Page 34 of 15 Summers Later

“That’s certainly your choice,” Luke said, his voice even. “Let my office know whatever you decide so someone else can handle your next round of vaccinations.”

He nodded to the man and climbed into the truck. Madi, still stunned from the argument, climbed into the passenger seat. She had barely closed her door before Luke drove away, leaving Paul Lancaster to watch after them with a dark expression on his weather-beaten face.

10

Our journey takes an unexpected turn as we reach the edge of a fast-flowing river. The water roars with a deafening intensity, a turbulent barrier standing between us and freedom. With no other choice, we wade into the icy stream, the current pulling at our legs like invisible hands trying to drag us under. The frigid water numbs our limbs, but we press on, the urgency of our escape drowning out the discomfort.

—Ghost Lakeby Ava Howell Brooks

Luke

Madi fumed beside him for the entire drive back to her house on the old Pruitt farm.

“How nervy,” she finally burst out as he approached the farmhouse. “The man drags you out on a Saturday to v-vaccinate his lambs at the last minute becauseheforgot to schedule an appointment. And then he actually threatens to take his business elsewhere over something completely out of your c-control. Now do you see how that st-stupid b-book is ruining everything?”

“He has every right to take his business elsewhere. That’s his choice. I don’t have the monopoly on veterinary medicine in the area. There are several other excellent vets within a sixty-mile radius.”

“None of them are as good as you,” she said with a loyalty that touched him. “Can’t he see that you’re a completely innocent victim in this whole thing? Your family had absolutely nothing to do with the Ghost L-Lake C-Coalition, but you all paid a terrible price because of them. B-because of us.”

Her words tangled more than usual, a certain sign of how upset she was. He glanced across the cab of his truck briefly before returning his gaze to the road. That quick look was enough to show him she was almost vibrating with anger.

“Not because of you,” he corrected. “You and Ava were the most innocent victims.”

“Innocent victims who...who dragged you and your family into a nightmare you had nothing to do with. Your father is d-dead because of us. Sierra and your niece and nephew never had the chance to meet their...g-grandfather.”

Her voice hitched on that last word, and Luke felt the familiar ache of sorrow, missing his father keenly. He pulled the truck to the side of the road into a clearing overlooking the vast peaks of the Sawtooths.

A mountain bluebird flitted through the red twig dogwoods along the creek and he could see a couple of magpies watching them warily.

“You can’t think you’re to blame for what happened to my dad.”

Had she truly held this inside her all these years, blaming herself for the choices of others?

“Can’t I?” she looked out the window at the still-snowcapped mountains, green and rugged and beautiful.

“You shouldn’t. You were an innocent child. You could not have known what would happen.”

“We never should have approached your camp,” she said. Her words flowed more fluently, which told him she had thought this many times. “We had spent days avoiding people after our escape, trying to work our own way out of the mountains without being seen, without being scented by the dogs. We had stayed away from the few people we caught glimpses of from a distance. That was partly because we did not know who to trust, but also because we did not want to drag anyone else into the situation. But I was starving and sick and Ava...Ava knew I wouldn’t have lasted much longer. I wish to God we had stuck to our original plan and skirted around your camp on our way down the mountain to our grandmother’s house here in Emerald Creek. We had no idea they were so close b-behind us.”

What he remembered most about that day was the argument he and his father had been having. Luke had been nineteen, home for the summer after his first year of college.

He had announced only the week before that he didn’t want to return to school. A friend of his had taken a job on a fishing trawler in Alaska and wanted Luke to come join him.

The money was amazing. He could work a few seasons and save up enough to finish school without having to take out student loans.

What he hadn’t told his father was his own self-doubt, the anxiety that he wasn’t cut out for even undergrad work, forget about the rigorous requirements to earn a doctor of veterinary medicine. Luke had feared he was a failure who could never measure up to the amazing Dr. Dan Gentry, so what was the point in trying?

They had agreed to a cease-fire so they could both enjoy a long-planned fishing trip to their favorite lake deep in the Sawtooth wilderness.

This had been an annual tradition for them, when his father would close the practice for a few days and take him, Nicole and Owen on the seven-mile hike into the backcountry to Three Peaks Lake, which teemed with native trout and Arctic grayling. They would camp beside the lake and fish and eat and talk and fish some more.

It was a tradition they loved and looked forward to all year.

The first night had been good, with everyone getting along. But the second afternoon, angry words had seethed between him and his father, until Owen had stalked off to the lake to fish on his own and Nicki had retreated into her tent with a book.

He and his father were sitting in angry silence when two sunburned, bedraggled girls wearing ripped, filthy, old-style prairie dresses had burst into their camp.

He could remember it like it had happened that morning. The girls were half-starved, covered in insect bites, Ava sobbing as she begged for their help.

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