“Dear God,” Drew whispered, “let me make up for what I did to him. Please. Give me that chance.”

For fifteen years he had convinced himself he had done the right thing when he had kicked Elijah out of the house and sent Jo Harper back to her family. Even now, Drew accepted that he’d had no other choice.

That didn’t mean he didn’t have regrets.

A.J., Sean and Rose would forgive him if he died on the mountain he loved, but they’d never forgive him if their brother was killed. That Elijah had chosen to become a soldier and accepted the risks that came with it wouldn’t soften his siblings from holding their father responsible for driving him away from the only place he’d ever truly wanted to be.

Drew scooped up snow into his waterproof glove and formed it into a smooth ball. Two weeks ago he had held in his palms a dozen fragrant pink blossoms that had fallen from Washington ’s famous cherry trees, even as Jo Harper, in her early thirties now, had scrutinized him, obviously wondering if he was half out of his mind.

He hadn’t gone into his other reasons for coming to Washington. It seemed crazy now. Crazier even than his reasons for seeking out Jo. More visions emerged, as clear and real as the one of his son in battle-Elijah, the boy Jo had loved, now a man.

Drew dropped the snowball into a drift.

Maybe he was half out of his mind.

He noticed footprints-fresh ones-slowly disappearing in the falling snow. He went very still. He wasn’t so disoriented and preoccupied that he’d gone in circles.

No, he thought. They weren’t his prints.

Someone was up here with him.

Drew crept past the spruce and, just ahead, saw the little house he had spent most of last fall building. He hadn’t bothered with permits-he figured he’d get slapped with a fine one of these days, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t meant for the project to get away from him the way it had. After years of searching, he had finally found the cellar hole of the original Cameron house on Cameron Mountain. He had started by clearing out some trees and fixing up the rock foundation, and next thing he knew he was drawing up plans for a simple post-and-beam structure-more shed than house, really. When he finished it, he meant to present it as a surprise to his family, perhaps their last surprise from him.