Earle just stood there looking at Peter, and he’d never felt someone communicate so much warmth and good humour with their eyes while the rest of them seemed to do the opposite. He liked her. He liked them both, then cussed himself for being surprised. And the fact Cooper had even told them anything about him at all, let alone things that helped them to make allowances for his absence up until now, suddenly overpowered him.

“I don’t know why you’re being so nice,” he said.

“Don’t cry,” said Earle. “That won’t look good on you.”

Emmett nodded in agreement. “Yes. Please don’t. Earle can’t handle emotional outbursts. She has too much inner turmoil of her own to deal with.”

Earle held Peter’s gaze and said nothing to contradict that statement. “So. You comin’ to see the ghost town with us, then?”

The hairs on the back of Peter’s neck froze, but the expression on Earle’s face remained calm like there had been no deliberate attempt to shock him. Cooper looked back, first making sure that Peter was with him, then away to direct his attention down off the bluff into the forest below.

At first, Peter couldn’t see what it was Cooper was trying to show him. Sunlight on the bark of the snowbound pines was sharp now, making the wilderness beyond the hillside glitter. It wasn’t until he made his way around the campfire, and stood on the edge of the bluff overlooking the forest, that he saw it.

The red light was only faint in among the treetops. And infrequent. Seconds passed before the white tips of the pines were singed with red again. But when they were, the light didn’t glimmer like fire, but spluttered.

“You can see it much better from over here,” came a voice at Peter’s side.

Perched on a rocky outcrop, a little further along the bluff from where Peter was standing, was Becky. She didn’t look his way, like the act of speaking to him first when he’d done so little as her friend, was more than enough to be getting on with. Her gaze stayed on the forest below them and on the red light, her legs swaying to and fro, to and fro. But just when Peter had gone through a thousand different ways to open an apology, she seemed to recognize his struggle and gently patted the rock for him to come join her.

“Becky, I—”

“Remember that time you were dumb enough to ask me how you can tell when someone likes you?”

Peter cleared his throat and said nothing.

“And remember when you were so clueless about how much Cooper liked you that you didn’t even get that he only taxied people around the lake so he had an excuse to canoe by your place?”

“Yes,” said Peter. “I remember.”