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

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.

Obviously, someone had hated him. Harper had portrayed him as the classic difficult man—demanding, unyielding—though Sarah had detected a subtler, more complicated side to her feelings. Men like that were often quite charming, and financially successful, which only encouraged their bad behavior.

Entitled, to use the modern phrase.

But clearly not a modern phenomenon. H, in Caro’s account of the incident involving the Swedish housemaid, seemed to fit the bill. Who had he been? What had happened to him?

Some got their comeuppance. Others didn’t, at least not publicly. She’d worked her way around the side of the lodge and took a step back, scanning for streaks on the office windows. Justice was like physics. For every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction. Even if you didn’t get to see it.

But a murder? It had a ripple effect beyond the victim. It affected the entire community.

“Oh,” she said out loud. Was that what led to the formation of the Lakeside Ladies’ Aid Society? Had they kept it secret not just to avoid talk that might prevent women from asking for help, but also to avoid scrutiny? If a woman who’d been seduced by a married man sought support from a church society, word would spread like wildfire, but a group acting in secret could protect both the woman and the wife, and the child, if there was one, from rumor and scandal.

She picked up her bucket and moved to the next window, careful not to crush the shrubbery. They’d seen no indication that the Ladies’ Aid Society had done anything to exact revenge on misbehaving men, but she wouldn’t put it past them. Funny that they’d never heard of it until now. Had her father known? She’d have to quiz her mother.

At that very moment, the sound of an engine coming down the lane broke into her thoughts.

“She’s here,” Sarah told the squirrel who’d been keeping