" I always thought your grandfather would come back here to die," he said. "To be buried next to her." He looked into the shadows for a moment, thinking of his mother, of the grandmother Hannah had loved so dearly and lost so young.

"But he never came. I expect he's gone now, but I don't know that for a fact. Sometimes I wake up at night wondering, and you know, daughter, I think maybe that's just what he wanted. He wanted me to think of him out there in the world someplace. It's a comfort to me, that much I got to admit. To think he might walk up the mountain some morning and be standing there when I wake up—if I live another fifty years, I'll still be wondering if maybe—" He paused. "If that's what he wanted, then it's a kind of a gift a father can give to a son. "

― Sara Donati , Fire Along the Sky (Wilderness, #4)