Bitterroot Lake

by Alicia Beckman

  Seems the family had another legacy, too. One whose depth she’d never guessed.

  Secrets. And silence.

  They were talking now. Could they undo the damage the silence had caused?

  The rain had subsided, but the air was still heavy, cool in the way that it always was after a rain, and she caught a whiff of wood smoke from somewhere along the shore. A bald eagle perched on a tall snag.

  “Take care of the land,” her father had liked to say. “We’ve been good to it, and it’s been good to us.”

  God, she missed him.

  Had she passed that legacy of secrets on to her own children? It was true that they hadn’t told the kids right away when Jeremy’s cancer came back. His first bout, the testicular cancer, had come months after their marriage, not long after he’d recovered from his injuries in the crash. The accident. Whatever it was. If he hadn’t been under close watch by so many doctors, they might not have caught it so early—early enough that he’d sailed through treatment and gone on to father two children. And the second time, the kids had been so young—four and six. They hadn’t understood enough to be scared. Or so she’d told herself. They’d teased Jeremy about going bald, seeming to forget all about his illness as soon as his hair grew back. As the kids got older, there had never been any reason to talk about it. It had all been in the past.

  Last fall, after Jeremy finally admitted the low back pain wasn’t getting better and the physical therapist had sent him to his doctor who’d sent him to the oncologist—well, they’d waited to say anything. Why worry the kids? At least until they knew. Until they had their plans in place, with the doctors and lawyers and financial advisors.

  Because the third time was not the charm. The cancer had moved quickly, settling deep into his bones. They’d told the kids before he started chemo, and when that first round failed and he’d decided he didn’t want to go through another round if the cancer was going to kill him anyway, just as quickly, they’d been upfront about the options and his decision.

  She tightened the hood of her jacket and resumed her trek, following the trail uphill, the blood rushing to the skin of her thighs, the tingling sharp, almost painful.

  So yes, they’d kept Jeremy’s illness a secret, but not long. Only until they knew that the future would be short.

  True, they had never told the kids the details of the crash. Why should they? It had happened before they were born, before Sarah and Jeremy had been married.

  But she hadn’t told him all her theories, all her conflicted imaginings, about that day. Why? Because she’d known—assumed—Jeremy wouldn’t share her feeling that they were both to blame, for not stopping Lucas? It wasn’t just because they’d been off together, making love in the abandoned homestead cabin. It wasn’t just because Lucas had taken Jeremy’s car—why had he left the keys in it, anyway? It was all that, and the dream.

  Did she really think he’d have dismissed the dream, called her crazy? Yes. Jeremy Carter considered himself a rational, practical man. And she was young and in love, and while she wanted to share everything—everything—with him, she had not risked telling him anything that might tarnish his opinion of her.

  She reached the top of the hill, the same spot where she’d stopped a day or two before. Found a stick and sat on the bench, scraping the mud off the soles of her feet. Mud, feet, mud, feet, blood, tears, mud, feet.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. None of it. Losing Jeremy meant losing her own future.

  She flung the stick away and slid her hands up her sleeves, warming them on her arms.

  What had Connor meant when he said Jeremy had let the past go, but she hadn’t? How would he know what Jeremy thought about the crash?

  And why was Leo targeting Janine? He couldn’t seriously think she’d cooked up this whole letter business as an excuse to kill Lucas Erickson and terrify the rest of them.

  No. It was because Janine had run. She’d seen the body and she’d fled to the lodge and hidden. What would she have done if Sarah hadn’t found her there?

  Would she be dead, too?

  Sarah closed her eyes, remembering the terror radiating from her old friend.

  Janine was convinced that someone had been in the law office with her. Watching her. Someone who’d slipped in after the secretary left, leaving Lucas there alone, and slipped out before she returned. Someone who didn’t expect another visitor to come in the front.

