“When the locals caught wind, a bunch of ’em spent days combing the forest and the road, lookin’ for her. There was this one girl with ’em. She was older than me by a few years and had a gun slung over her shoulder. She seemed tough as nails. I told myself I needed to be tough like her if I had a hope in hell of survivin’ up here.” His lips quirk. “They finally found my mother. She was frozen solid. They figure she got lost ’cause she was way off course. Probably died that first night.”
