Bitterroot Lake

Thank goodness she’d remembered to switch on the water heater last night. The hot shower had felt so good.

There might come a day when Sarah McCaskill Carter would walk down the streets of her hometown wearing second-day clothes and second-day hair, but this was not that day.

She took pity and set the last of her yogurt on the floor for the cat, who polished the bowl clean before sitting on her haunches and asking for more. “Don’t get used to it. People food isn’t good for you and I have no patience for picky eaters.”

The cat did not reply.

Sarah found a tunic for Janine to wear over the borrowed leggings, then pulled on slim-cut black pants, a white silk T-shirt, and a bright blue blazer with a notched collar and rolled-up sleeves. Black flats. She’d only brought one bag, a woven straw tote with a leather strap. Finger-combed her light brown hair, the red flecks catching the light. It would do.

They drove the ten miles to Deer Park in the rented SUV, Janine’s face ashen, hands clutching her elbows. Sarah kept her eyes on the road, barely seeing the land she’d once known as well as her own face.

On the courthouse steps, Janine paused.

“The last time I was here, I was twenty-two, claiming what my mother left behind.”

Sarah grabbed Janine’s shoulder and looked her square in the eyes. “You. Are not. Your mother.”

Inside the office, the sharp smell of cleaning spray mingled with the scent of daffodils from a bouquet on the counter. The fortyish woman on duty said Sheriff McCaskill wanted to see Sarah first, and a young officer who introduced himself as Deputy Pritchard escorted her to the interview room. The fluorescent lights buzzed slightly and gave his pale skin a bluish tinge, though the table and chairs were not as old and scarred as she’d expected. Then Leo entered.

It didn’t take long to repeat her story for the digital recorder that lay on the table between her and the two men. No, she replied to Leo’s final question, she had nothing more to add.

“If you’re sure—” Leo said. She was sure.

Back in the lobby, he beckoned to Janine. “No reason to wait,” he told Sarah. “We could be a while.”

She turned to her friend. “Text me when—” But Janine had no phone.

“I’ll ping you when she’s free,” Leo said. A good sign, right? He didn’t plan on clamping on the handcuffs and tossing Janine into the jail. Which surely did not smell of spring flowers.

Outside on the sidewalk, Sarah checked her phone. Replied Gorgeous day in Montana—love you! to a text from her daughter, no doubt sent while scurrying between classes. She’d texted both kids from the train station in Whitefish yesterday, letting them know she’d arrived safely. Her son might not reply for a day or two. They had their own lives now, which was the point of raising kids, right? But though she’d been happy to see them choose their dream schools and move halfway across the country while their father was alive and well, now she wanted to drag them home and never let them out of her sight.

Which was exactly what she couldn’t do.

She dropped the phone into her bag. The courthouse anchored Main Street—literally; it stood in a circle at the south end of downtown, a few blocks from the lake. Despite the sunshine, the air held a slight chill. Mountain air. Fresh, and yet, filmy. Like a thin curtain had fallen between her and the rest of the world when Jeremy died.

This is your hometown. There is nothing to be afraid of.

She took a deep breath. One step, then another, and another.

At half past ten, Ma

in Street was open for business. Flower baskets hung from hooks on some of the wrought-iron lampposts, while others sported nylon flags with bright images of birds and butterflies. “OPEN” signs glowed in the windows of the copy shop and the liquor store, and petunias and verbena spilled from window boxes outside the florist’s shop. Her grandmother had had a standing order for a fresh bouquet every week, and Sarah had loved going in with her to pick them up, even when the owner was away and they had to deal with the prickly woman who worked there. As a little girl, she’d wondered why someone who worked with pretty things always seemed to be in a bad mood, but her grandmother had said the woman had a hard life.

“Good morning,” an older man called as he came out of Deer Park Hardware and crossed the sidewalk. She returned the greeting, though she didn’t know him. This was how she remembered town. Not like Seattle, where default mode was to pretend you didn’t see the woman who pushed her grocery cart between you and the shelf you were scanning for the right kind of mustard or the man next to you studying his phone while you waited for your latte at Starbucks.

And yet, though it all looked so familiar, so friendly, it felt so different from when she’d last visited, a year ago.

No. It was she who was different.

And she whose tummy growled. The few bites of yogurt she’d eaten before giving the bowl to the cat had worn off.

But when she glanced down a side street, a sharp tang swelled in the back of her throat. Between the quilt shop and the locksmith, across from the school playfields, stood a single-story sandstone building with a Kelly green awning, the corrugated metal dented and rusting at the corner.

And blocking the sidewalk, two of those orange rubber traffic control thingies, strung with yellow CRIME SCENE tape.

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.