Bitterroot Lake by Alicia Beckman (i read a book .TXT) 📕

Nic came in, glancing around for something. “Have you seen my jacket? I’m sure I hung it in the entry last night, but now I can’t find it.”

“Oh, geez. I wore it when I went out on the property. It’s filthy now—sorry. Take mine and I’ll wash yours while you’re in town.”

“Good, thanks. It’s an all-purpose errand trip. Buy a signal booster. Pick up Janine’s phone. Convince the sheriff she had nothing to do with the murder.”

“You could come,” Holly said, the invitation clearly an afterthought. “We could squeeze you into Nic’s car.”

“No. Thanks. I’ve got work to do here,” she replied. “Hey, would you call Connor, too? We’ve got some trees down—nothing urgent, but I doubt there’s a working chain saw out here, if I did dare to use one. But we’ll need to get some tarps up pretty quick.”

“Sure. Surprised he didn’t come out as soon as Mom told him you were here. He’s been worried.”

So they’d been talking about her, the whole family. That was good, she supposed. But the thought of people feeling sorry for her made her twitch.

“With this storm and thousands of acres to manage, he’ll be crazy-busy. This is nothing. Get the roof and balcony covered and we’ll be fine. You go. Don’t worry about me.”

A few minutes later, she was alone. Another thing she hadn’t understood about grief was that one minute she was terrified of being alone, and the very next she wanted nothing more. Depended, in part, on how pushy the other person was. Were they continually asking if she was okay, did she need anything? She was not okay, damn it. She needed Jeremy. And if you couldn’t bring him back, and no one could, then just shut the fuck up.

But she couldn’t say that. Except to Holly, who didn’t hover, but certainly not to her mother. Peggy had suffered her own losses when JP died, but being widowed at seventy was a whole different thing from being widowed at forty-seven. Though seventy was too young, too, wasn’t it?

And where was her mother, anyway?

Gad. She’d told Nic teenagers were a handful. Turns out middle-aged adults could be mood-swing wrecks, too.

Get a grip.

She gathered up Nic’s fleece and a few other things and headed to the cellar, flashlight in hand. Surveyed the pipes before loading the washer—the last thing they needed was a flood.

No broken windows. A decade’s worth of cobwebs between the joists and a faint whiff of mouse, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Back on the first floor, she found a broom, then checked the doors and windows. None had blown open or been cracked by debris. They were mostly original, except for a window or two that had been replaced over the years. They ought to all be replaced, but double-paned, insulated upgrades would cost a small fortune. Add in the sagging roof and the loose gutters, and now the storm damage. Make that a sizable fortune.

In the sewing room, she swept up the storm litter. Among the rubble lay a long, curved cone from a white pine. When she was a kid, they’d gathered cones in late summer and Peggy and other teachers had used them for school craft projects—pine cone reindeer and hedgehogs, owls and elves. They’d dipped a few in wax to use as fire starters, stashed in giant baskets next to the fireplaces. Whenever she’d found a white pine cone with all its scales intact, a rare thing, she’d saved it and tucked it on a shelf in her bedroom—her treasure shelf.

They could spend Christmas at the lodge this year. If she managed to get it clean by then. If they kept it.

Keep moving, girl. She set the cone on the top step and made a quick circuit of the upper floors. Satisfied, she returned to the main floor and headed outside. The wind had not budged the heavy log tables and chairs, but serious sweeping was required. She walked down the stone steps to the lawn.

An object lay on the grass and she bent to pick it up. A nest woven of pine needles and grasses, a fragment of speckled shell stuck inside. The sight snagged her breath and she let out a strangled sob, her worry, she knew, even more for her own chicks than for the unhatched baby bird.

 11

Sarah crossed the driveway to the carriage house and slid open the double doors. Specks of dust swam in the beams of sunlight.

This time of year, it stayed light until well after nine. Her bet: George had spotted a sightseer hoping for a surreptitious peek at the historic lodge. In the off-season, as long as the roads were passable, no one minded.

So why had he mentioned it?

Holy crap. In the twilight and her hurry the other night, she had not noticed. Peggy had said the carriage house needed to be cleaned out, but—whoa.

How had they ever accumulated so much junk? Tires and tools, skis and snowshoes, paddles and life jackets. An old band saw and drill press—her dad’s? He’d taken up woodworking after he retired, working in an unused corner of the lumber company shop. What were his tools doing here?

And that old wooden canoe. They ought to haul it out. Toss it in the water, see if it was sound.

She picked her way around a roll of field fence to the workbench, where wrenches and hacksaws and tools she could barely identify hung from hooks on the pegboard mounted to the wall. Another wall held odds and ends of tack—ropes and leads, bits and guards, cinches and straps.

Back home, her saddle and bridles hung in the storage room Jeremy had insisted they build in the garage, too good to get rid of. Too much a part of who she thought herself to be.

Maybe she would take up riding again. There were stables in Kenmore and Woodinville, or out at North Bend, where a horse could be rented for a few hours. Once she got the feel for it again—got her seat