Chapter 1
Juliette sat on her little balcony and fanned herself uselessly, not even she could stir up a breeze on this hot July day. New York City wasn’t a great place to spend the summer, especially if air conditioning was something you couldn’t afford like Julie. Thinking about winter brought her a moment’s peace until she thought about the slush and freezing rain and shivered, the truth was the only time she liked the city was during those brief months in the fall and spring when the city was a wonderful place to be. The rest of the time she hated it, the extreme weather, the crowds, the noise, and the pollution reminded her every day that this wasn’t were she belonged.
She belonged anywhere but the city, had known that for most of her life, but the city had been necessary, the only place she could get the education she needed to fulfill her dreams. For eight long years she’d been suffocating in the city, living for the summer when she could abandon it and head for the mountains and a few short months of fresh air and sunshine. Those summers had been the only thing that had saved her all these years, and now all that hard work and sacrifice had paid off. Not only had she gotten her PhD in Ecology but she’d gotten one of the most sought-after jobs in the entire country.
Now instead of living off grants while doing research, she’d have a full salary and her own little cabin, but that wasn’t the best part. The best part was that she’d be in Coldwater Canyon high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, no crowds, no pollution, and the only noise that of the forest and its inhabitants. A part of her still couldn’t believe that she was going, and she resisted the urge to pull out her phone and look at the email again, knowing that it would say the same thing it did last time.
When she’d left her interview with the board of directors for the canyon, she’d been hopeful, but she also knew that lot of other ecologists had applied for the position. Even her advisor had applied, willing to uproot her life for a chance to experience life in Coldwater Canyon, which had been the talk of many academic circles since they’d beat the state in a lawsuit and returned the water supply to 350 thousand acres of prime land in the mountains.
With only the goal of conservation and sustenance living as their prime objective, a small group of very rich families had begun Coldwater Canyon Park and Preserve almost six years ago. Some had sneered at what they were trying to do, sure that the grand plan would fail, but no one was sneering now, as the land had blossomed under their care. Now it was a wonderland of new and exciting information for scientists around the world, from hydrologist to archaeologists, there was something in the canyon for every branch of science.
For Julie, it was an opportunity to study the one thing she’d been obsessed with since she’d discovered life outside the city one summer in the Appalachian Mountains. Thinking back to the day it had all started always made her smile, especially when she remembered how cold the water had been when she fell in. She’d been such a novice back then, waking early and leaving the tent to explore on her own, the lack of patience so common in teenagers clouding her brain. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal to walk along the creek exploring, she knew she’d be able to find her way back to camp, but in the end the entire experience had changed her life.
Life in the small town she’d grown up in didn’t offer much for a young African American girl, the promise of a factory job was what most kids had to look forward to. A life of barely making enough money to keep your family fed and clothed was the norm in her hometown. But Julie had been given an opportunity that most kids hadn’t, thanks to a teacher who was paying attention.
Helen Jenkins had been teaching for a long time, watching kids with promise fall through the cracks, but she knew that Julie was different, had what it would take to break away from the path all the rest of the students were on. She’d taken Julie under her wing and showed her what was out in the world, including a trip to the Appalachian Mountains.
Walking along the creek that first morning, she’d come to marshy area full of wildflowers so she’d stopped to sketch them. Tucked back under a tree where the ground was dry, she’d been sketching for a while when she heard a crashing noise out in the marsh and went to explore. Following the sound, she walked into a dense clump of willow and fought her way through them. What greeted her on the other side of the branches made her stop abruptly, so abruptly that she lost her footing and landed in the mud. Staring down at her was a moose, its nostrils flaring as it sucked in her scent, it pawed at the ground then slowly backed away.
From that moment on she’d been fascinated with the animals, one of the few species that seemed to be making a comeback after years of being threatened. Now she was going to study first-hand just how a new population of moose spread into a new area, where they came from, and how genetics played a role in their survival. She’d studied maps and population distribution until she knew it all by heart, but nothing could compare to being out there in person, tagging and following the animals.
It would be a test of her survival skills, camping out for long stretches, living off the land as much as possible, a challenge she was looking forward to. If there was one thing that she was dreading, it was the hours she’d be forced to ride, a skill she was still trying to master. Much to her embarrassment, she’d discovered that she was a horrible horseback rider, always feeling slightly off kilter when she was on a horse. But it was a necessary part of her life now, the mountains of the canyon being much too large to traverse on foot as she preferred, instead she’d be on horseback for the next two years.
Heat or no heat, she had to get packed, in two days she’d be boarding a plane to a new life, and she didn’t plan on bringing any more of New York with her than she had to. One suitcase of clothes and her books was all she would bring, the rest of her stuff was going either in to storage or straight to the donation center around the corner. It was a brand-new start and she didn’t plan on bringing her old life with her, she’d finally gotten where she wanted to be and it was time to put the past behind her.
