She’d never liked Lucas, even before he attacked Janine. She’d been ticked at Holly for inviting him to the lodge that weekend, only grasping later that her sister had invited Lucas because she knew he’d bring Jeremy, the sweet, nerdy guy Holly had the hots for. The guy Sarah had chatted with a few times but never seriously considered until that weekend, the guy she married a year later. She’d been prepared for the possibility that Lucas would hear she was in town and seek her out to offer his condolences. She’d been prepared for that, for the awkward conversation.
But she had not been prepared for news of his death. His murder. For yellow tape screaming at the townspeople that no amount of baskets filled with nasturtiums and verbena and sweet potato vines would keep them safe.
No one, no town, is ever prepared for that.
4
“Sorry, love,” the waitress at the Blue Spruce said as she refilled Sarah’s coffee. Turned out the hipster coffeehouse slash wine bar she remembered, on the ground floor of the old Lake Hotel, had closed. That left the Spruce, the sugar in the same dispensers on the same Formica tables as when her parents had brought them here for waffles after church or they’d crammed too many girls into a booth for Cokes and a shared order of fries on Friday afternoons after school, the same faded color prints of elk and Bighorn sheep staring down at her from the same plastic frames.
“Didn’t mean to keep you waiting,” the woman continued, “but the crime scene crew from Missoula just left. Ate everything in sight. Hope you weren’t wanting any sausage this morning.”
“Uh, no, thanks. Coffee and toast. Whole wheat?”
“Yup. Coupla eggs, bacon? We make the best hash browns in three counties. You could use a few extra calories, you don’t mind me saying.”
How could she mind, put that way? Plus, it was true. “Sure. Over easy. Thanks.” Before Sarah could ask the waitress what she’d heard about the crime, the woman was gone.
“Sarah? Sarah McCaskill? Is that you?”
Sarah set the glossy brown mug on the table. Not who she wanted to see her first day back. They were the same age—did she look that old, too? God knows, some days she felt it.
“Becca. Yes, it’s me.” Sarah slid out of the booth and the two women gave each other a half hug punctuated by air kisses. Then, not because she wanted to but because it was polite, “Join me?”
“No, no.” Becca waved away the invitation with a plump hand. “I tried to slide in there, they’d need the Jaws of Life to pry me out, especially after breakfast. There’s a stool at the counter with my name on it. No, I just spotted you on my way back from the ladies’ and wanted to say hello.”
A silence fell between them.
“Well,” Becca said, her voice breathy, her full face growing blank. “Can’t let my pancakes get cold. Or that coffee of yours. We’ll catch up another time.”
“Yes, let’s,” Sarah said, but the other woman had already turned away.
Seated again, Sarah cradled the warm mug. She’d encountered too many of these uncomfortable silences in the last seventeen days—eighteen, now—to count. People didn’t understand that all you needed was for them to acknowledge your loss. Even if all they said was “I heard about your husband—I’m so sorry,” or “you must be heartbroken.” She’d settle for “I don’t know what to say,” but people didn’t even say that.
She picked up her phone. Started a text to her mother. Put it down, unfinished, and sipped her coffee. What did it say, that it was easier to accept mothering from the waitress she’d never met than from her own mother?
It said that her mother knew what she was going through, and the stranger didn’t. Her mother would ask how she was feeling, was she sleeping, when had she last eaten, and had she talked to the kids? Even though Peggy talked to the kids at least once a week—well, to Abby, anyway. Noah, not so much. It was hard, sometimes, to remember that the questions came from love and concern.
If only she had answers.
“Careful—hot,” the waitress said and Sarah raised her hands. What had she been thinking, ordering so much food? She remembered telling the kids, the kitchen counter covered with muffins and salads people had brought when they heard the news, that they needed to eat. Both had given her that “you’re crazy” look kids learned before they learned their ABCs. But then Noah had said “You, too, Mom,” and his tenderness had nearly crushed her.
Did anything smell as good as bacon and potatoes still sizzling from the grill? She picked up her fork.