  A slow heat rose up Sarah’s spine. As if she was being watched right now. The heat became a chill and she froze. Felt her breath go shallow, her jaw tighten. Was it better to act casual, turn slowly, try to fool whoever was watching you into thinking you had no idea, or to whip around and catch them in the act? She and Noah had debated that one time, over biscotti and kombucha at the co-op when he’d felt himself being watched. The eyes, his biology teacher had said, sense information beyond the visual. If you can sense when someone is looking at you, Noah had countered, can the person doing the staring sense when you know?

  But there was no one there. No one in the woods, not even a sparrow.

  This whole stupid thing had turned her into a blubbering idiot, scaring herself for no reason.

  This was why she hadn’t told Jeremy about the dream. Why she regretted telling Holly, the day of the attack.

  The wind was whipping up again. As she headed for the lodge, the question clung to her brain: had whoever saw Janine leaning over Lucas’s body known she’d sensed their presence?

  And what would they do next?

  But short of a hypnotic trance, Sarah didn’t have a clue how to help Janine identify who might have seen her. And after this dream nonsense, she wanted nothing more to do with the unseen world. This one was trouble enough.

  Outside the mudroom door, she stopped to wipe her feet on the mat. Glanced at the phone box. Remembered the penny in her pocket.

  “Okay, okay.” She rolled her eyes, tossing the words into the ether. To the ghost of her dead husband, or whoever was listening.

  * * *

  When had she last eaten?

  Where were Holly and Janine?

  And where had Caro’s journal gone?

  “I know I left it right here,” she said out loud. On the kitchen counter, next to the plate that had held this morning’s coffee cake. Too bad Janine couldn’t afford to open a café; that coffee cake alone would guarantee success.

  Sarah grabbed an apple. In the main room, Holly and Janine sat on the couch, speaking intently, voices low.

  They broke off when they saw her, Holly following Sarah’s gaze to the journal, which lay on the coffee table next to the box of letters and a stack of albums and scrapbooks.

  “Amazing,” Janine said, “that your family saved all this stuff. I’ve never even seen a picture of my grandmother.”

  “I’d never seen anything in that trunk,” Sarah said. “Con and Caro must have brought it with them when they gave the house in town to our grandparents and moved out here.”

  To the lodge. Everything came back to the lodge.

  “And then”—she was guessing now—“it got stashed in the carriage house apartment and forgotten.”

  “Amazing. Back to work for me,” Janine said, pushing herself off the couch. “Earning my keep.”

  When the door closed behind her, Sarah said the words she’d wanted to say for so long, but hadn’t, wanting to hear them first. She didn’t have that luxury anymore, if she ever had.

  “I’m sorry, Holly. For everything I’ve done to keep us apart.”

  Silence. Then, quietly, “Me too.”

  Sarah sat beside her sister, the couch still warm from Janine. “What are you going to do?”

  “Read those letters. Flip through the albums and scrapbooks.”

  “I meant back home, after this. Why didn’t you tell me you lost your job?”

  “You had enough on your plate. I’ll figure out something. Does Mom seriously want to sell?”

  “I don’t think she knows what she want
s. She practically begged me to come help her with this place, and where is she?”

  “Either she’s burning to paint—”

  “She would not let me in her studio. No way.”

  “Or she thinks if she leaves us out here by ourselves, we’ll work through our differences.”

  Like she’d done when they were kids. “Hol, do you know—has she said—is she sick?”

  “No. Good God, no. What did she say? Why do you think that?”

  “She didn’t say a thing. It’s just—and you may not want to hear this. But what if the girl in the dream, whoever she is … She came to me twenty-five years ago, to warn me. What if she’s telling me now that someone else is in trouble? At first I thought it was Abby, because of the light hair, but she’s fine. I mean …”

  “Except for the dead dad. Which is horrible. It’s hideous. No kid should have to lose a parent at eighteen. But she’ll be fine, Sarah. You know she will.” Holly’s voice shook as she went on. “I’m so sorry for what I said this morning. Forgive me?”

