Kate was forced to admit, if only to herself, that Old Sam might have a point.

She thought of the two-bedroom, two-bathroom home, now outfitted with electricity and running water, sitting where her cabin had been, before a murderer had set it on fire, hoping she was inside. The cedar prefab house was so new it made her teeth hurt, so clean she was afraid to let Mutt get hair on the rug, so large she imagined an echo when she spoke.

Well, okay, maybe it didn’t echo. But it sure as hell was big compared to what she was used to, with all the room in the world for her newly adopted son, Johnny, an orphan of his father’s death and his mother’s neglect.

She climbed the hill past the old high school and found a spot to sit and look at the view, narrow Orca Inlet, Hawkins Island, Hinchinbrook Island, outlined in orange and red and hot pink by the setting sun. To the east, tiny Mummy Island stood out in bold relief; to the west, the passage to Prince William Sound. It was beautiful, but suddenly she longed for her own place in the world, the clearing filled with a semicircle of buildings surrounded by wildflowers and diamond willow and spruce and alder and birch. Mutt sat next to her, leaning against her side, a warm, solid, reassuring weight. Kate knotted a hand in Mutt’s ruff and felt three months of tension begin to gear down, one ratchet at a time.

Three notes sounded in the still evening air, a pure descending scale. She cocked her head to hear them better when they repeated.

“Okay, Emaa,” she said softly in reply. “Time to go home.”

She’d see out the red season, but after that, it was back to the homestead. If it was an unfamiliar roof, a roof lacking in any family history whatsoever, at least it was hers.

Besides, she thought, getting to her feet, it was more than time to continue her bedevilment of Sgt. Jim Chopin.