She nodded. "What a disaster for us all. Tecopa used to be a bunch of shacks built over hot springs. Rowdy. Now it's plush. The desert is like that."

"It's beautiful here. Something big could happen to Shoshone."

"Yes, but would we want it to?" She shook her head dubiously. "I'd like to keep it the way it was when I was a girl, but I know that's not practical. The way it was when Father was alive. It seemed so permanent then. I could always come back." She shook her head slowly, looking out across the grass to a lava-covered hill beyond. "What I'm getting around to saying is, we could use a geologist here. In Shoshone. To help us work out the mineral rights and figure out what we have, exactly."

"That would be nice," Edward agreed.

"You'll think it over?"

"Your tourist business should be real good for the next few months," he said.

Stella made a face. "We're just getting the freaks now. Religious nuts. All going out to the cinder cone. Who needs them? Everybody else is going to stay at home and wait it out. Do you think it's all going to go away?"

"I don't know." But he did know, in his gut. "That's not true, actually. I think it's all over."

"The things inside the Earth?"

"Maybe. Maybe something we don't even know about."

"It makes me so goddamned mad," Stella said, her voice breaking. "Helpless."

"Yeah."

"But I'm going to keep on planning. Maybe the whole deal will fail through. The commodities markets are going crazy. Maybe nobody will want to buy mineral rights now. But we have to keep working."

"I don't think I can stay," he said. "It sounds wonderful, but . . ."

Her eyes narrowed. "Restless?"

"I don't think I can really have a home now. Not even here, nice as this is."

"Where will you go?"

"I'll travel. Probably break away from Reslaw and Minelli. Go out on my own."

"Sometimes I wish I could do that," she said wistfully. "But my roots are too deep here. I'm not enough like my sister. And I have to stay with Mother."

"There was a place," Edward said, "where my father took my mother and me before he ran away. My last summer with him, and the best summer I've ever had. I haven't been back since. I didn't want to be disappointed. I wondered if it would have changed . . . For the worse."

"Where was that?"

"Yosemite," he said.

"It's beautiful there."

"You've been there recently?"

"Last summer, driving through on the way to the wine country. It was really lovely, even with all the people. Without crowds, it would be wonderful."