Twenty minutes later, Janine slid into the booth and nodded at the empty plate. “I guess the food’s good.” The waitress appeared, coffee pot in one hand, an empty mug in the other. “Desperately, yes. And buttered white toast, please?”
“You got it, doll.”
Janine tugged off her scrunchie, shook her hair loose, then drew it back again, all while glancing around. “Hasn’t changed much. Smells better, though.”
Sarah leaned forward, her voice low. “Everything’s okay, right? I mean, not okay, but you’re in the clear.”
“I’m not under arrest, but that’s not the same as not under suspicion,” Janine replied, in an equally low tone. “Leo’s a nice guy, but he’s got a murder and no suspects.”
“Oh, honey,” the waitress said as she set Janine’s plate of toast on the table. “When it comes to Lucas Erickson, this town is full of suspects.”
“Deb!” the white-haired man at the nearest table interjected. “How can you say that?”
“Why shouldn’t she say it?” his wife asked. “It’s what everyone’s thinking.”
“Not a fan, I take it?” Sarah asked the waitress. Deb.
“The son of a bitch represented my ex in our divorce,” Deb explained. “I know darn well Lucas helped him hide assets from me. Now he’s living the good life, with a brand-new pontoon boat and a shiny red truck to pull it with. Candy-apple red. And I’m working here. Not that I don’t enjoy it, but you understand.”
She did. She hadn’t been away from Montana so long that she didn’t understand the dangers of men who drove candy-apple red pickups.
“I heard they took some woman in for questioning,” the woman at the table said. “From Missoula, but I guess she used to live here.”
Janine froze at the words, a piece of toast halfway to her mouth. Fortunately, Deb had her back to them, busy refilling the gossipy couple’s coffee.
Sarah grabbed her bag and fished inside. Dropped cash on the table and stood. “Thanks, Deb. You were right about the hash browns. Sorry we’ve got to run.” She managed to position herself so Janine could slide out and head for the door without being seen. “Bye now,” she called over her shoulder.
Outside, Sarah led Janine down the sidewalk, away from the Spruce’s plate glass windows.
“No one in this town will ever believe me,” Janine said.
“Don’t say that. Those people don’t know anything. They don’t know who you are. And you heard them—nobody liked Lucas.” Although he must have had friends in high places—or thought he did—if he planned a run for Congress. And money, though you’d never guess that from the exterior of his office.
Questions, questions, questions, as Jeremy would have said.
“Leo’s deputy told me about an electronics repair shop a block off Main. After we see if they can fix your phone, we’ll find you some clothes,” Sarah said. She hitched her bag up on her shoulder. “Come on.”
“Sarah,” Janine said. “Get real. I can’t afford anything in this town.”
“I’ll buy you—”
“No. I don’t want to owe you.”
Friends back in Seattle had told her she needed a project to take her mind off her loss. She’d managed to not tell them to go jump in the lake. Her mother wanted her to make the lodge her project. Washing windows, ironing lace curtains, and pulling birds’ nests out of gutters might be exactly the therapy she needed. Counting sets of china and making lists of paintings and knickknacks. It would go quickly, and might almost b
e fun, with help.
“Make you a deal. Give me a hand cleaning up the lodge, and we’ll trade work for whatever you need. If you can stay for a few days. Did Leo tell you not to leave town?”
“No. Nic said he can’t say that, that it’s tantamount to an arrest, even if TV cops say it all the time. But I’m not going to leave yet. Not before she gets here.”
Sarah had almost forgotten about Nic, making the long drive across the state. Maybe she’d been wrong; maybe Janine did need a lawyer.
“Deal?” She held out a hand.
Janine’s features softened. “Okay. But we’re shopping the sale racks.”
No one recognized either of them as they picked out shirts and pants at the sporting goods store, and found sandals and tennis shoes to replace the rubber clogs that were part of Janine’s kitchen work uniform. Everyone was as friendly as Deb the waitress and the couple in the café, and no one gave them a second glance at the grocery store, where they picked up new tea and sugar, cat food, and cleaning supplies, among other things. Sarah could almost feel Janine’s anxiety ease.
