Had there been no group of church women willing to offer food, shelter, and a little cash? No one could be judgy-ier than a group of women, even good church women. Had the Society stepped in where the usual folks feared to tread? Not every letter writer fell outside societal norms, but widowhood was one thing, living in sin another. A larch cone, about the size of a strawberry, hit her on the arm.
“Sorry,” Janine called. The ladder creaked as she descended. She dumped the dark, flat water from her bucket into a juniper. Sarah dumped hers, too, then rinsed both buckets from the spigot on the side of the house.
It was a long moment, the woods around them oddly quiet, before Janine spoke.
“The first time I came out here with you, it was almost Christmas and the snow was falling.” Janine gave the lodge a long, sweeping gaze. “I thought this place was magical.”
Just listen. You owe her that.
“When Roger left me,” she continued, “we’d been living in New Mexico where he had a job on a ranch. It came with a house, he said, but it turned out to be an ancient metal trailer that rattled like a snake when the wind blew. Drove me half crazy. Sixteen miles out of town, not a tree in sight. Zak turned two there.” Janine wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered. “When Roger took off, with the truck and the last of our cash, the ranch manager’s wife took pity on me. She knew I’d worked in restaurants and got me a job in town at the café. It was a jelly doughnut-drip coffee kind of place, but I knew I had to make do until I had the money to leave.”
She sat on a big boulder. Untied her hair and bent over, shaking her head, then straightened and slipped the scrunchie onto her wrist. Sarah sat on the ground a few feet away.
“The problem,” Janine continued, “was where to live. There was nothing I could afford except a cabin by the creek on the edge of town. Practically a twin to the cabins here.” Her face softened.
Sarah waited.
“I stayed in that town way too long because of that cabin. The most comforting place I have ever lived. Or that I’ve ever been, except for here, at Whitetail.”
Janine leaned forward, hands clasped between her knees. “They made that job for me. They didn’t need me. They didn’t know me, they had no reason to trust me or help me, but they did. Customers brought in stuff for Zak—books, toys, clothing their kids had outgrown. The crankiest old lady gave me the most beautiful handwoven blanket—I’ve kept it all these years. No questions. No judgments. Just …” Her voice trailed off.
“They helped me heal. And up on that ladder, looking in at the bunk room where you and Holly and I used to sleep, I realized it was like you and your family. Like coming to the lodge.”
“But—this is where—”
Janine held up a hand and Sarah stopped. “This is where the healing started. Where I started to feel I was worth something. Lucas tried to take that away from me. For a long time, I thought you had, too, by denying my voice. But washing the layers of grime off the old glass, I saw that my shame had built up in layers, too. From my childhood, the attack, Roger’s abuse. I married a man who abandoned me and our son, just like my mother had done. The lodge helped me heal from my childhood, the same way that little nowhere town helped me recover from my broken marriage.”
Sarah began to catch a glimmer of where Janine was going. “So when we found the journal and the letters, and uncovered what Caro and the Ladies’ Aid Society did …”
“Exactly,” Janine said. “I don’t know how or why, since you didn’t know about Caro’s society. But helping women in need is as much a part of the history of this lodge as the steamboat dock or the thirty-six place settings of railroad china.”
“But I stopped you from filing a report against Lucas.”
“And you weren’t wrong. I was thinking, while I was up on the ladder.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What you said about me being fragile. You were right. I was like glass. Hard on the surface, but if I’d been forced to face Lucas Erickson in court, with him sneering at me and denying everything, I would have shattered into a million pieces.”
In and out. Sarah repeated the exercise until she could speak again.
“Are you seriously thinking of moving back up here? I thought you hated Deer Park.”
“I thought so too. Turns out, I hated some of the things that happened to me here, but none of that matters anymore. I’ve got my own experience of Deer Park, and the lodge is a huge part of it.” Janine paused. “Nic said she told you about the clippings. I know they look bad. I was just keeping track of him. I kept a file on the case against my mother too. They were part of my story. But I’m ready to let it all go. Live my own story, not theirs.”
“Oh my gosh. That’s what the dreams are about, aren’t they?” Sarah asked. “We’re supposed to help each other. Help women in danger. Tell the stories that matter and let go of the ones that don’t.” She let out a cackle. “In the business, architects and designers like to say a house talks to them. But I don’t think they mean it quite so literally.”
Then she turned serious. “Ellen Lacey built this house. The first dream came to her.”
“She didn’t listen,” Janine said. “That’s what killed Anja. And it broke Ellen.”
The question hung in the air, unspoken.
What danger was stalking them now?
* * *
The rest of the morning, they washed windows and gathered debris. It amazed Sarah to see Janine work so hard to clean a place that wasn’t hers. To restore the magic.
And to keep from obsessing about Lucas Erickson, shot to death on the floor of his own office?
How was that working, she wondered. Because it wasn’t working for her. No love lost and all that, but still. The man was dead. People had loved him. His mother and sister. His children. People had depended on him, their lives and businesses entwined with his. Renee Harper and his clients. Which included McCaskill Lumber.