I laughed. She was already one of the most interesting people I’d ever met, and I’d been living in a colony of freethinking, artsy people, who were, to say the least, colorful. “I’m planning to walk to Blackthorn Ridge. There’s a place along the road called—”

“Phantom Curve,” she finished for me. Her blue eyes blinked in sympathy as she astutely figured out why I wanted to walk the road. “You lost someone. You lost someone at Phantom Curve.”

“Wow, you are a mind reader.”

“Nope. I wish I were, but you aren’t the first person to make the journey. There are at least ten makeshift memorials running along that curve in the road. The state has sent experts in to find out what it is on that piece of highway that sends so many drivers over the edge, but they can’t figure out the problem. They decided that if the night is black enough and the moon is at the right angle and the oncoming traffic just happens to have headlights at the right level, it creates a few seconds of blindness for the driver coming from the opposite direction.” She rolled her eyes. “Isn’t that ridiculous? I mean, I’m surprised they didn’t add in that the stars have to be twinkling at just the right brightness while a solar flare erupts on the Sun.” She took a sad, long breath. “Who did you lose?”

“My dad. And, in a way, a little piece of myself.”

Chapter 2

Jem

Sometimes it was easy to get lost in my own world when I was out on the water sorting logs. With the lumber mill and its sharp metal roofs, conveyor belts and whirring hiss of machinery behind me and an endless view of forest in front of me, it was easy to transport myself right out of reality, to a different place and a different life that wasn’t so damn bleak.

A breeze had been kicking up all afternoon, causing the massive layer of logs to bunch up against the shore and the cement brow. I lifted my pole and hopped across to free a log that had jammed itself against the river bottom. My shoes had spikes but my own innate sense of balance was my best safety equipment. ‘Wolfe’s as sure-footed as a goddamn mountain goat’ was what Hal Stevens, the owner of the sawmill, liked to say. Finn Harris, my partner on the pond, was less steady. Most days, Finn ran the pond boat, the small boat used to sort logs and push debris to the conveyor where it eventually rolled into the mill chipper. The work was most efficient when one of us was on the logs and one was in the boat.

“Jem!” Someone yelled from the deck where the waggoner was lifting a bundle of logs off the truck to be dropped over the log brow. I steadied my feet and looked back over my shoulder. Walt Pickman, the scaler, was waving at me. He cupped his hands together to make a megaphone. “Jem, it’s Dane.”

I slipped back and righted the log before tipping back past the point of no return. “Is he hurt?” I yelled back.

Walt shook his head. “You should come.”

“What the fuck is he up to now?” I muttered as I turned to find the best log path back to shore. My half-brother, Dane, was two years older than me, but I’d been his damn babysitter my entire life. Someone had to keep an eye on him. His mom had died of suicide when Dane was just a baby, and our dad was about as useless as a windshield wiper in a blizzard. Dane was an unlit fuse just waiting for a book of matches. And since I’d gotten back to Blackthorn Ridge, after a long stint on the road, ambling through life and trying to stay out of trouble, I’d become my brother’s personal fire extinguisher.

I reached the shore. The steel spikes on my boots stabbed the muddy bank as I trudged up toward drier land. Walt didn’t wait for me to catch up. He turned back up the embankment and headed toward the mill. It was the last fifteen minute break of the work day and most of the men were gathered in front of the massive stack of hardwood logs, ones that skipped the pond because they were too heavy to float, waiting to be moved into the mill for stripping. Two barker operators had been out sick for the week, leaving the mill shorthanded. Work was behind, and the logs were piling up, making the stack unusually high, a good fifteen feet off the ground.

I shaded my eyes with my hand and glanced up to the top of the stack of raw logs. “Shit.” Dane was walking along the top log on his hands. The guy was fearless, reckless and had the strength and agility of a goddamn trapeze artist. He also had the common sense of a chocolate chip cookie. Dad had blamed it on Dane’s mom. Apparently she’d decided that crack was far better at easing her morning sickness than the vitamins the clinic had given her.

Roberts, the ratchet setter, grinned from ear to ear when he saw me. “Hey, Bronc, I’ve got twenty seconds, and I think I’m going to win the pot.” My job on the pond, riding logs, had earned me the nickname Bronc. I figured it was better than monkey, another common nickname for the pond workers. From the ratchet setter’s enthusiastic tone, I gathered that this bet was not whether Dane could travel the logs on his hands but how fast he could manage it.

Nathan Franks, one of the bull chain operators, was standing in the center of the men with a bundle of cash in one hand and a watch in the other. The guy was an asshole, and he was an expert at getting Dane to pull stupid stunts for a betting pool.

My fists curled against my sides. I knew if I started a fight with Nathan, I’d be the one out on my ass. Nathan had followed behind several generations of respected sawmill workers. I, on the other hand, was the son of Alcott Wolfe, a man whose reputation preceded him like a dark, ugly cloud. Dane and I had the same dark clouds following close at our heels, and no matter what I did to shake them off, the fucking things just stayed there, clinging to me and casting me into the same shadowy light as my dad.

Dane was halfway across the log. The cheering had shrunk to a low murmur as everyone waited for him to make it to the end. He’d taken his shirt and gloves off, and his tattoos twisted and stretched as the muscles in his arms tensed and tightened. His face was beat red, but I knew Dane. This acrobatic feat might have been impossible for most men, but Dane wasn’t most men. Walking a good twenty feet on his hands on a wobbling round surface with more wobbling round surfaces beneath was like walking across the street for Dane.

I looked back at the office. Hal stepped out to see what had everyone’s undivided attention. He looked at my brother and then at me. He wasn’t happy. He crossed his thick arms, resting them on his beer belly, another sure sign that he wasn’t pleased.

Dane reached a section of the pile that had been carelessly stacked. As his hand reached forward, one of the lower logs broke free. A collective breath was held, but Dane was completely unfazed. The rogue log bounced when it hit the bottom and rolled to a stop.

I walked up next to Nathan. He peered sideways and flinched when he saw it was me. I didn’t need to say a word.

“Hey, Dane brought it up,” Nathan said quickly. “I just organized the—”

I lifted my hand to shut him up.

Dane reached the end, and with a little too much enthusiasm, yanked his feet to the lower level of logs. As Dane’s feet pushed off, the log rolled away. A thunderous roar of logs tumbling against each other followed. My brother tried to climb up the pile but wasn’t making any progress, reminding me of a cartoon character running in place.

I shot through the onlookers. A stampede of errant logs rolled toward me. I hopped up on the first one and leapt to the next. I wasn’t making any progress either. It was like running on the world’s most dangerous treadmill. The whole fucking thing would have been comical if my brother wasn’t about to get sucked into the middle of the collapsing pile. “Dane, jump to the side!” I yelled over the clamor. “Get the fuck out of there.”