Page 4

Adam sighed softly. Someday no longer existed for Thomas.

No new mountains lay ahead of them; they would never climb Denali again — Denali …

His thoughts shifted to the ongoing debate about the official name of The High One .

Just recently, President Carter had supported a bill that would recognize the traditional name, but Congress blocked the change.

To Adam and his family, though, it would always be Denali, and the irony hit him upside the head.

Thomas had instructed Adam to assume his name.

Adam could ask others to call him by Thomas’s middle name, but just like Denali had lost its native name because of some prospector’s idea to honor President McKinley, Adam was sure to lose his identity by taking on his brother’s name.

He wouldn’t just lose his name; he would lose two years of his life.

He wouldn’t graduate high school. He wouldn’t go to prom with — He lifted his eyes to the rays of sunlight poking between the visor and the doorframe, hoping to dry his stupid tears.

He had no right to cry about losing two years of his life when Thomas would never experience anything again.

In less than two hours, he’d left several inches of snow on the ground, the only home he’d ever known, and a brother he loved more than peanut butter, horses, and a roof over his head — since he’d chosen to stay with Thomas rather than hope for a warm government-funded house with three meals a day.

Two hours away, and his life would never be the same, but he had a life. More importantly, he and Peter had a chance at a future because of Thomas’s sacrifices.

Adam eased his foot off the gas as he approached the turn to Wasilla.

Take a left on Main Street, or continue until I reach Anchorage ?

For that matter, maybe even farther.

After their parents’ deaths, TV and movie ratings were no longer a concern.

Although his brother had insisted that bedtime was ten, when Thomas went to the drive-in, Adam and Peter huddled in the truck bed, their sleeping bags cinched around their waists so their hands were free to eat buttered popcorn — a total treat Thomas had provided them after he’d “ come into some cash ,” as he’d put it.

Several times during the movie, Thomas had rapped on the window, declaring, “ You boys better be sleeping back there .” But on the way home, Thomas had elbowed Adam’s side, chuckling, “ Imagine living in a van, drag-racing for money. Picking up girls …” He’d nudged Adam’s ribs again.

“ It’s almost time we have the talk , brother .

” Thomas had sighed. “ I know the flick was set in L.A., but I was imagining Florida. Jeff went to spring break in Daytona Beach, said the girls were wild —” Thomas had glanced over where Adam sat in the middle to where Peter had curled up against the door.

“ Someday, Adam… Someday our world will be right again .”

“ Someday …” Adam repeated Thomas’s words aloud.

“Adam?”

Adam jumped. The quiet truck had lulled him into a near trance, allowing him to imagine a future that would never happen. No matter how much he wanted to think he could start a new life, the events of the evening would assure that his world would never be right again.

“What are you doing, man?” Peter glanced from one side to the other of the intersection.

Adam blew out a breath. “Thinking.” He couldn’t tell Peter what he was contemplating. His kid brother would be all over going to Daytona Beach. But Peter was only fourteen. He needed to finish high school.

Instead of overthinking his decision, Adam turned left.

“Adam!” Peter craned his neck, looking behind the truck. “Anchorage is that way. Thomas told us to head to Anchorage.”

“Change of plan,” Adam said simply. “There’s a ranch in Wasilla. I can work. Make some money. Then maybe we can —”

Peter jerked the backpack off the floor. “We have plenty of money.” He pulled out two wads of bills. “They’re not ones with a hundred wrapped around them, either. They’re all hundreds. If Thomas had this much, why didn’t we ever have more food?”

Adam slammed on the brakes and stared at the rolled-up bills. He didn’t answer right away. He couldn’t. Thomas hadn’t been spending his own money. That much was clear now. The food had been scarce because the money hadn’t belonged to him. Not really.

Eyes on the road, Adam exhaled softly. “Because that cash wasn’t ours to spend, obviously. Now, put it away until I figure out what to do with it,” Adam growled. “If anyone sees —”

“See us?” Peter shoved the wads of money back into the sack.

“Who’s going to see us?” He motioned around them at the two-lane road, the darkened businesses.

Wasilla was larger than Falcon Run, by a longshot, but it was still the middle of the night.

Peter shook his head. “We’re in the middle of Bumfuc —”

“Peter! Don’t talk like that.”

Peter scoffed. “Who’s gonna hear me?”

“ I hear you. It’s… it’s… disrespectful , and…

probably offensive to… Egyptians.” Whenever their father would slip and swear in front of their mother — which was unusual — their mother would say that cursing was disrespectful and, worse, it showed a person’s ignorance, revealing they weren’t creative enough to come up with a proper adjective or interjection.

“Whatever, man,” Peter grumbled. “Dad cussed. You and Thomas cuss —”

“Only when I’m at the end of my rope… and there’s still a fifty-foot drop below me.” Exactly how he’d felt two hours ago. He used the climbing metaphor, knowing Peter — who was a much better climber than he ever was — would understand the feeling of your life hanging on by a thread.

