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strange and wondrous one filled with mountains and trees and birds and animals and all sorts of adventures he’d only read about before coming to West Virginia.
    He paused and leaned on his crutches, looking down the mountain. Not because he was tired. Oh no. He just liked the view. The big old white framed farmhouse with its wraparound porch—Flora called it a veranda—and red tin roof, faded from the sun. And the three people watching him from the back steps. Gram Flora, his great-grandmother, in her seventies and blind but still smarter than most people he knew. Jeremy, around his mom’s age, black, with a constant smile and an endless repertoire of bad puns.
    And Ty Stillwater. His mom’s best friend growing up and now David’s. Ty had taken David all over these mountains this summer—it was the first time ever that David had tan lines.
    A cloud shielded him from the sun for a moment, suddenly chilling him. He waved to the grownups and turned to resume his toil up the mountainside. When he thought about Ty and all the adventures they had this summer, he almost forgot about his dad dying.
    Almost.
    With a sigh, he heaved his foot forward, sweat puddling between his sock and plastic ankle-foot orthotic. He turned his face up toward the wishing stone and kept on going. Mom was going to be so surprised come Saturday.
    He couldn’t wait.

FOUR
    I left Elizabeth and Grandel discussing tactics and stumbled out to my bright blue Ford Escape hybrid, staggering under the weight of the reports and manuals and articles Grandel had provided. Not that I’d be reading them myself—ever since a car accident left me in a coma ten years ago, I’ve had a hard time reading. Wish I could also blame my impulsiveness, temper, and knack for leaping before looking on that as well, but I can’t.
    David would be doing the reading for me—we made for a good team that way. He’d be way more interested in all this technical stuff than I’d ever be. All I wanted to know was how it impacted the people.
    Grandel said my way of approaching things—from the effect back to the cause—was exactly the kind of “reverse social engineering” he’d been hoping for. I think he meant that as a compliment; he was smiling, but his smile was like the smile of an alligator or politician—you never knew if it meant they were happy or hungry.
    I piled the stack of reading material into the back seat and then pulled away from Elizabeth’s house. Driving through downtown Scotia was the same summer or winter—empty houses, empty store fronts, empty parking spaces.
    Empty hopes and dreams—that was Scotia.
    The only new jobs the town had seen lately came from the demolition team tearing down the old school. Once that was done, it would be back to unemployment and welfare, a never-ending cycle that trapped so many in the valley.
    Folks around here made do like they always did, with help of friends and family, helping out others when they could in turn. Government assistance would be taken grudgingly but also with a sense of entitlement, seeing as how so many generations of Scotia’s men had lived and died in the coal mines, providing energy to the rest of the country even as they were abandoned and forgotten by the outside world.
    Ten thousand dollars was more cash than many of these families would see in a year—and Grandel tossed it at me like a bone for a clever dog that had just been taught a new trick.
    I felt dirty taking the money, but when I thought about it, I wasn’t sure why. It was for David, not me. And Grandel had promised I’d be home in time for David’s birthday. So where was the problem?
    The fact that I didn’t have an answer only made me feel worse. I left town and drove the three miles up the twisting mountain roads to Gram Flora’s farm. It wasn’t until I got out of the car and breathed in the vista unfolding below me that I was able to untwist the knots between my shoulders.
    Flora’s farm—which included twenty acres