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You'll leave me alone.  No more surprise visits."
    "I'll be glad to see the back of you," my father agreed, the words echoing his dismissal a decade before.  Then he pushed his hat back down over his hair, whistled to his wolves as if they were hunting dogs, and brushed past me up the trail.
    "One month," he called back without turning.  Within seconds, my father was out of sight, but the scent of wolves lingered in my memory for the rest of the day.
     
     

Chapter 5
    My boss tried to talk me into simply taking a leave of absence, but I knew I wouldn't be coming back.  During the five years I'd worked for the park, I'd merely been marking time, and I realized now that I'd never so much as gone out for drinks after work, let alone made any deeper connections.  There was no one here who I would miss.  I might send Maddie a postcard once this whole mess had been sorted out, but that was about it.
    As I drove my ancient Toyota back to my cabin to pack my sparse possessions, though, I realized I had no idea where I was going.  How long ago had my sister died?  Did Dale know his wife and son were werewolves?  As much as I would have loved to use the absence of information as an excuse to malinger, my father was efficient in getting what he wanted, so I wasn't surprised to find a dossier waiting on my kitchen table, even though the cabin door was just as firmly locked as when I'd left.  I suspected there was an equally thick file on me floating around the Chief's office—just how a daughter hopes for her father to remember her, with a sea of facts in case she can someday be of use.
    The contents of Brooke's file hit me hard.  I had to sit down to keep from falling when I saw her young face in the top photograph, tilted up to smile at the lanky man beside her.  That had to be Dale, and I could tell even from the photo that he was the furthest you could get from an alpha werewolf.  My brother-in-law was skinny and unimposing despite his height, the kind of man you might call cute instead of handsome.  Just the type of husband my loving and lovable sister would have gravitated toward.
    More photos slipped out of the folder, but Brooke didn't get much older.  By the time her curly-haired son was three years old, the family was short a mother.  My sister had died before I even left Haven.
    Although the reality of my sister's early death was shocking, the true surprise came when I flipped to the end of Brooke's folder.  The last item was an unopened envelope, addressed to me in my sister's looping hand.  Peering at the postmark, I saw that Brooke had mailed it months before I fled Haven, but our father had clearly deemed the letter not worthy of my young eyes.  Yet he'd kept it and added the envelope to Brooke's file.  Probably after steaming open and resealing the flap in order to decide whether the contents would be an appropriate bait to add to my trap , I thought sarcastically.
    Even though I was itching to know what Brooke had wanted to say to me, I stilled my fingers before they could open the envelope.  The letter inside was from my sister, but I knew the real message came from my father, and I'd been manipulated enough for one day.  So I tucked the unopened missive back into Brooke's file and got to work packing up the few possessions I wanted to keep.  Once again, my father's actions were forcing me away from my home.
     
    ***
     
    As I crunched up the winding gravel driveway from the country highway to Dale's house the next day, I realized my brother-in-law was wealthy.  Yes, the rundown nature of the yard gave the residence a homey and lived-in look, but the sheer size of the house at the top of the hill made it clear I was outclassed.  I pulled to a stop beside a brand-new minivan, and even the soccer balls and scratched bike in the yard weren't enough to keep me from cringing at the comparison between my rusty vehicle and my brother-in-law's van.  I knew without turning around that the garbage bags