Bitterroot Lake

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.”