  Sarah bit her lower lip and nodded. “Then I thought the woman in the dream might be you. But what if it’s Mom?”

  21

  She’d come to the lodge expecting to be alone, but now that she finally was, Sarah wasn’t sure what to think or feel. Nic was still in town, Janine out cleaning cabins. Holly had gone for a run, saying it was time she shook off her self-pity and got moving.

  As intrigued as she was by the finds in Caro’s trunk, she had work to do. She couldn’t inventory dirt. And if her mother did decide to sell, they had to know what work the place needed. She took her notebook and phone to the top of the house. Room by room, she snapped pictures, took measurements, and made notes. In between rooms, she made trips to the cellar to move laundry—sheets, towels, and curtains Janine brought in from the cabins.

  She set a basket of towels on a kitchen chair. Mundane tasks like folding laundry could be meditative. Other times, they opened the cracks that let sadness creep in, the spidery, many-fingered tendrils of sorrow in a life. All the things that were supposed to be perfect, but never were.

  When had she become such a mope?

  She reached for the next towel. It didn’t come and she gave it a tug.

  “Meeow.”

  “Oh. Bastet.” She scooped up the cat, one claw catching on a thin white dish towel that fluttered up with her. Fluttered like the nightgown on the woman in the dream.

  Sarah loosened the cat’s claw from the fabric. “Who are you?” she asked. “What do you want from me?”

  But she wasn’t talking to the cat.

  “Sarah?”

  “Nic. You’re back.” Sarah set the cat on the floor and picked up the towel. Saturday, the stitching read, beneath the outline of a girl hanging laundry. Apt. She tossed it aside to rewash, then turned on the heat under the teakettle. “Perfect timing. The cat and I were just about to take a break. What did you find out in town?”

  “I hardly know where to start. I met Dan Fleming for lunch at the Spruce. Nice guy.”

  “So why was he in business with Lucas?”

  “You cynic, you.” Nic cracked a wry smile and sat. “They kept separate clienteles. He had no idea Lucas had done any work for McCaskill Land and Lumber.”

  Curious. Sarah plunked bags in two heavy white mugs.

  “He’s been interviewed at length, of course,” Nic continued. “He was meeting with clients when Lucas was killed.”

  “What about Misty?” The kettle whistled. Sarah filled the mugs and set them on the table. She checked her chair for the cat before she sat, but the creature had disappeared. “They live in Whitefish, right?”

  “Right. She keeps an office above the shop there, where she was holed up all afternoon. Dan says the sheriff’s office confirmed both alibis. Thanks.” Nic spooned sugar into her tea. “He’s adamant that there was nothing going on between him and Misty until after she left Lucas, but Lucas didn’t believe that.”

  “Was Lucas serious about a congressional run?”

  “Dan doesn’t think so. Lucas was really good at shaking hands and making promises, but the job is a lot more work than that.”

  Sarah frowned, wondering why her brother had done business with the man.

  Nic took a quick sip, then set her mug down, holding it with both hands. “I was in the prosecutor’s office when she got a call from the state crime lab.”

  “About the letters? That’s the only physical evidence they have now, unless they’ve found the gun and matched the fingerprints.”

  “No. No gun yet. And it’s harder to get prints from a gun than you think. Plus, it’s a common model. How did your cousin put it? ‘Guns are like pine cones in Montana. Shake any tree and at least one will fall out.’ There’s probably a .38 in half the houses in the valley.”

  Her mother hadn’t wanted guns around the kids, so her father kept his deer rifles and the shotgun he used to hunt ducks in a safe in his office. And the handgun he always carried in the woods. You never knew what trouble you’d run into, he’d said. You might hit a deer on the highway and need to put it down. If Connor did the same, he’d left it in his truck when he came inside.

  “They can’t seriously believe,” Sarah said, “that Janine would ever own a gun, let alone use it. Not after what happened with her mother.”

