Bitterroot Lake

“That went well,” Sarah said after a long silence.

“Look at it from her point of view. Going back to Seattle means life going on as normal. But only if you’re there.”

“Life is not normal.” Sarah heard the brittleness in her voice. “It is not going to be normal for a long time. She has to understand that.”

“Yes, but you’re not at that point yet. Not anywhere close. Don’t expect her to beat you to it.” Holly parked in front of their childhood home and shut off the engine. “You coming in?”

“No. I want to sit for a moment. Maybe call Noah.” What had Abby meant, wishing her good luck getting Noah to Montana for a few days? What did she know that Sarah didn’t?

Was she losing her kids, too?

No, she told herself. Don’t be dramatic. Holly was right. Abby was afraid of losing her, and that meant being where she was supposed to be, doing what she was supposed to be doing.

There was no playbook for any of this.

Noah didn’t answer, no surprise, so she left him a voice mail, putting on a chipper tone, about how beautiful Montana was this time of year and remember, they’d talked about the kids coming here for a week or two after school got out, blah blah blah.

What was taking her mother and sister so long? She was halfway out of the SUV to go check when the front door of the blue Victorian opened and her mother emerged, Holly behind her. She waited while Peggy got situated in the front seat, then opened the back door. Holly stopped her before she climbed in.

“She showed me,” Holly whispered. “The paintings. Is that what it looked like?”

Sarah nodded.

“I don’t know whether to be jealous that the dreams didn’t come to me,” Holly said. “Or grateful.”

* * *

The soccer fields sat between the grade school and the junior high, two blocks east of the courthouse and across the street from the law office. Children, adults, and dogs swarmed the place, while kids in brightly colored uniforms and knee-high socks clustered on the field. Sarah exchanged greetings with a couple of old friends, accepting condolences and making promises to get together.

“Nice to have a brother who stands out in a crowd,” Holly said of Connor, head bent, listening to his wife, one big hand resting on her back.

“Sarah!” Brooke rushed forward and enfolded her in a warm embrace as Holly and Peggy greeted Connor. “My big goof husband told me he finally ’fessed up to you. I won’t ask how you’re taking the news. I can imagine the answer and I don’t want to make you swear in front of your mother.”

“Not that she hasn’t heard all the words,” Sarah replied. “But thanks. I owe your parents a thank-you note for the flowers and the hospice contribution.”

“No worries,” Brooke said. The kids, nine and eleven, rushed up and Sarah found herself wishing her kids were that age again, not caught up in the zig-zag whiplash of launching their own adult lives while reaching with a back foot for the security of the one they’d left.

The one that no longer existed.

Aidan and Olivia ran back to their teams and the adults drifted toward the bleachers, Sarah lagging behind with Brooke.

“Oh, there’s Misty Erickson and her mother-in-law,” Brooke said at the sight of a trim blonde in her mid-forties, a broad-brimmed straw hat shielding her face, a gray-haired woman beside her.

“I barely know her, but I should say something.” They watched as an older couple greeted the Ericksons, he enveloping Lucas’s mother in a hug, she embracing Misty, and the opportunity was gone. Sarah could feel Brooke’s relief.

“Hard to know what to say, isn’t it?” she said, and her sister-in-law flashed her a grateful look. It wasn’t just this moment, or Misty’s loss, that they were acknowledging.

“Now that he’s told you about his deal with Jeremy,” Brooke said, “I’m hoping Connor will feel less stressed. It’s a big job, trying to keep the company relevant, as he likes to say.”

“Work and family are a tough balance sometimes,” Sarah replied. “But it’s good to have a husband who believes in what he does.”

Her husband had put his trust, and a big chunk of cash, into her family’s business. On the field, Aidan and Olivia and their teammates were going through warmup exercises led by one of their coaches, a thirtyish woman with a ponytail and killer quads.

Jeremy had invested in their future as well as hers and that of Abby and Noah.

She changed the subject. “Hey, I can’t believe all the packing you two did in the lodge.”

“We didn’t get very far. But wow, some great old stuff.”