“Dear Bruin,” it began.
At first her father pled innocence. The envelope must’ve gotten overlooked, or been buried somehow among all his other papers. It wasn’t until Monday, some forty hours after its discovery, that Logan finally confessed.
“There is such a notion,” he told her, “as doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.”
Addie, heaving her last duffel into the bed of her pickup, pretended to ignore him.
“When I was your age,” he continued, stepping into the driveway, “the thing I wanted more than anything was to go to CSU. Your uncle Luther went. Only there wasn’t money enough for the both of us, so one of us had to stay home.”
She stood on the wheel, leaning and stretching bungie cords to secure her cargo in place.
“Fort Collins is only eight hours away. Heck, you could drive home on weekends. Bring your laundry, eat some home cooking. That’s what Luther used to do. To this day he’ll tell you those were the best years of his life.”
“His life, Daddy.” Addie wheeled, red-faced, to where he stood in the driveway. “This is my life we’re talking about.”
“It’s your life I was thinking about. Your life here, with Waylon and Feather. With your friends and your schoolmates. With your grandparents, for goodness sake. Have you thought about them for even a minute?”
“Don’t try to make me the guilty party.”
“They want you here as much as I do. You know they do. Here where you were born. Here where your mother is buried.”
Addie circled the truck, inspecting. “I’ll call Grandma when I get to California,” she said, yanking the driver’s door open.
“And what about Colt? Ain’t you even gonna say goodbye to him?”
The driver’s door slammed and the engine caught and roared. Addie lowered the passenger-side window as she leaned over the console.
“You can call him! Tell him goodbye for me! You can invite him over and the two of you can watch baseball and drink beer and make plans for my future!”
She’d jammed her truck into gear then, and stomped on the gas, and she never looked back at the tall man receding in the driveway behind her, bending double as she sped from view.
“Colt ought to be there today.”
“What?”
Her father drew rein, halting the big Appaloosa. To Addie’s surprise they’d arrived at the fork where the first stony riffles echoed in the pine trees. Where somewhere beyond them a hissing sound, faint and serpentine, seemed to hang in the wind.
“Colt called to say he’d like to pay his respects to your grandma. You’ll recall she was right fond of that boy.”
“Daddy. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but Colt Dixon is a married man.”
“Was a married man. Him and your friend Brenda, they divorced around four months ago.”
“Divorced? How come?”
Logan shrugged. “I reckon their baby had something to do with it. Born dead is the story I heard.”
Addie turned the sorrel on its haunches and urged it up the trail toward the mesa.
“Hold on!” her father called. “I thought we might ride to the waterfall!”
She spurred the mare into a canter. After a long minute of uphill pounding she heard Lightning’s anvil hooves thundering behind her.
Addie was first to the cattle guard where the dry fork of the irrigation ditch passed under the track through a culvert. From this higher vantage the hissing she’d heard at the fork sounded more like an idling jet engine. She dismounted and held the reins in one hand and unlatched the gate with the other.
She walked the horse forward, then froze.
“Oh my God,” she said.
5
Bradley had overslept, and by the time he descended to the kitchen he could sense from the deafening stillness the house was already empty. He checked his phone for the umpteenth time, turning a circle where he stood.
A coffeepot warmed on the counter. In a cupboard he found a single porcelain mug, chipped and stained, amid a jumble of mismatched glasses.
On the porch out front he got his first sunlit view of the Red Rocks Ranch in all its autumnal splendor: Emerald fields framed by massive cottonwoods ablaze in greens and golds. Girdling walls of terra cotta rising to a sky of glacial blue. Elongated shadows, black and canted, running in chiaroscuro. He was reminded of Klimt somehow, or maybe van Gogh. The Mulberry Tree. He’d seen it once at the Norton Simon and now stood witness to that same arsenic palate of madness and wonder.
“You must be that professor.”
The old man sat in a rocker with his back to the risen sun. He was swaddled in a faded quilt while across his lap rested a twin-barreled shotgun that, by Bradley’s estimation, may well have outweighed him.
Bradley recognized him immediately, from the photo of Addie’s high school graduation.
“Bradley Sommers. You must be Mr. Olsen. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”
The old man tossed a hand.
“Addie’s told me stories about her grandmother. I only wish I’d had the chance to meet her in person. I know Addie held her in high esteem.”
“You could say the feelin was mutual. My Vivian, she clucked over that girl like a mother hen. I reckon we both did.” The shotgun barrels lifted. “Reckon I still do.”
“Not for warding off suitors, I hope.”
“This? Hell no. This here is for wolves. We get packs of ’em around these parts, daytime and night.”
Bradley’s gaze shot to the Prius; to where they’d parked it in darkness some thirty long yards from the house.
“I’m funnin you, sonny. There ain’t wolf one in the whole state of Colorado. Used to be, many years back. They come clear up from Mexico. I hear where they’re bringin ’em back on the Gila. On purpose, I mean. As if gettin quit of ’em in the first place wasn’t chore enough. Ranchers down there are fit to be tied, and I can’t say as I blame ’em.” He fished a handkerchief from his pocket and half sneezed, half coughed into it and examined it closely before returning it to his pocket. “Whatever you teach at that college of yours, I hope it ain’t nothin about animals.”
“I co-chair the university’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, but my academic background is in geology.”
“Geology. You mean like rocks and such.”
“That’s right.”
“What about oil and gas?”
“That’s also part of it. And alternatives like wind and solar and geothermal.”
“And that’s what Addie’s been studyin? Environment and sustainability?”
“I believe she was a psychology major at one point, but her degree is in environmental science.”
“Huh. There any money in that?”
Bradley rested his weight on the railing and took a sip of his coffee. He nearly choked.
“Well, there’s always teaching. And research, of course. Environmental consulting and TES surveys, that sort of thing. And quite a few governmental positions. Not to shortchange the value of knowledge for its own sake.”
“Sounds like farming. If you can’t grow rich,