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eyes; I’d have to compete with a dog if I got involved with this man. He wore boots, khakis, and a hard hat, a rock hammer in one hand. Dear Faye: I’m in the Badlands in southern Alberta hunting for fossils for an archaeological outfit . How’s the research coming? I’d like to hear more about your high-flying career. In person? I groaned. I should tell him to give up. I hit Delete, shut off the laptop, and headed for home.
    I calmed down on the walk back to camp, only to find Rainbow outside the tent, crying and lacing up her boots.
    â€œThey left me behind,” she sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve, leaving a smear of snot on the cuff. “I want to save the trees too.”
    The camp was deserted; Paul’s tent empty, the camp quiet for the first time in days. The stream bubbled along, the breeze rustled through high branches. A winter wren chirped from a huckleberry. Chit chit .
    â€œA wren.” I pointed at the bird, hoping to distract her, but she was already marching down the path to the road. “Whoa, where are you going?”
    â€œI have to save the trees.” She didn’t stop.
    I ran up and caught her by the arm. “I can’t let you tromp around out there alone.”
    â€œThey left me.”
    I regarded her pinched face, flushed from crying, jaw set like the Rock of Gibraltar, fists clenched by her sides.
    â€œDo you know the way?”
    She stretched out her arm and pointed her finger up the trail.
    â€œAnd then where?”
    Her shoulders slumped and a pitiful sob shook her body. My heart dropped and I sighed, mourning the lost hours of solitude. “Come on,” I said, nodding back toward camp. “Let’s have breakfast and I’ll take you to your mother.”
    The parking area was empty when we reached the trail-head. My car was nowhere to be seen. “Looks like Paul took my car,” I said, annoyed. I glared up the road, then back at the trail. Above, the sky was clear and blue through the breaks in the canopy, the sun warm. “Want to walk?” I asked.
    Rainbow’s face brightened.
    I walked, Rainbow did anything but. She skipped, ran, twirled, hopped, and sashayed. She squatted to examine a banana slug crossing the road, poking her finger in the thick gluey trail of slime. She picked a fireweed from the ditch and smelled it. Every dozen steps or so, for no apparent reason, she would jump straight up in the air and waggle her feet back and forth. Her constant motion made me dizzy. And she talked.
    â€œWhat’s this?” She pointed to a pile of dried dung at the side of the road.
    â€œBear scat,” I answered.
    â€œWhat’s scat?”
    â€œShit.”
    She poked at it with a stick, flipped it over, and peered into the woods.
    â€œIt’s old,” I explained.
    She threw the stick into the ditch and skipped on. “Do you have a dad?”
    I considered saying no. Other than the biological imperative of most male mammals to sire and nourish offspring, Mel hardly qualified. On my thirteenth birthday—a Pearson right of passage, the magic doorway to the mysteries of adolescence— Mel took me out for lunch. He didn’t want to go, a fact I gleaned from an eavesdropped argument between Mel and Grace in the living room the night before my birthday while I did homework in the kitchen.
    â€œIt’s not the same,” Mel said.
    â€œOf course, it’s the same,” Grace countered. “She’s your child too. No different than the boys.”
    â€œCome on, Grace. She’s not like the boys. What am I supposed to say to her,” he said. “I have no idea what she’ll go through as a teenager.”
    â€œTell her . . . tell her you love her.” I could hear the exasperation in Grace’s tone. “She’s waited for this day since you took Patrick to lunch six years ago. We’ve always talked about the birthday lunch with Dad. Don’t disappoint