None of the Cameron siblings was more taken aback than Jo was herself by their father’s inexplicable act of generosity.

And yet…

She pushed the uncomfortable memory of her last encounter with Drew Cameron out of her mind. She didn’t want to go there. Not now, not especially with Elijah ambling her way.

She watched the hawk glide back toward her and disappear into the woods and hills above the cabins.

Cameron land.

There was no wind, but the air was brisk and chilly-she’d gotten used to Washington ’s warmer climate. She’d had to pull on her black fleece jacket when she’d crossed the Vermont border. She hadn’t expected to be back in Black Falls until Thanksgiving, and then only for a short visit with her family.

But here she was, and who knew for how long?

The brightly colored leaves of October had fallen, just the rusts and maroons of dying oak leaves clinging to branches among the hemlocks, pines and spruces along the dot of a glacial lake. Jo noticed a battered dark green wooden canoe in the grayish frost-killed grass down by the lake. It was on her property, but it wasn’t her canoe. No doubt it belonged to a Cameron-probably the one walking down the road with the flowers.

She carried her box across the weeds and dead pine needles that passed for a yard. Elijah kept coming. She saw no sign of a limp-her sister, Beth, had e-mailed her in April after news hit town that Elijah, a Special Forces soldier, had been wounded, badly, in Afghanistan.

It was the day after Devin Shay, a Black Falls High School senior, had found Drew Cameron dead on the mountain named for his ancestors.

Jo stopped at the front door-the only door-to the largest of the dilapidated cabins. It was set up on blocks and had moss growing on its roof, which couldn’t be good, and its board-and-batten exterior needed a fresh coat of dark brown paint. But it was the closest to the lake and the best of the lot. Most of the cabins probably should have been condemned years ago. A.J., the eldest Cameron, supposedly had drawn up plans for expanding Black Falls Lodge down to the lake, never expecting the land wouldn’t one day be his.