Sam sat staring at the email he’d just received, not sure how he felt about the news he’d just gotten. For weeks, he’d been riding on a wave of excitement, thrilled with the invitation to join the scientific team in Coldwater Canyon, a dream he’d been fostering since he’d visited four years ago. He’d just arrived in California from New York, his undergraduate degree in hand, and excited about the prospect of being home again. But his pleasure had been overshadowed by the heartache of leaving the one woman he was sure he was meant to be with the rest of his life, and his best friend had wanted to cheer him up.
“Come on, man. You just got home, live a little,” Jack had said, giving him a shove when he didn’t seem to be listening.
“What?” Sam just couldn’t stop wondering if he’d made the biggest mistake of his life, leaving Juliette and coming home to California.
“I said, come with me to Coldwater Canyon, it’s just the kind of place you’d like. All wilderness and animals running around. It’s a crazy place.”
So, he’d gone, and discovered a place that time had forgotten for the last eighty years. Cedar Ridge, accessible only by four-wheeler, was a town right out of the 1930s, complete with a general store, post office, and school. The rest of the canyon had been partially settled, farms and ranches dotting the land, but best of all, the rest of the canyon was a wild and uninhabited place. Rife with wildlife, the ecologist in him was thrilled with potential secrets the canyon would yield in the years to come, scientists had already learned a lot in the first four years.
In a world that was badly bruised, what was happening in the canyon was proof that the Earth could be healed, that people could live in such a way that life could be maintained without doing harm to the planet. From that day forward he’d worked and studied with one goal in mind, to someday be a part of what was happening in the Canyon just miles from where he’d grown up. Now with his PhD, he’d finally found a way in, one that he’d only dreamed of all those years ago.
He’d never planned to do something so silly as become an expert on moose, but a summer spent in the Appalachian Mountains had forever changed him and the cause of that change was what was bothering him about the email. How this new information was going to affect his life in the canyon he wasn’t sure, but he’d worked too hard to get where he was to let it ruin everything. Closing the window on the email, he shut his computer, and went back to packing his desk, the one job he hadn’t let the staff do for him.
But try as he might, he couldn’t get his mind off that summer and the person he’d been back then. He’d been young and selfish, determined to prove himself, and in the process, he’d turned his back on the only woman he’d ever loved. Over the years he’d thought about Juliette, couldn’t help but think about her since they were so often in direct competition for the same prizes and awards. Living on different sides of the country meant that they seldom ran into one another and when they did, each pretended the other didn’t exist.
It had worked for eight years, but it wasn’t going to work in Coldwater Canyon if they were supposed to be working together. From a professional standpoint, he couldn’t have asked for a better research partner, but from a personal standpoint, it was going to be a nightmare. The worst part was that it was mostly his fault that things had ended as badly as they had, he’d acted like an idiot, said things that he never should have said, then walked away as if Juliette didn’t matter to him.
He’d been sorry almost immediately, but his pride had kept him from going back and making things right, now he was going to pay for that pride. Pulling out his computer he began an email to Juliette thinking that it might help pave the way, but as he sat with his fingers on the keys, his mind went blank. What do you say to a woman who you purposely hurt out of spite and anger, who you turned your back on when she was only trying to fulfill her own dreams. Slamming the computer shut, he went back to packing, he still had two days before they met face to face, hopefully the years had healed some of the wounds he’d opened and they’d be able to get over the past.
Going back to his packing, he hit a lever underneath the desk and popped open the secret compartment that contained only one thing, a manila envelope with his name written in his mother’s spidery hand. Just looking at it made him miss her, especially knowing that she’d written this just days before her death three years ago. That envelope contained all the answers to the questions he’d been asking all his life, but he’d never looked at what the envelope contained until a few weeks ago.
His mother was only days from death when she handed him the envelope. “I always thought there would be a perfect time to tell you who your father was, but my time is running out and I want you to know,” she’d said, gesturing to the brown package in his hand, which suddenly felt like it was burning him.
Asking his mother about his father had long been a game between them, and it always started with the same story of how his father had come all the way from Australia and fallen in love with his mother, how he’d had another family and had to leave her, but would always love her. As the years went by and he’d grown older, she’d added stories of their time together, making the man seem as real to him as if he was standing in the next room. But eventually Sam had wanted to meet the real man and that’s when his mother had stopped talking about his father.
Years went by but on his eighteenth birthday, she handed him an envelope much like the one he was holding now and said, “This is from your father.”
He’d stared at the legal documents for long minutes, before asking, “What is all this?”
