Bitterroot Lake

“That was the year my mother died. Sarah had already moved to Seattle when the shooting happened,” Janine said, “but you two, you were my rock. I’m not sure I’d have made it through without you.”

“Yes, you would have,” Nic said. “You’d have found the strength.”

The bare facts were brutal. Sue Nielsen had fought with her boyfriend and kicked him out. He’d come back later to get his stuff but she’d been drunk and mistook him for a burglar. She’d shot and killed him. The hard life had ruined her health, and later that fall, in jail awaiting trial, she’d developed pneumonia. The end had been mercifully quick. Sarah was focused on her new job and interior design classes, and on helping Jeremy get back on his feet, literally, though she’d have come home if there’d been a service. But Janine had decided against it. No one would come, she’d told Sarah, except out of pity, and she was probably right.

“I never told anyone that my mother called me,” Janine said. “After the fight, but before he came back. I was too ashamed to admit that I didn’t take the time to listen to her.”

They were silent, making sure they listened now, as she told the story. Finally, Sarah spoke. “I’m so sorry. But would it really have made a difference?”

“Maybe,” Janine said. “Maybe it would have.”

If not then, if not that, some other tragedy would have struck. Sue Nielsen had been a magnet for bad luck and bad choices. But Sarah could see how Janine might have blamed herself, especially after the attack and the crash, and spun out of control. Hadn’t she married Roger Chapman, a poor choice of her own, not long after her mother’s death?

“I don’t see how that could be connected to the letter,” Nic said. “Since Holly got one, too. Do you?”

But no one did.

As if by unspoken agreement, they all stood, Holly heading for the powder room, Nic and Janine for the kitchen. Sarah took her phone out to the deck, the display alight but the bars flat.

Must be some kind of gadget that would solve the problem. She’d ask the repair guy when they picked up Janine’s phone. Though overgrown as the trees around here were, she’d probably need to call NASA.

Who would ever have imagined she’d give an eyetooth for a landline?

What a mess they all were. Blaming themselves for the past, for what they hadn’t done. Except Nic, who’d called when Jeremy died, and made a generous donation to hospice in his name.

But when Sarah had asked about Kim, Nic’s wife, and their daughter, Nic had said they were fine without elaborating. Were they fine? Not fine? Should Sarah have asked more questions? Nic had never been one to avoid difficult conversations. But she’d seen too often in the last two and a half weeks that death silenced people. They worried about saying the wrong thing, so they said nothing, which made her feel even worse. Like the thing ripping her apart wasn’t worth mentioning.

She and Nic had been so open with each other back in college. Though the last half hour had made painfully obvious that the relationships between the four of them had shifted. The other three still seemed close, while Sarah, once the ringleader, had become the outsider.

What was she going to do about that?

Or about her kids. Or her mother and the lodge.

And the letter. They had to call Leo. She could not lose sight of one simple fact: Lucas Erickson was dead, and Janine was the obvious suspect. Although surely there were others—an a-hole like that had to have rubbed plenty of people the wrong way, starting with his ex-wife. What leads was Leo pursuing? Who was he talking to? She knew squat about murder investigations, but she did remember the investigation into the car wreck. The road had been closed for hours while sheriff’s deputies and highway patrolmen took pictures from every angle and measured barely visible marks on the road, a

ll while Jeremy’s once-beautiful red car had sat, impossibly crumpled, tangled with the body of the dead moose. Peggy and JP had come out. Mary Mac, thank goodness, had been traveling with friends, though the news deeply upset her when she returned. The sheriff—Sarah didn’t remember his name—had insisted on interviewing the girls alone. He hadn’t told her he wouldn’t pursue the assault charges; no, he had never been that blatant. But she’d understood the message, and she’d gone along.

Once when Noah was four or five, he’d been playing with a set of toy cars and smashed the red one into a dump truck with a gleeful little-boy shrill and Jeremy had nearly lost it. She’d managed to drag him out of the room, where Noah couldn’t see him, and the boy had never known there was a problem, but the man. Oh, the man. Jeremy had gone sheet-white, sitting on the edge of their bed with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.

When she thought about that terrible day twenty-five years ago, it was the sounds she remembered most. But if she closed her eyes and peered into her memory, it was all there. And the clearest image, the one she could still see in living color, hear, smell, touch as if it were unfolding in front of her right now was when the EMT jumped into the back of the ambulance and pulled the door shut behind him, and his partner flicked on the lights and drove off, rushing Jeremy to the hospital. Had she honestly, truly known in that moment that she and Jeremy were meant to be together, that he had to survive so they could build a future?

Yes, she had.

“Oh, Jeremy,” she said out loud, her hands steepled against her lips. “What am I going to do?”

WEDNESDAY

Nineteen Days

9

The wind worked at the corners of the shutters on the front windows, picking them up and slapping them down. Picking them up and slapping them down. Pick, slap. Pick, slap. Slap, slap, slap.

Sarah struggled to sit up, the wool blanket slipping on the leather couch. Too dark to see the clock on the fireplace mantel, so she grabbed her phone, good for something. Half past twelve. That made it Wednesday, nineteen days since Jeremy’s death.

She’d have sworn she hadn’t slept a wink, if not for the dream. Even with her eyes open, she could picture the woman running along the lakeshore, silhouetted against the night sky, a bit of moon, a tree whipping in the wind. Who was it? Surely not herself—she was watching the dream unfurl. And the woman was light-haired. Or, in the way of dreams, had she been both watcher and watched?

No sign of the cat. She unwound the blanket and stood, then made her way quietly through the dark to the powder room. Holly had taken the other couch. Nic and Janine were sleeping in the cabin where Janine had holed up that first night—ever the Girl Scout, Nic had brought sleeping bags. More cleaning tomorrow. The dust clung to these old logs as if it wouldn’t have a life without them. Where did dust go when you wiped it up? She remembered Abby asking her that once while the cleaning woman was working, the two adults having no answer and trying not to laugh.