Chapter 27 #2
They left the dogs with Jax and Nessie. Greta crouched and got both hands into Atlas’s fur and held him for five seconds—his body warm and solid under her palms, his breathing steady—then stood and walked away without looking back.
Atlas made a sound low in his throat, not quite a whine, and Nessie’s voice went soft and soothing behind her.
When she glanced over her shoulder halfway to the tree line, Atlas was still watching her, his ears flat against his head, his body tense in Nessie’s grip.
King all but yanked Jax off his feet, trying to lunge after them.
The trail started at a wooden post with a faded marker nailed to it: Summit Ridge Trail, 2.4 miles, elevation gain 1200 feet. The first switchback came within fifty yards, the path cutting sharply left and climbing through loose shale under a thin layer of pine duff.
Greta hit it at a pace that was too fast for the terrain and exactly right for not thinking.
Her flats slipped on the wet rock. She caught herself with one hand on a pine trunk and kept going.
The trail steepened. The switchbacks came closer together, cutting back and forth across the face of the ridge in tight zigzags that made her calves burn and her lungs pull hard for air.
The pines crowded in on both sides, their trunks dark with rain, their branches dripping onto the trail. The smell was sharp and clean.
Her flats were ruined within the first quarter mile.
The soles had no tread, the leather uppers were soaked through and caked with mud, but she didn’t care.
She pushed harder, taking the trail at a pace that made her breath come short and ragged, hauling herself up the steeper sections with both hands grabbing for trunks and branches.
Bear kept up. She didn’t look back at him, but she could hear the steady rhythm of his breathing, the occasional grunt when his foot slipped, the rustle of his jacket as he grabbed for a handhold. He didn’t tell her to slow down. Didn’t ask if she was okay. Just followed.
The trail broke out of the trees at forty minutes and opened onto a wide granite shelf that jutted out over the valley like something someone had forgotten to finish.
The stone was pale gray and smooth, scoured by wind and rain into gentle curves, and it ran flat for thirty feet before dropping off into nothing.
Behind the shelf, the ridge continued upward, but here there was just open air and the long drop to the valley floor.
Greta walked to the lip of the shelf and stopped.
Below, the cemetery was visible as a small dark rectangle in the pale grass, the iron fence a thin black line around its perimeter.
The fresh grave was a darker square at the far end, raw earth against the green.
Beyond the cemetery, Solace spread out in a loose grid of streets and buildings, small and tidy from this height.
Beyond Solace, the Bitterroots rose in long ridges, their peaks invisible in the gray overcast. The sky was building weather at its edges — darker clouds piling up in the west, the kind that would bring rain by evening.
The wind came across the shelf in steady gusts, pulling at her jacket, tugging strands of hair loose from where she’d pinned them back that morning. One strand came across her face and stuck to her cheek. She didn’t move to fix it.
Bear stopped six feet behind her. She could feel him there, but still, he didn’t speak. He just stood and let her have the silence.
She stood a long moment. Long enough that the wind shifted and brought the smell of rain from the west. Long enough that her legs started to shake from the climb, and she locked her knees to keep herself upright.
Then she opened her mouth and screamed.
It came from somewhere below her lungs and ripped its way out through her throat. It went out over the valley, and the trees swallowed it.
She pulled in another breath and did it again.
And again.
And again, until her voice cracked and split and her throat went raw and her knees buckled.
Bear caught her. His arms came around her from behind. She grabbed his forearms with both hands and held on, her fingers digging into the muscle there, and she shook.
She didn’t know how long it lasted, but when it finally started to ease, she felt scraped clean, like something cancerous had been pulled out of her.
Finally empty, she went still.
The hollowness felt like relief.
She turned in his arms. Slow, unsteady, her hands still gripping his forearms. He let her move, loosening his arms just enough to let her turn, but not letting go.
She ended up facing him with her hands pressed to his chest and his arms still around her, and she dropped her forehead to his sternum and stood there.
“I’m glad you’re a mountain.” Her voice came out muffled against his shirt, rough from the screaming, and startled a small laugh out of him.
“What?”
“You’ve been my rock through all of this. My mountain, keeping me steady. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
He brought his chin down to the top of her head and held her tighter. “You can lean on me any time you want, Tink.”
She closed her eyes and let him hold her. The wind came across the shelf, and the sky built weather in the west.
Down at the cemetery, Atlas and King had broken free of Nessie and Jax and were running up the trail toward them, side by side.
They’d been doing that for days now. Lying next to each other at the house.
Walking the property as a pair. Like the dogs had decided something the humans hadn’t said out loud yet.
Greta watched them come.