The SUV loaded, Sarah dashed into the pharmacy for a notebook and tiny stickers. And a measuring tape—there had to be one somewhere in the lodge, but you could never find things like that when you needed them.
One more stop. Why was it so hard?
Because she hated to admit that at forty-seven, she needed her mother.
A few minutes later, they rounded the curve at the end of the lake and there, at the corner of Lake and First, its three-sided turret a beacon, sat the Wedding Cake. That had been her name for her grandparents’ pink Victorian when she and Holly were kids and walked here every afternoon from the squat two-bedroom starter house on the other side of Main, their mother pushing Connor in the stroller. Before Grandpa Tom and Grandma Mary, often called Mary Mac because she’d traded one Irish surname for another, moved to the lodge full-time and gave the house in town to the young family.
The frothy old frame house hadn’t been pink in ages. After Mary Mac died, Peggy confessed she’d always hated the pink and repainted it a dusty dark blue, the white gingerbread cream. Though it had been odd at first to see such a dramatic change, the blue and cream were striking. Almost as if the house should have been those colors all along.
Through the multi-paned windows of her bedroom on the second floor, Sarah had been able to see much of Bitterroot Lake and the mountains ringing the valley. Her view hadn’t quite stretched to the lodge, though on a clear day she could see the point that separated McCaskill land from the Hoyt property to the east, and the beginnings of the gravel beach. Idyllic, even when life itself had not been a fairy tale. Her mother had converted the room into her studio years ago.
No driveways on this stretch of Lake Street; garages opened on the alley. Sarah drove past the house, made a U-turn, and pulled up in front. On either side of the walkway that split the compact front yard, clumps of daffodils bloomed and peonies sent up their fringed red stalks. Last year’s leaves hadn’t been raked from the shrubs around the foundation, and the window boxes that usually burst with geraniums and lobelia hadn’t been planted yet. They climbed the broad wooden steps and Sarah grabbed the brass doorknob. Locked.
Tried the door again. Why did you always do that? As if the result might be different the second time.
“Mom?” She peered through the oval glass in the door, then the sidelight window. Dark.
“Try the back,” Janine suggested. “Or call her.”
As they picked their way over the stepping-stones on the east side of the house, Sarah thumbed her phone. The faint ring from inside was her only answer. She tried her mother’s cell. No response.
The back door was locked, too. So was the garage, too dark to tell if her mother’s car was tucked inside.
The seed of dread that had been planted in her gut with Jeremy’s diagnosis sent up another shoot.
“She must be out running errands,” she told Janine, hoping it was true. It had to be true. “She’s taking pictures of the light or leaves or scenes she wants to paint.”
“She’ll call when she sees she missed you,” Janine assured her.
Back in the car, back on the North Shore highway, she wanted to ask Janine about her interview, but held back. She didn’t want to cross another invisible line, like when she’d offered to buy Janine some decent clothes. In Seattle, she and Jeremy had gradually come to live in a bubble, most of their friends well-off, if not downright wealthy. Fortunes built on tech, as theirs was.
If Lucas had meant to run for office, chances were he’d have hit Jeremy up for a campaign contribution sooner or later. Hey, old buddy, haven’t seen you in decades, but I hear you struck it rich. How ’bout it?
She did not want to think about Lucas Erickson or his plans. Or who had hated him enough to fire a bullet into his chest.
They drove by an old farm that was now an alpaca ranch at the foot of the wooded hills. Another had been subdivided into five- and ten-acre parcels, growing trendy homes instead of wheat or potatoes. Janine spotted a foal in a pasture and they shared a smile at the sight of the long-legged baby. Lynx Mountain and Porcupine Ridge rose high above them, the hillside covered with Arrowleaf Balsamroot, her favorite wildflower. The further west, the lower the tree line. Spruce, fir, and pine, the occasional cedar. Birch, aspen, vine maple. Familiar territory, a road Sarah had known all her life, from her family’s regular treks between town and lodge.
And yet, like all roads taken, in places it felt unrecognizable.
