Sierra Falls (Sierra Falls 1)

Everybody knew him, of course. He was the pride and joy of the Simmons family. Oddly, that was one of the things that appealed to her. Not that he had money, though she sure could’ve used a whole lot more of that in her world. But Damien understood family expectations and responsibilities, and she liked that. Sorrow had family obligations coming out of her ears.

She just wished he weren’t so heavy-handed with her sometimes. He took care of business for his family, but she didn’t necessarily like the feeling that she was an obligation for him to deal with, too.

She raked a hand through her hair. “Damien, Damien,” she murmured, not quite sure what to do with him. But now it was time to get back to business.

Knowing Damien, the roofer would be there within the hour. In the meantime, she might as well do as her mom asked and rifle through the generations of old junk not valuable enough to have a place in the rest of the house.

“What a disaster. ” She kicked at one of the old trunks. It was the “hope chest” of one of the women on her dad’s side. If it’d belonged to one of the Sorrows in his family tree, it was no wonder the thing was still filled with dusty and forgotten hopes.

She nudged it from the wall to see how even after death, these women had bad luck. The sides were already rippling and peeling, the wood turning cherry-red with damp. Getting ruined on her watch.

“My apologies, Grandma Sorrow. Or old Auntie Sorrow. Or whoever you were. ” Sinking to her knees, she jiggled the old hinge, trying to unfasten it despite years of rust.

“Too bad they didn’t name Laura after you,” she grumbled. Why her parents hadn’t saddled her big sister with the name Sorrow was beyond her. If they had, maybe Laura would be the one kneeling there in a freezing puddle. “If I’d had a different name, then maybe I’d be the one off gallivanting around California. I’d be the one with the fancy job and

car. ”

But no, her siblings hadn’t been able to run out of Sierra Falls fast enough, abandoning her with things like leaking roofs and rotting trunks. “Maybe I’ll find some treasure and then I can have my turn. ”

She finally pried open the lid, and was hit by a wave of mildew and mothballs. “Oh, jeez. ” She rubbed at the twinge in her nose, looked up at the bright hole in the roof to catch a sneeze. She was going to be sneezing all day, she knew it.

“All right,” she muttered, digging through the contents in search of whatever needed saving first. “Gotta start somewhere. ”

Family photos, important papers—she went through each trunk, systematically setting aside anything that couldn’t be washed or replaced. Most of it was junk, though. Her father had inherited the lodge from his father, who got it from his father, and so on, and much of this stuff was the forgotten, meaningless bits of life that accumulated when you weren’t paying attention. Old ledgers, musty afghans, mildewed picture frames, a warped guitar…she hoped to convince her parents to toss it all in the Dumpster, but knowing Bear and Edith, she feared it was a pipe dream.

“Seriously?” she exclaimed as she opened an old Kinney shoebox, revealing stacks of ancient receipts. She shoved the whole thing into a paper bag, planning to sneak it and the rest of the worthless papers to the recycling center in Silver City. “Do they seriously need this stuff?”

What she saw at the bottom gave her pause, though. The prettiest lace shawl, with ivory crewelwork, yellowed to a color that told her it’d been at the bottom of the trunk for a long time. She pulled it out, afraid the cheap wood might bleed color onto it.

Something tumbled from the shawl, and she scooped it up. A stack of letters. She held them up to catch the light. “Hello there. ”

They were as yellowed as the linen, but otherwise miraculously spared of damage, still bound by a strand of rickrack gone crispy with age. The handwriting was old-fashioned spidery loops, and she got a shiver, knowing in her bones that she held a piece of history. A very intimate piece of history.

Carefully, she slid off the ribbon and unfolded the first page. The writing was dense, but two lines at the end popped out:

Sincerely, and ever your Loving,

Sorrow

“Well, what do you know?” She’d known all her life that hers was a family name, but seeing it written by the owner’s own hand felt thrillingly personal. “Which Sorrow were you?”

She plopped onto her bottom. An icy puddle seeped into the seat of her jeans, but she didn’t care. She’d read the date at the top of the letter—1851. This could be from none other than her three-times great-grandmother, the first and saddest Sorrow of them all, Sorrow Crabtree.

Four

Marlene Jessup sat behind the wheel of her Ford pickup, shaking. She’d skidded off the road right into a snowbank.

The old truck acted light as a feather—or at least the back end of it did—and it had the nasty habit of fishtailing all over the road at the first hint of flurries. By the end of winter, there was always a bed full of snow to weigh her down, but these early season dustings were always tough.

She’d have loved a nice car, something fancy and European-sounding like Volvo or Audi, but when her husband left, he’d taken half of their already lean bank account and stuck her with the pickup.

He and his new squeeze lived in Pinole now, in some well-to-do development, probably driving some fancy new pickup. The hell of it was, his new wife wasn’t even that much younger. It would’ve stung less if he’d left for some fresh-faced bimbo—she could’ve pointed the finger in blame. But Frank had left her for some late-fifties professional type—something to do with pharmaceutical sales—and soon they’d both retire, at which time they’d probably buy that boat Marlene and Frank had always talked about, and they’d travel the world.

Some other woman was getting her boat.

And Marlene was left with the old Ford, two elderly aunts, and an ailing mother to care for, haunted by questions of where she went wrong.

Not going there, as her grandson would say. She put the truck into reverse, willing her hands to stop shaking. It wasn’t even that cold, dammit. She hit the gas, and there was a horrible whirring sound, her tires spinning uselessly.