“Yes, it will be good to have them home. Miss the grandkids, too. Having Mark and Emily fighting wildfires was bad. When they were in the Army before that, it was worse. I lost count of how many times they were shot down. Twice on national TV for Emily; once for Mark. Damned hard to watch, I don’t mind admitting. At least to you. They will probably never tell me all the times it happened.”
Julie looked out again at the view. The house and ranch buildings tucked safely below. The massive Front Range of the Rocky Mountains sweeping up out of the Great Plains in a grand gesture of towering rock. The fierce snow-covered mountains soared to the west and the limitless horizon of the grasslands to the east. Big cumulus were moving south out of Canada, one last snow or else a freezing rain. There
