“Such a stupid tradition. Why would you break up with someone for one night just so you could dance with someone else? I wouldn’t go to a dance unless I could dance with the guy I wanted to be with.”

Peyton was looking at her.

“What?”

“You haven’t ever been to the breakup dance, that I can remember.”

Because the person she’d wanted to dance with hated dancing. “Yeah, well, I don’t like to dance.”

“Whatever, Miss My-Step-Up-DVD-Is-Worn-Out. I’ll bet you still have Channing Tatum posters on your wall.”

“Not even close. I’m nearly twenty-nine. I took them down a year ago.” She grinned at Peyton.

“Fine. Just promise to go to the hockey game with me.”

“Now who is pining?” Peyton had loved Nash Remington from afar for years. She never missed the annual pickup hockey tourney.

Echo couldn’t bring herself to go the first few years after Dodge left, his absence like a tumor inside her. But after Peyton returned . . . “Sure.”

She walked over to check out a photo on the wall, an amazing shot of a grizzly with a salmon caught in her mouth, two cubs standing behind her in the water.

She’d shot it with her old Canon 5D digital SLR, a shot that took her all afternoon to get.

Well, she’d been mostly mesmerized by watching Elsa, three years out of captivity, adapting so well to motherhood.

She was magnificent—silver-tipped hair along her back, a tuft of white between her ears, and her paw stretched out, as if to catch the fish. Powerful, protective—exactly the way she was created to be.

A fostering success story. At least something had gone right after that terrible accident.

“That’s an amazing shot,” Hank said. “You sure you don’t want to go pro?”

“I like my life.” Echo looked at Peyton. “We’ll leave at first light tomorrow. Meet me at my place.”

“I’ll be there.”

She headed back out to her truck. The sun had fallen halfway behind the mountains, turning the valley to shadow and the surrounding mountains—Foraker, Huntington, Russell—an eerie salmon color.

She made her way down Main Street, then toward Copper Highway, passing Mulligan’s Hardware, the Roughneck Roadhouse near the river, and finally the Copper Mountain schools. All three—elementary, middle, and high school—in one building.

Beyond that sat the public rink, edged in a wooden border. At this late hour, a handful of kids slapped a puck around, a pickup game with no pads. Just kids in parkas jostling each other on the ice. Above the rink, a board bore the stats of the Copper Mountain Grizzlies’ history. They’d been an all-state team every year Dodge—and Ranger and Colt—had played.

Echo had spent hours warming the bleachers.