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

If you took a picture, compared one calendar photo to another, then the north shore of Bitterroot Lake might barely be a blip on the register of beautiful places. But Caro was right when she said a place drew you to it and wanted you to make it home. Holly and Nic had gone into Deer Park on a fact-finding mission, hoping to learn more about both Sarah Beth’s and Anja’s deaths. Tragedy had sent Ellen Lacey running, but Caro, of the bigger heart, had not been daunted by Anja’s story, whatever it was, or by her dreams.

Caro had understood that tragedy didn’t scar a house, but shaped it. Made it yours.

Maybe it was time she understood that too.

 25

Inside, she scooped up clean rags and grabbed a pair of buckets. Said a quick prayer to the household gods as she walked out the mudroom door that this was the day the phone company techs deigned them worthy of service.

Why were the carriage doors open? Had Janine gone for a drive? Nic and Holly had taken Nic’s car. She set the buckets on the gravel path and walked into the carriage house. Janine’s white van stood next to her SUV, cool as the proverbial cucumber.

From deep inside the building, she heard scraping sounds, the clink of metal on metal.

“Janine?”

“Over here,” came the reply and Sarah peered through the semidarkness. Picked her way to the workbench near the stairs, where Janine stood, hands on her hips. She’d pulled her long curls back in a bright red scrunchie.

“You said this was the most likely place for phone wire, so I figured I’d rummage around. No luck.”

“Half dark, all this dust, who knows what’s out here.”

“I was actually hoping to find a ladder, so we can reach the second-story windows.”

“Outside. At least, that’s where they’ve always been.” Sarah led the way. Wood and metal ladders of different lengths hung along the exterior wall. A squirrel had left a stash of pine cone bits and pieces in the rail of a paint-spattered aluminum extension ladder, and after they lifted it off its wooden prongs, they flipped it over to dump the debris. Carried it back to the lodge and hoisted it upright.

“You should have told me,” Janine said, as they stared at the dull, dry logs and the mud-spattered windows, the sills caked with dirt and moss. “About the dream.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Janine did not reply. After a long moment, she stuffed a couple of rags in her pocket and picked up a bucket. Tested the bottom rung and climbed up.

In truth, Sarah was surprised Janine had stayed. But despite everything, despite the distance they’d let grow between them, when Janine was in trouble, she’d sought refuge here.

Sarah picked up the other bucket and started on the kitchen windows, careful of the peonies and spirea. Her grandmother had sworn that the best way to clean a window was with damp newspaper, but every time Sarah tried that, she’d ended up with a lump of wet mush, stained hands, and ink on the window sills. Happily, she’d found a wicker hamper in the laundry room full of rags. Had no one in the family had ever thrown away an old towel, T-shirt, or diaper?

No. No one in this family had ever thrown away anything.

That brought her back to the letters and Caro’s journal. What had prompted Caro and her friends to start the Ladies’ Aid Society loans? Caro had wanted word to spread to women in need, while avoiding talk that might stymie their efforts. She poked her thumbnail at a glob of sap glued to the glass.

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