“What do we do now?” Mel asked Pops.

He was cleaning the cut on her arm. The shard of glass had left her with a nasty, oozing gash.

“We need to tell the rangers,” he said. “The station is closed now. But I’ll call first thing in the morning.”

“What will they do?”

“They’ll have to trap the bear,” he said, tearing open a Band-Aid and carefully pressing it over Mel’s cut. “They’ll move it up to the mountains, way into the wilderness.”

He explained that the rangers had a special kind of trailer for trapping problem bears. They’d hitch it to a jeep and drive it to where the bear was last seen. They’d bait the trap with deer or elk meat. The bear would climb inside to get the bait. And then, slam! a door would shut behind it, locking it in. Then the rangers would drive the trailer up into the wilds of the park, far from the campgrounds and hiking trails. They’d release the bear and drive away.

“What if that grizzly comes back here?” Mel asked.

“It won’t,” Pops said.

But his eyes flickered, and Mel could see he wasn’t so sure.

Mel wanted to help Pops clean up the broken glass. But Kevin needed her. The little guy was all shaken up. Mel found him on her tiny cot, tears pouring down his face.

“I’m sorry, Mel! I made the bear mad!”

“Oh, Kev,” Mel said, lying down next to him and pulling him in close. “It’s not your fault.” She tried to make her voice sound calm like Mom’s always did when they were upset. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Shhhh, shhhhh.”

After a few minutes, Kevin’s sobs slowed down, and Mel pulled the blanket over them. She thought about all those times Mom’s calm words made things better.

There was the time they saw bats in the outhouse. And the time they discovered a huge raccoon standing on the counter in the cabin. It had looked at them and hissed.

“Well, good morning to you, too,” Mom had said to the raccoon.

She always made them feel lucky when they saw something wild. To her, a shiny green beetle was more beautiful than a diamond ring. Every spider’s web was a work of art.

But Mom wouldn’t have felt lucky tonight. That bear had terrified all of them, even Pops. In fact, Mel was secretly glad that Kevin wanted to sleep with her. She snuggled up closer to him. A few minutes later, he drifted off to sleep with both arms wrapped tight around Mel’s neck.

Mel could hear Pops moving around the cabin. He’d already hammered a piece of wood over the broken window in the door. Now he was sweeping up the glass.

She closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep. But the bear attack kept playing over and over again in her head, like a slideshow that wouldn’t stop.

It just didn’t make sense. Grizzlies didn’t act that way. Or smell that way. At least, no grizzly she’d ever heard of.

She’d only seen a grizzly one other time in her life. As Kevin breathed softly next to her, she thought back on that unforgettable day.