Lightning

legend had it, to the North Pole.
    Wind and Stars
appeared in October of '87, and it was a still bigger hit than any of her previous books. The movie of
Endless River
was released that Thanksgiving, enjoying the biggest opening-week box office of any film that year.
    On Friday, January 8, 1988, buoyed by the knowledge that
Wind and Stars
would hold the number one spot on the
Times
list that Sunday for the fifth week in a row, they drove up to Big Bear in the afternoon, as soon as Chris came home from school. The following Tuesday was Laura's thirty-third birthday, and they intended to have an early celebration, just the three of them, high in the mountains, with the snow like icing on a cake and the wind to sing for her.
    Accustomed to them, the deer ventured within twenty feet of their house on Saturday morning. But Chris was seven now, and in  school he heard the rumor that Santa Claus was not real, and he was no longer so sure that these were more than ordinary deer.
    The weekend was perfect, perhaps the best they had spent in the mountains, but they had to cut it short. They had intended to leave at six o'clock Monday morning, returning to Orange County in time to deliver Chris to school. However a major storm moved into the area ahead of schedule late Sunday afternoon, and though they were little more than ninety minutes from the balmy temperatures nearer the coast, the weather report called for two feet of new snow by morning. Not wanting to risk being snowbound and causing Chris to miss a day of school—a possibility even with their four-wheel-drive Blazer—they closed up the big stone and redwood house and headed south on state route 330 at a few minutes past four o'clock.
     Southern California was one of the few places in the world where you could drive from a winterscape to subtropical heat in less than two hours, and Laura always enjoyed—and marveled at—the journey. The three of them were dressed for snow—wool socks, boots, thermal underwear, heavy slacks, warm sweaters, ski jackets—but in an hour and a quarter they would be in milder climes where no one was bundled up, and in two hours they would be in shirtsleeve weather.
    Laura drove while Danny, sitting in front, and Chris, sitting behind him, played a word-association game that they had devised on previous trips to amuse themselves. Rapidly falling snow found even those sections of the highway that were largely protected by trees on both sides, and in unsheltered areas the hard-driven flakes sheeted and whirled by the millions in the capricious currents of the high-mountain winds, sometimes half obscuring the way ahead. She drove with caution, not caring if the two-hour drive home required three hours or four; since they had left early, they had plenty of time to spare, all the time in the world.
    When she came out of the big curve a few miles south of their house and entered the half-mile incline, she saw a red Jeep station wagon parked on the right shoulder and a man in a navy peacoat in the middle of the road. He was coming down the hill, waving both arms to halt them.
    Leaning forward and squinting between the thumping windshield wipers, Danny said, "Looks like he broke down, needs help."
    "Packard's Patrol to the rescue!" Chris said from the back seat.
    As Laura slowed, the guy on the road began frantically gesturing for them to pull to the right shoulder.
    Danny said uneasily, "Something odd about him…"
    Yes, odd indeed. He was her special guardian. The sight of him after all these years shocked and frightened Laura.
10
    He had just gotten out of the stolen Jeep when the Blazer turned the bend at the bottom of the hill. As he rushed toward it, he saw Laura slow the Blazer to a crawl a third of the way up the slope, but she was still in the middle of the roadway, so he signaled her more frantically to get off onto the shoulder, as close to the embankment as possible. At first she continued to creep forward, as if unsure  whether he was only a motorist in trouble or dangerous, but when they drew close enough to each other for her to see his face and perhaps recognize him, she immediately obeyed.
    As she accelerated past him and whipped the Blazer onto the wider portion of the shoulder, only twenty feet downhill from Stefan's Jeep, he reversed direction and ran to her, yanked open her door. "I don't know if being off the road's good enough. Get out, up the embankment, quickly,
now
!"
    Danny said, "Hey, wait just—"
    "Do what he