“It’s from your father’s legal firm in Australia, as his son you’re entitled to a share in everything he owns,” his mother had said, tears in her eyes. “I didn’t know he knew about you, Sam. That’s why I never told you who he was, I didn’t want you to get hurt. But I guess he’s known about you all these years.”
It took weeks and several trips to an attorney for Sam and his mother to figure out that he was suddenly a very wealthy young man. So wealthy in fact that Sam had a hard time even imagining where all the billions of dollars he was worth were held. The list of investment companies, properties, and stocks in his name made his head spin. But the one thing that wasn’t in any of the legal documents was his father’s name, it had been cleverly concealed and no amount of digging on his part had unearthed it.
“You have to tell me,” he’d finally demanded, after he came up empty handed.
“If he wanted you to know, he would have put it in the papers,” she’d answered so calmly it had only made him more frustrated.
“You always told me he was a wonderful man, but he doesn’t seem so wonderful to me. If he knew about us why did he wait so long to help?” Sam had demanded, mad for many reasons but focusing on that one, he’d spent his childhood wishing for all the things the other kids had, but being told that it was something they couldn’t afford.
“I can’t answer that, only your father could,” his mother had said. “Just be thankful that he’s chosen to help now.”
“It would be more help to me if I knew who he was, if I could meet him,” Sam had finally admitted. “I’d just like to meet my father.”
His mother pulled him into her arms, like she had when he was just a child. “I know, son, and I’m sorry about that. I really thought that he didn’t know about you, but now I see that he’s known all along. I chose not to tell him because I thought it would be easier for all of us, but maybe I was wrong, maybe I should have told you.”
“Tell me now,” he’d pleaded quietly.
“Now I feel that I can’t. He’s gone to a lot of trouble to hide his identity in these papers and I’m going to respect that, but I promise someday I’ll tell you,” she’d answered in that tone of voice that told him there would be no changing her mind.
Smiling at the memory of how stubborn his mother could be, he opened the envelope she’d given him that day and spread the contents out on the desk. When he’d done the same thing only a few weeks ago, in a mood to move on with his life, he’d stared shocked at the face of the man who was his father. He was standing with his arm around his mother on the peer in Santa Monica, he knew it well, his mother loved to go there, had taken him anytime they had a little extra money.
The man was smiling and looking down at his mother, a look of pure love on his face, and even without a direct look at his face, Sam could see the resemblance. He continued to sort through the pile of papers, news clippings, and magazine articles, documents that told him all he needed to know about his father. He learned his father’s name was Sam as well, and that he had three half-brothers who didn’t know he existed.
When he flipped to the last page of the stack, he found a newspaper article about his brothers’ move to Coldwater Canyon with the sheep they were hoping to establish in the canyon. No one had ever raised them in America and with the wool trade declining in Australia, and family connections in the canyon, it had seemed only natural for them to relocate to the canyon.
It had come as a huge shock to realize that the family he’d been longing for all his life was going to be in the same place he was, a strange twist of fate that left him with a difficult decision to make. Tell his brothers who he was or hide the relationship. Either way the last thing he’d expected was to be faced with such a moral dilemma, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make up his mind which would be best. In the end, he’d decided to wait and see what happened, but now looking at everything again, he realized that he wanted his brothers to know who he was.
As much as he’d loved his mother and wanted to honor her wishes, he also wanted a family, something he’d never had since his mother was all alone in the world. But the opportunity to work in the canyon far overshadowed that need, even though he’d felt that way since he was a kid, the last thing he wanted to do was jeopardize his time in Coldwater with what would surely be an explosive announcement. Just the thought of walking up to these three grown men and announcing that he was their brother seemed ridiculous to him, he’d just have to wait, see how things went, and hope that the perfect opportunity would arise to tell them the truth.
He shoved everything back in the envelope and put it in the bottom of a box, then covered it with books, knowing that he might need it at some point in the future. As he walked through the house that his mother had chosen for them, he felt sadness and a strange sense that he wouldn’t be back here ever again. Selling the house had been at the back of his mind for a long time, but his mother had loved this house, the first real home they’d ever had so he’d waited. But now it felt right, she’d want him to move on with his life and be happy, this house held more bad memories for him than good, reminding him every day no amount of money had been able to save her.
Feeling at least one weight lifted from his shoulders, he went back inside and called his assistant giving him instructions to sell the house and everything in it. His new life would begin tonight, instead of staying at the house, he’d head toward Coldwater Canyon, find someplace to stay in a nearby town, then finish the drive in the morning. Brooding about the past and worrying about the future was getting him nowhere, he’d concentrate on the job in Coldwater and let the rest figure itself out. Fate had stepped into his life and thrown him a curve ball, but he couldn’t change that, he’d just have to do his best to make the right choices when the time came.