Page 17 of Wind Valley

“Really, that late?” Maura shuddered slightly. Winter had a whole different meaning here in the mountains. “Okay. Noted. But the same point applies.”

Sarah tapped her pen against her lips. “What else can we write in our journals?”

“You can write anything you like.” Inspiration struck. “You can keep a list of the animals you see. Moose, mice, ravens. You can take notes on their behavior and get to know their habits.”

Was it wrong that she hoped the kids would act like little scientists and give her a full report of their local wildlife? Hey, it was Firelight Ridge, all rules were off.

Hailey was already scribbling away in her journal, no doubt eviscerating her evil ex on paper. She was a slim, fierce teenager partial to dark eye makeup and apocalyptic doodles. Maura adored her on sight.

She tried to wrap up class by three, so the kids could get home before it got to dark. There were no school buses here, no carpools. A rotating selection of older Chilkoots came to pick up the younger ones, and Gus and Eliza usually skied home, since they lived relatively close to town.

Hailey walked home, since she lived the closest of anyone. Sometimes her best friend Elias would meet her after school, and the two of them would head off ice skating on a pond that the plow truck kept clear of snow.

It wasn’t until she’d been teaching her classes for about two weeks that she realized Hailey’s friend was also a Chilkoot—or at least had been. Elias now used the last name McBride, but he’d been raised as a Chilkoot, and he looked like the other family members with his reddish hair and strong physique.

“My brother talks to animals,” young Noah Chilkoot had declared. “And they talk to him too.”

She didn’t make the connection until the day she found Elias waiting outside the boarding house with a baby ermine perched on his shoulder. It was a sunny day, and she had to squint against the glare of sun on snow to see the creature clearly.

Hailey groaned at the sight. “It’s a rodent, Elias. They have diseases. You shouldn’t get so close to them.”

“This one doesn’t,” he said calmly.

“I can’t believe you let him sit on your shoulder.” Hailey shuddered. Maura guessed that if she’d been in a different mood, she would have found the ermine adorable, even if it did look like a white-furred ferret. Before coming to Firelight Ridge, she hadn’t known what ermines looked like. But there were more ermines than humans here, by a long shot.

“I can’t make him get off now,” Elias said reasonably enough. “He needs a ride back home.”

“Oh my God.” Hailey threw up her hands and turned to Maura. “Do you still need help with the littles? Some free time seems to have opened up in my schedule.”

“Actually, do you mind if I ask you some questions, Elias?”

Surprised, the young man put out his hand for the ermine, who ran onto it, took one look at the curious faces around him, then scampered back onto the safe zone of Elias’ shoulder. “I’m doing school with my mother. I’m very behind.”

“It’s not about school. It’s about animals.”

He brightened. “I know more about animals than about math or stuff like that. English class is the hardest for me. Some of the grammar makes no sense.”

She smiled at him sympathetically. “I don’t disagree with that. So I was wondering…” She noticed that Hailey had abandoned her morose mood and was listening curiously for her next words. Did she want word to spread around about what she and Pinky had seen? Could Hailey be trusted? Could any teenager?

But she didn’t have a chance to make that decision before Elias spoke.

“If you’re talking about the man that got bitten by the wolf, that wasn’t the wolf’s fault. He was defending his territory. That’s part of being a wolf, and that man should have known that.”

“What?” exclaimed Hailey. “A wolf bite? You didn’t tell me about that. What if it was a werewolf?”

“When did that happen?” Maura asked him. She wondered why Pinky hadn’t mentioned it, since he heard about most things that happened around town.

“Last week.” Elias seemed surprised at all the fuss. “I guess I forgot. He wasn’t a nice man, so I couldn’t blame that wolf.”

“Okay, back the truck up,” said Hailey. “Tell the whole story, from the beginning.”

“The truck?” Elias looked around, confused. “I’m not in the truck.”

Hailey giggled, now entirely recovered from her bad mood. “It’s so cute when you don’t know all the dumb phrases everyone else uses. Don’t you think, Ms. Vaughn?”

10

“So the story is that Elias was out at the Chilkoot property helping the men clear out the snow after that last storm,” Maura told Lachlan that evening, at The Fang. “By the way, they seem to have very strict gender roles out there. What’s the story with that?”

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