Scott Lyndon sighed heavily as he felt chills slice through his body for the fifth time since he had begun reading the letter. The couple, at the end of their rope, had planned their own deaths and the future of their daughter. He wondered if they realized she would end up living in the mountains for five years with a black bear and a silver coyote as her only companions. Somehow, he doubted it. Scott felt sorry for the couple and wished he could have helped them. He looked up at the innocent blue eyes of Sidney Southington and realized he could. He folded the letter and slipped it back into the wallet then closed the wallet and held it up for the little girl to take.
She shook her head. "Can you keep it safe with Mommy's locket?"
He smiled and nodded. "Yes, I will keep it safe with your Mommy's locket." Before he could blink Sidney stepped up to him and, wrapping her arms around his neck, hugged him tightly. If there had been any doubt about Sidney's future, it was extinguished in that moment and he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tenderly as tears stung his eyes. When she released him and pulled back, Scott saw question in her face.
"Daddy told me that someday a really nice man would come and I would go to live with him. Are you that man Scott?"
Scott Lyndon had to blink back the tears. He smiled at the little girl he now knew to be eleven years old. "Yes Sidney," he said gently as a tender smile touched his lips. "I am."
The following morning, while Sidney played with her two friends near the yard, Scott and Steve Lyndon took one of the logging trucks and the four by four and drove up to fire lane forty-seven, a dirt road that circled around the far end of the northernmost slopes of the preserve. They found the thicket and after plowing down some of the dense underbrush they discovered the red and white motorhome. They towed it back to camp and moved it into one of the larger unused storage sheds and closed the doors.