Peter glanced around at the empty intersection again. “What I was going to say… in the middle of nowhere… is that if we don’t go to Anchorage, how will Thomas find us? Didn’t he tell you where we’d meet?”

Adam whooshed out a breath. Oh, no… Dear God .

How do I explain ? He’d just assumed Peter had understood.

But why would he? He wasn’t there. His body hadn’t been flattened into muddy snow by a trained gunman.

Jeff had grown up in the same part of Alaska they had, but he’d acted as if he’d just come back from Vietnam.

Instead of answering Peter’s question, Adam focused on a car pulling into a parking lot a half-mile down the road.

The headlights went out, then the door slowly opened.

A couple of seconds later, an older woman, her coat drawn tight around her neck, shuffled to the side door of a squat wood building with only a red bowtie-looking sign touting BUDWEISER.

He guessed patrons must be more interested in the fact that the restaurant served beer than food.

Adam pointed through the hazy windshield.

“Isn’t that the diner Dad took us to before picking up a new horse he needed to train?

” Adam had never put together that the ranch Jeff had directed him to might be the place he’d been as a child.

Clara Mae ran the ranch, he remembered. She’d been tough on the hands but she’d treated Adam well.

“Yeah…” Peter nodded. “Remember their flapjacks? I cried when the waitress set the platter in front of me.”

Adam shifted his foot from the brake to the accelerator, heading toward the restaurant. “I remember that. I was so confused. Why did you cry? I thought you liked flapjacks.”

Peter turned on the bench seat, lifting his hands to indicate the size of something.

“That one blueberry flapjack was bigger than the plate. You know how Dad always insisted we eat everything on our plates. Well, I remember staring down at that gigantic brown thing the size of flattened bear skat — with berries even — thinking, I’ll never be able to eat this, and then Dad will be mad at me. ”

“Oh…” Adam covered his mouth, trying not to laugh.

He certainly didn’t feel like laughing. Any minute, Peter would remember his question about meeting Thomas in Anchorage.

Still, Peter was easy to sidetrack. Both Thomas and Adam had learned early on that if their baby brother was complaining about something, they could get him thinking about something else — sometimes just by staring off in the distance.

Peter would be ranting one minute, and Adam would focus on a specific location in a tree or simply out the window, and Peter would forget his train of thought, anxious to join in with whatever his brother had discovered.

Peter’s expression turned down. “Dad didn’t yell at me, though.

He simply picked up my fork and knife, folded the flapjack to look like a small stack of flapjacks, then winked at me and said, ‘ I’d be happy to help finish it off if you can’t .

Don’t forget Thomas has a larger appetite than all of us put together .

’ Hm,” Peter finished, looking down at the geometrical pattern on the woven seat cover.

“I totally hadn’t thought about that day in forever.

I might never have again if we hadn’t come here. I miss them, Adam.”

“Mom and Dad?” Adam tested.

“Yeah… Thomas, too. He used to be so cool, so laid back. Now he’s all —”

“Stop right there,” Adam warned as he pulled into what he hoped was a parking space outside the café. Although there wasn’t three feet of snow on the ground, slush and mush covered any lines that might indicate where he should park. “Thomas worked his ass off to keep us in our home.”

Peter pulled in a shaky breath. “I know… I just get so — angry. It’s not fair what happened to us.

If I were Thomas, I would have ditched us two leaches.

I mean, really, why should he have to take care of two teenagers?

I know it’s not fair. Still, I wish he could be a kid — I wish the three of us could. ”

Adam thought about his father’s constant reminder when any of them had whined about not getting what they wanted that life isn’t fair but held his tongue.

Peter had already lost, in a way, two fathers.

Adam didn’t need to be Peter’s father; he needed to be his older brother. Like Peter said, they were still kids.

The coffee shop probably wouldn’t open for another hour or so. The woman probably gets in early to make fresh biscuits or pastries. Adam seemed to remember that there had always been fresh baked goods.

Adam turned off the ignition — no sense in wasting gas — and nodded to the coffee shop. “We can get one of those flapjacks when they open, which probably won’t be for an hour or longer. We need to talk, anyway, and here’s just as good as anywhere else, I suspect.”

Peter pursed his lips, then looked up at the stained headliner. “We don’t need to talk, Adam. I think I know why you made the turn for Wasilla.”

Adam sniffed and looked out his window at the quiet street. Maybe Peter was the smart one. Afterall, it’d taken Jeff spelling it out before Adam accepted the truth of his brother’s death.

Peter slumped against the passenger window again. “I don’t wanna sit here for a couple of hours. Why don’t we just go to that ranch you mentioned? I remember the lady was nice — she gave me hard candy.”

Adam didn’t answer right away. The memory was warm, safe… like the flapjacks or the drive-in. But that was years ago. Back when they still had parents. Back when Thomas still had hope.

This time, they weren’t picking up a stray wild horse for Dad to train, or selling the woman something she needed.

This time, they were the strays — scarred but still wild where it counted. And Adam wasn’t about to let either of them be broken.