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Gracie suspected there was an ulterior motive to his enthusiasm, but she didn’t know yet what it was. She suspected through comments her mother had made over the years that her dad wasn’t very happy growing up, that his intensity (he was a software engineer who traveled a lot all over the country and the world) prevented him from ever being loose or carefree. He thought in terms of circuit boards and digital switches, and when the level of drama was high-which it often was with Danielle and sometimes Gracie-that he was “better at hardware than software,” as if that explained everything. She thought maybe he was hoping he could go on this wilderness cowboy pack trip and … be a boy again. She wasn’t sure that was something she really wanted to see.

* * *

The trip the day before had begun on a jarring note, Gracie thought. It was taking her a while to process what had happened and why it bothered her, other than her natural and annoying propensity to simply worry too much about everything.

They’d kissed their mother good-bye at Denver International Airport in the morning and boarded the United/Frontier flight to Bozeman. Although they’d planned to carry on their luggage-which was ridiculously slight given the weight restrictions Jed McCarthy imposed-but because of all the metal and equipment in their duffel bags, they’d had to check the bags through. Gracie thought her mom looked forlorn and vulnerable, as if she wondered if she’d ever see her daughters again. That wasn’t a good way to start the trip.

Their arrival was slightly delayed-the airplane had to circle Bozeman while early summer thundershowers lashed the airport. Gracie had the window seat and looked out at the mountains in all directions and the black thunderheads on the northern horizon.

“Which way is Yellowstone?” she’d asked her sister.

“Like I would know?” Danielle said in a way that was both incredulous and offended.

“That’s right,” Gracie had said, “how dare I assume you know anything.”

Which was met with a hard twist on her ear.

She’d looked out expectantly for their dad in the luggage area because he was scheduled to arrive an hour before from Minneapolis, but he wasn’t there.

“His plane must be late,” Danielle told her. “I’ll check in a minute.”

When their bags arrived and the rest of the passengers cleared out, Gracie waited near the outside doors. She knew there was a problem by Danielle’s worried face as she came back from the Northwest counter.

“The plane arrived on time but he wasn’t on it, they said.”

Gracie fought panic. She looked up at the mounted animal heads and stuffed trout on the walls and out at the cold blue mountains to the south. She thought of how miserable it would be to be stuck in Bozeman, Montana, with her sister until they could figure out a way to get back home. And she was worried about what might have happened to their dad. Was he sick? Did he get in a car crash on the way to the airport? She flipped open her phone and powered it up, hoping there would be a message.

“I’m calling Mom,” Danielle said, having already opened her cell phone.

That’s when their dad bounded into the airport. Not from the area where the planes landed, but from outside on the street.

“Girls!” he shouted. His grin and his open arms made Gracie’s black dread melt away as if he had touched a flame to a spider’s web. He seemed almost too exuberant, she thought. As if he was happy but with a bit of desperation thrown in.

“Come on, the car’s out front,” he’d said. “Let me help you with your stuff.”

Danielle told him they were starting to worry, and what the people at the airline counter had said.

He waved it off, saying, “That’s ridiculous. Obviously, I was on the plane. I’m here, aren’t I?”

* * *

They turned onto a dirt road by a brown National Park Service sign indicating the campsite and trailhead. Her father once again closed his window to prevent the roll of dust from filling the car. Gracie turned off her phone and put it in a side pocket of the door and made a mental note not to forget it when they returned. She watched as Danielle seethed-no signal at all-and finally snapped her phone shut.

“Great,” her sister said, “I’m completely alone in the world.”

“Except for your sister and your father,” her dad said with caution.

“Alone in Hell-o-stone,” Gracie mocked gently, “Hell-o-stone alone…”

Danielle mouthed Shut the fuck up, Gracie.

“That’s your second offense,” Gracie said, deadpan. “We may need to turn you in to the rangers.”

“We’re here,” her dad said with an epic flourish.

Gracie once again bounded forward and hung her arms over the front seat. They’d rounded a corner and could now see that at the end of the road was a very long horse trailer in a parking lot. People stood around the trailer in the sun; a couple were already on horseback. Gracie counted ten or eleven milling about. When she saw the horses her heart seemed to swell to twice its size.