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one stop to make, and then she would be on her way back to Colorado Springs, a place she had hoped never to see again. She wondered halfseriously if it was the karmic center of the whole universe, or just hers. She had grown up in Aspen—not the famous resort, but a small farming community east of both Boulder and Denver—but it was Colorado Springs where she had lived and been happy. She had gone to school there, met and married her husband there, had a son there, and finally buried them both there.
    The car bounced over a frozen mound of snow, and the wheel jerked in Amanda’s hand. Even her car was reluctant. “Easy girl,” she said. “We still have to see Auntie Em before we go.”
    Regency Care Center was the only medical facility in Thompson County, and the only place Emily Elizabeth Larson would consider living. At 72, she was Amanda’s oldest living relative; in fact, she was Amanda’s only living relative. She had retired from her professorship, sold her home in Enid, Oklahoma, moved back to Aspen Springs, Colorado, broken her hip, and had surgery all in the span of one very stressful month.
    Amanda made the sixty-mile drive from Boulder back to her hometown several times in the last few weeks despite the obvious risk. Normally, it took less than an hour over the new highway, but this morning she took the old route. It was a shorter distance, but took a half hour longer because most of it was over one-lane roads that wound down Kenner Pass. She had avoided these roads for eight years; bad memories lay ahead, but she had to face them before she faced the future.
    The road finally began to level off and Amanda could hear the swollen Kenner River as it flowed parallel to the gravel road. A few more bends in the road and then there it was, looming above her: the bridge. It was an old steel structure with dark rust stains at each rivet site. It hadn’t received a lot of attention in the eight years since she was last at this spot, but it still appeared solid. The river had become popular with kayakers as it plunged more than a hundred feet in the last quarter mile before passing under the span; Amanda could see several cars parked in the makeshift gravel lot just to the left of the bridge. It bothered her that people were here now, and that this place, which had become a nexus for her family, had now become a recreation destination for others.
    She let the Jeep coast into the lot and it finally come to rest in front of a tree that was perched precariously over the narrow gorge. By all rights, she should have this place to herself; she shouldn’t have to listen to the sounds of yelling and laughter while she faced her past. It was not quite dawn so no one had entered the rapids. It wouldn’t take much to make them leave , she thought. She could feel the six people crawling through the trees down to the water’s edge; they were so full of life and excitement in a place where she had only known death and misery. She climbed out of the car and walked out to the road and up to the bridge. She saw the kayakers carefully climbing down the path, each carrying a small boat and dressed in a thick wet suit.
    Her father had died at this very spot almost thirty years ago. He had been a small, mean-spirited man whose attitude permeated their tiny house like a bad smell. One of her earliest memories was of him towering over her screaming that she was a burden he had never asked for. He died the day after her ninth birthday; the official story was that he had been changing a tire when a half-drunk lawyer plowed into the back of his car, apparently throwing him into the river below. It took them three days to find and recover his body. Amanda never believed the official story. Somehow, she knew that her father had jumped into the river long before the drunk ever showed up, and that the only time in his life he had ever been lucky was after he was dead.
    Amanda noticed that the group of kayakers had stopped on the path and were