  “We know that, and I reminded Leo and the prosecutor. But our beliefs don’t prove anything.”

  “And you called me a cynic.”

  “They have to be skeptical. Because people aren’t consistent. Our observations aren’t as accurate as we think they are, and they’re influenced by what we want to believe,” Nic said. “Every single one of us has done something even our closest friends never imagined we would do.”

  Not a reminder she actually needed.

  “Here’s where things get ugly. Two things. I probably shouldn’t tell you either one.”

  “Nic. Tell me.” Sarah put her palms on the table and leaned forward.

  “They got a search warrant for Janine’s apartment in Missoula. That’s routine. They found a file in her desk drawer. Filled with clippings about Lucas over the years.”

  Sarah sat back. “What the—”

  “Every time his name made the paper—for some lawsuit, when his father died, when he ran for County Attorney—she kept the article. It’s a thin file, but …”

  “But it’s a file. Holy cow. What’s the second thing?”

  “The secretary, what was her name?”

  “Renee Harper.”

  “Right. She told you they’d taken the computers and printers to check for evidence that Lucas wrote the letters to you, Holly, and Janine. They also took a laptop from his house, and according to Dan Fleming, quizzed both him and Misty on whether Lucas had access to any other computers, in their home or offices. This is preliminary”—she held up a hand—“but they don’t think Lucas wrote that letter.”

  “Well, of course they didn’t find a copy. He didn’t save it. Any idiot would delete it, and Lucas Erickson was not an idiot.”

  “As I said, this is preliminary—they’re still searching hard drives and automatic backups for evidence of the letter itself. But they can match documents to keyboards and printers. Not like in the typewriter days, but pretty close. And no match.”

  “What about fingerprints on the paper, or DNA on the envelopes. From licking.”

  “No such luck. These were gummed. You pull the strip and press to seal. Same with the stamps. But they don’t match any envelopes found in Erickson’s home or office.” Nic scratched her cheek, in front of the ear. “But here’s where they got lucky, sort of. They found a partial print on one of the envelopes that matches a print on the stamp from the other envelope. Meaning the same person sent both.”

  “But it wasn’t Lucas …”

  Nic spread her hands, the gesture and the somber expression in her eyes asking one question.

  If Lucas Erickson hadn’t sent those letters, then who did?

>   * * *

  From deep in the cellar came the buzz of the dryer. Sarah picked up her basket and fetched the last load of towels. Could Janine really have sent the letters, sending one to herself to send the rest of them down the wrong track?

  She’d never imagined her old friend could be so devious.

  But then, she’d been wrong about so much lately.

  When she reached the kitchen, Nic stood at the window, the two ironstone mugs in hand. Without a word, Nic put them in the sink, wiped her hands, and began folding towels. This wasn’t the time to ask about the clippings, and if Nic thought there was a snowball’s chance that Janine was behind the letters. Later.

  The basket half empty, Sarah glanced up. She had forgotten Nic’s habit of biting her lower lip when she was worried. She was practically chewing a hole in herself right now.

  “It was kind of shocking-not shocking to hear about what happened at your house,” Sarah said. “I guess I don’t really know what kind of backlash you get from your work, and just from being who you are. I’d like to hear more, if you want to talk about it sometime.” You couldn’t be irked at people for not telling you things if you never let them know you were interested.

  “Thanks.” Nic glanced up, her eyes soft. “That means a lot.”

  “You get hold of Kim?”

  “Yeah.” Nic exhaled heavily. “Turns out not to have been the best time to leave town.”

  Sarah stopped folding. “Not more vandalism?”

  “No. There was an—incident at school. It’s our fault. My fault.” Nic snapped the wrinkles out of a hand towel, but didn’t fold it. “I get so fired up. I want gay and lesbian couples to have the same rights to jobs and housing and health care as straight couples. I want queer kids to know they’re worthy of love and respect and not be afraid when they walk down the halls at school.”