Piper's Mountain Man (Wren Brothers Of Harrow Peak #1)

Piper

I drive up Ridge Road with Owen's notebook on the passenger seat.

Not to read. I know every page — the trail names in his careful print, the elevations marked with stars, the whole section on Harrow Peak that takes up more room than anywhere else in the book. I brought it because he should be here for this. He wanted to come. I'm coming for both of us.

Seventeen switchbacks. I counted. The road narrows to single-lane gravel halfway up, trees pressing close on both sides, and then the valley drops away and the town appears — a handful of buildings tucked against the base of a mountain that makes everything underneath it look temporary.

The altitude hits when I step out. Thinner than Denver, and I've lived at five thousand feet my whole life.

Pine and cold rock underneath it, even in August. The mountain above the town catches the late-afternoon light.

I stand in the gravel lot with one bag, a notebook, and three days.

The town Owen wanted to see, the people he talked about, the mountain where he planned to stand.

Then home — Denver, the trauma floor, the grief I've been managing since the phone call.

Owen described it exactly right. He always did. If he said a trail was steep, you needed both hands. If he said a person was good, they were.

He said Slade Wren was good. Talked about him constantly — the medic from Colorado who was heading home to join a mountain rescue team when his enlistment ended. Owen had plans to visit. A whole page in this notebook dedicated to everything he and Slade were going to do up here.

I'm here because Owen should have come first.

My charge nurse thinks I'm visiting a college friend in Breckenridge. I let her. I'm driving four hours to stand on a mountain where my dead brother never got to stand doesn't fit on a PTO request.

The Summit sits across the gravel lot from a converted firehouse, connected by a covered walkway. Dark wood, propped-open door, the low sound of glasses inside. I called this morning. The woman who answered — Dottie — said of course, honey and asked nothing else.

I stop on the porch. The mountain fills the sky above the roofline and my chest seizes — hard enough that I press my hand flat against my sternum. I never expected to be taking my own vitals on a porch in the mountains.

He would have stood right here. He would have said something about the light, and it would have been exactly right, and I would have told him to shut up and write it down.

I open the notebook to the Harrow Peak page. His handwriting, neat and deliberate: Visit after separation.

He had plans.

I close the notebook.

Footsteps on the gravel behind me. Steady, measured.

I don't turn around. Not yet.