The two-lane highway wound between a series of ponds surrounded by the scarlet shoots of ceanothus, better known as elk bush, and golden shrubs whose name she could never recall. They passed the wildlife viewing area and neared the Hoyt land. The old ice house and homestead shack weren’t visible from the road, her memory of them complicated.
“Stop,” Janine said. “Pull over up there.” She pointed to a turnout leading to an unused two-track.
The moment Sarah put the rig in park, Janine hopped out. Sarah followed her twenty yards back down the highway to a freshly painted white metal cross atop a red metal post. Crosses like these dotted Montana roads, erected at the site of each traffic fatality. Some became shrines, tended by the families of the dead, decorated for holidays or with mementos. Some appeared neglected, just the bare cross rusted by weather and time—marking a forgotten soul or a traveler who died far from home. Though the crosses honored the dead, the main reason for them was to remind drivers to slow down, take care, arrive alive.
Someone had wound silver and maroon ribbons around this post, and attached a key chain adorned with a tiny grizzly bear.
“Recent,” Janine said, crouching to stroke the little bear in a maroon sweater emblazoned UM. The school colors, the school mascot. “Since the last rain.”
In the last two days, then.
Then Sarah saw a second key chain, dangling one of those clear acrylic rectangles intended to hold a photograph. She reached out for a closer look.
At a face long gone, a face forever twenty-two. The face of Michael Brown.
5
A familiar dark-red sedan sat in the circular drive in front of the lodge. Sarah parked the rented SUV behind it. What was she supposed to feel right now? She had no idea. That was the thing about grief that no one told you: you would not know what to feel. You would crave comfort, and resist it. You would be angry, devastated, heartbroken, uncertain—even, God help you, relieved. You’d be anxious, terrified. Impatient, needy, worried, betrayed. Sometimes all at once, or so it seemed, your heart flipping through the dictionary searching for the right word for the moment.
The mudroom screen door opened and a woman emerged, drying her hands on a white dish towel.
Sarah blinked, unsure whether she was seeing her mother or the ghost of her grandmother. Her eyes, her mind, playing tricks on her again. The two women had looked nothing alike—they were mother- and daughter-in-law, not blood relations. But that was where their grandmothe
r had always stood to greet them.
Had her mother, who was only seventy-two—or was it seventy-three?—aged that much since the funeral? Slighter, smaller, more gray in her long, dark blond hair, the skin around her eyes and mouth drawn.
Or had the whole world changed when she wasn’t watching?
She flung open her door and dashed across the driveway, the gravel crunching underfoot. Who held each other more tightly? She couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. It had been three years since her father, JP, died. When she’d found herself dreaming of him, night after night, in the weeks before Jeremy’s death, her therapist said that was typical. That the fear of coming losses often unearthed old ones.
She took a step back, studying her mother’s face. There it was, that dread, that fear, mingled with the love and worry in the familiar hazel eyes.
“Leo said you were here.” Peggy’s voice hovered on the knife edge between hurt and understanding.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I wanted—I guess I wanted a night here alone first, to figure out whether this was going to work. And then—” She gestured toward Janine, a few feet away, a shopping bag in hand. “Mom, you remember Janine Chapman. Janine Nielsen, from high school. My old roommate.”
“I know Janine,” Peggy said, as she extended an arm. “She came to my show in Missoula a few weeks ago. I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
The show had been in early April. Jeremy had been too ill; Sarah hadn’t dared risk leaving him to fly over, even for a couple of days, but Peggy had sent pictures and a video clip from the opening. Landscapes and portraits, like the ones that hung in the house in Seattle.
Neither she nor Janine had mentioned running into each other.
“But what are you doing in Deer Park?” Peggy asked Janine, releasing her from the one-armed embrace.
“Let’s get the groceries unloaded,” Sarah said. “Then we can talk.”
“I hope you bought cat food,” Peggy said. “He’s been jabbering at me since I got here, and I may not know cats, but I know what that means. Where did he come from, anyway?” She didn’t wait for an answer, and Janine followed her inside.
Bitterroot Lake Page 3