“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?