citrusy and cool. Lily’s eyes widened, and Chase smiled inwardly. “I’ll see you, Lily.”
Chase disappeared inside, and after a second, Lily followed Sarah down the stairs. “I can’t believe that’s Chase. She was so skinny and shy.”
“She grew up,” Sarah said abruptly.
Lily shot her a questioning glance. Sarah was very rarely anything but sunny and optimistic, and the hint of anger in her tone was unexpected.
Sarah caught the look and shook her head. “Sorry. It’s been hard. Chase was so young then, and I wasn’t really ready to be a parent, and with first Dad going and then Mom just a few years later, she ran a little wild.”
“She seems to have turned out pretty responsible. From the way you described it, being a DEC officer is demanding.”
“That’s true, and for her it’s been doubly hard.” Sarah shook her head and her smile returned. “That’s Chase’s story. I’m really happy that she’s found her place.”
Lily remained silent. There was more to the story, and she wasn’t going to hear it from Sarah. She’d heard so many stories, often sad ones, and witnessed so many more tragedies in the past few years that she thought she’d grown immune to them. The sudden desire to know more about Chase Fielder surprised her.