Chapter 7: Big Sky

I stepped out onto the terrace before I could think.

Russell turned at the sound of the door.

He smiled at me with the cigar in his teeth.

"Here she is. I was just telling your fella how lucky he is."

"I heard what you were telling him."

"Then you heard good advice."

He took his time stubbing out the cigar on my mother's stone railing.

Then he went back inside, nodding at me.

Nicholas's hands were gripping the railing.

His knuckles had gone white around the old scar.

"He's never said it out loud before," he said. "Fifteen years. Never once."

"He said it in front of me on purpose."

"I know."

He let go of the railing and looked at me.

"Come to Montana next weekend. I want you to see the road."

We flew out the next Friday on the Santoro plane.

I had never been west of Chicago except for Aspen, which my mother said didn't count.

The ranch sat in a long valley under a wall of mountains still white at the top.

There were no other houses as far as I could see.

The quiet was so loud I couldn't sleep the first night.

On Saturday morning he drove me up the mine road in an old truck.

Eleven miles of gravel switchbacks.

He drove slowly, one hand on the wheel.

At the fourth curve he pulled over.

The guardrail here was new steel. The drop beyond it went down and down to a creek I could hear but not see.

There was a small wooden cross wired to the post.

He got out. I followed.

"I was at school," he said. "They called me out of math. My grandmother was in the hallway in her barn boots."

He touched the cross.

"I've come up here once a month for fifteen years. I keep thinking I'll see something I missed."

I stood next to him and looked down.

My own curve was over the ocean.

I knew how long the fall felt.

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