Riley had the truck warmed up, and Dodge climbed into the driver’s seat of the extended cab. He’d spent the four days before Larke and Riley arrived from Anchorage with their father checking over the vehicles.

He’d also done a thorough check on his Piper PA-14, and indeed, his father had taken care of it. Dodge had even started it up and listened to the prop hum.

He hadn’t taken her up, but he counted it as progress.

He’d also given the chopper a once-over. Larke had mentioned it recently passed a hundred-hour inspection.

Dodge had spent the rest of the time chopping a slew of wood and stocking both the house and one of the cabins by the frozen lake. Just in case he had to take refuge.

It was better than fleeing the state. Again.

Dodge, Riley, and Larke drove in silence the forty-five minutes to town, mostly along snow-packed roads, until they crossed the Copper Mountain Bridge and headed northeast to the depot.

He hadn’t been to town yet and planned to veer a wide berth.

The last thing he wanted was to run into— Nope. Not even going to think about it. Fate just might read his mind and sabotage him.

“I could have flown you to Anchorage,” he said, the words twisting in his gut. But it might have been good for him.

“We want to take the train. The Aurora Winter Train is so romantic,” Larke said.

Dodge glanced in the rearview mirror in time to see Riley roll his eyes, but he wore a grin.

As they headed north, Dodge noticed a few changes—a slew of new cabins along the highway, a gas station, a couple small neighborhoods. “I feel like I’m in a suburb of Anchorage.”

Larke laughed. “We even have a pizza parlor now. Levi Starr runs it.”

“You’re kidding me. When did he come back to town?”

“About a year before I left. He got tired of waiting for his big break, hung up his skates, came home, and started tossing pizza. It’s good too. And Goodwin runs the gear rental in town—bikes and kayaks and snowshoes, cross-country skis—”

“I thought the Starrs would all be pilots, like their dad. I saw Winter in Anchorage.”

“Just Winter, although I think Shasta still flies too. I saw her waiting tables at the Midnight Sun a couple weeks ago.”

He passed the Laughing Moose B&B and the small float plane operation near Fish Lake, and then drove by a church, parking lot crowded for the Sunday afternoon service. The area became more populated, plowed roads branching off into neighborhoods. The forest fought back with the heavy cover of spruce and pine, but dusted in white, it seemed more of a wonderland than menace.

He’d give them another three hours of daylight, given the glint of the sun against the mountains to the north.