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(Excerpt from Emerald Earth)

“ H ey, you’re the one who lives in Oregon,” I responded, after Lance made some exasperated comment about me keeping him on the phone.

“, I’m Attorney General…”

“And I’m running… you know what, it doesn’t matter. I’m here. Are you sure you’ll be able to get away? I’m taking a lot of time off to do this…” I said.

“It’s not me you’ve got to worry about. You know how Kyle is.”

I shook my head thinking about our baby brother. “Have you even spoken to him?” I asked, and Lance just laughed.

“Okay, that’s a no. Well, text him or something, he listens to you more than me. I also think Crater Lake is a cool spot to meet, especially since it’s where Grandma and Grandpa met. At least, according to Grandma’s stories.”

Lance was quiet, and I wasn’t sure whether he was thinking about our grandmother, or just ignoring me like he usually did when I called.

“Okay, I’m about to hit a national forest, and there’s never coverage in those. I’ll Facetime you when I get to the park, and you can thumbs up or down our choices of staying around there.”

“Thanks, brother… and yeah, I’ll text Kyle… not that it’ll do any good.”

I smiled as I hung up. I didn’t spend much time with my brothers, not like I should, but there was always this wall between us… a wall our dad had built. Despite that, I was determined to maintain some sort of connection, or at least try to.

I put my phone down, turned up my favorite CD since the national forests were notorious for poor radio reception, and cruised toward Crater Lake National Park. Hopefully, given Lance and Kyle both lived in Oregon, they’d be willing to join me there for a weekend of getting reunited.

It’d been two freaking years since I’d seen them, after all. Not to mention that our grandmother had passed away during that time. At the very least, they could spare their brother a weekend.