“It may just be a wild-goose chase, but Grandma was talking about the mountains just now and how Jamee was so happy there. I think maybe she’d go to the last place where she felt truly happy,” Darcy explained.

“This ain’t no kind of weather for a little girl to be in the mountains in jeans and a T-shirt,” Cooper said ominously.

Carl Wills said nothing, but his heavy breathing hissed like the wind in the cab of the truck.

Just as they reached the mountains, a deer leaped in front of them. Cooper slowed, and the animal raced back into the woods. The Wills family had come here so many times. Darcy thought she remembered every twist and turn, but now, in the darkness, with so much time passed, it looked strange and unfamiliar. She turned to her father and asked in a frightened voice, “Do you remember where we used to hike?”

“About a half mile up this road,” he said. Then, as they made a turn, he pointed, “Right there. ”

Cooper parked, and the three of them jumped out of the truck. The harsh cold made Darcy shiver. There were no signs of people anywhere. Not on such a night. “Jamee!” Darcy screamed, pacing around where they used to chase squirrels through the pines and cedars. The only response was the lonely cry of a coyote from the hills below.

Darcy and Cooper walked around yelling Jamee’s name, but the dark, cold forest offered them only silence. Tears filled Darcy’s eyes. “I was so sure we’d find her here . . . ”

Carl Wills was walking around shouting with them too, but then he stopped. A strange, almost manic look entered his dark eyes. He spun around with surprising grace for such a big man and began scrambling up a nearby slope. He stumbled, dropped to his knees, got up and continued on, running, crawling. Darcy stared after him, thinking for a moment that the burden of grief and guilt had at last destroyed him, and he was running howling into the wilderness to die.

“The man don’t look good,” Cooper said. But before Darcy and Cooper could follow him, Carl Wills let out a loud shout. “Jamee!” And then, there he was, staggering back down the slope, the cold, wet, unconscious girl in his arms. Jamee’s limp arms drooped as if she were more dead than alive.

“She was by the cedar,” Darcy’s father said between choking sobs. “She remembered our tree and she was huddled there. It was where I made her a princess. ”