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throw herself from the car. But of course none of those things would prove to anyone that she was old enough to take care of herself.
    She remembered the last time they had come to visit her grandfather, how hard she had giggled at thinking of her dad growing up in the middle of nowhere. He had still been alive and it had been their last family trip.
    Hot tears stung her eyes as lightning flashed overhead, illuminating the gloom of the woods. She clenched her hands, reliving how hard it had been after her dad had died. She’d gotten through because she’d had her mom and they’d held each other as they cried and kept each other strong each time the police told them there was nothing new.
    “You’re a senior this year, right?”
    Without looking back at him, Katelyn brushed away her tears. “Yeah. School started four weeks ago. I’m going to miss everything. Prom. Graduation. Everything.”
    “We’ve got those things here.”
    Was he actually trying to make her feel better?
    “It’s not the same,” she said, stricken.
    “Sure it is. I figure high school, graduating, all that, are the same anywhere you go. Lots of kids scared of their own shadows struggling to survive. It’s just like the mountains. Just like life.”
    She had forgotten that side of him. Blunt and practical, a hunter who lived like Daniel Boone. It was hard to believe that for years he’d been a philosophy professor. Her dad had never had much use for philosophy, and said philosophers were all people with too much time on their hands if they could waste it debating the existence of good and evil or the meaning of life.
    Sean McBride had faced good and evil every day. He had spent his life prosecuting criminals until the day one of them killed him. She didn’t care what anyone said; evil was real. She knew what it could do.
    Did her grandfather really know how scared she was?
    “Lots of … professional kids in L.A. don’t even go to school,” she said. “They don’t have time. Because they have to focus.”
    He went silent again. Then he said slowly, “That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”
    “No, it’s not.” She could hear the desperation in her voice. She felt like she was losing everything. It had been a mistake to come. “It’s the life of an artist. Mom—”
    “Got married,” he interjected. “To a man with a real job. How long do ballerinas last? Midthirties?”
    “She opened the dance studio,” Katelyn shot back.
    “And that was a big success.” He blinked and pulled in his chin, as if he’d surprised himself, and turned his attention back to the road.
    She frowned. What did he mean by that? The studio had done okay. Or so her mom had always told her. Did her grandfather know otherwise?
    “Mom loved being a dancer,” she insisted.
    “It’s from living out there in La-La Land,” he went on, as if he hadn’t heard what she’d said. “Kids thinking they’re going to become movie stars. Like winning the lottery. The average person has a better chance of being struck by lightning—”
    “I’m from L.A.” Her voice was icy. “And I have friends who are making it.” That wasn’t exactly true, but he didn’t need to know that. “Kids do become movie stars.”
    “One in a million, and the rest park cars. You need some normalcy.” He frowned, sighed, and said again, “Normalcy.”
    She realized she’d miscalculated how to approach him. Rather than impress on him how vital it was for her to stick to her game plan, she had convinced him that she needed to give it up. “You have to let me go home,” she begged.
    Thunder rumbled, and he stopped the truck abruptly. The rain hit the windshield like pellets. The tinny music from her earbuds squawked merrily away.
    “Katelyn,” he said, “you are home.”

2
    T his can’t be happening , Katelyn thought. Her grandfather handed her the keys to his front door, then went to retrieve her suitcase. The sun had begun to set, and