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“You be careful who you hire,” George cautioned. “Lotsa builders think they can do anything.
Throw up trophy homes, sell ’em to rich fools who pat themselves on the back for being eco-friendly while they drive them big SUVs and race their speedboats up and down the lake. Folks who don’t know a thing about the history of this town and don’t care. Spend two mill building a place you visit six weeks a year? It ain’t right. A house wants to be lived in.”
“It’s not for us to judge, is it, George? Their lives, their money. Besides, wealthy families have always built their retreats and vacation homes. The lodge started out as a summer camp for a railroad executive and his family, before my great-grandparents bought it.” Why it had been sold, she’d never known. Financial trouble, or the original owners discovered that keeping a summer home was more work than they wanted. Their loss; her family’s gain.
“You be careful,” George said as if she hadn’t spoken. “Not just anybody can work on a jewel like this.”
“Thanks. Long as I’m outside, I guess I’ll hike up and see how much blowdown we have in the woods.”
“Hop in. Shep and I’ll help.”
In her pajamas and a borrowed jacket. Her city friends would be appalled. She followed George back to the truck. The passenger door stuck and she reached across the seat to open it from the inside. She grabbed the roof strap and pulled herself in.
George shifted to make room for the dog between them, and his worn denim jacket slipped open, revealing the holstered gun on his hip. Another sight she’d gotten out of the habit of seeing. Without a word, he tugged his jacket over the gun and continued down the narrow lane to the cabins. Small branches littered the ground, and a tree had bent the edge of one metal roof, but the cabins appeared otherwise unharmed.
Then they drove the property, George squeezing the pickup down narrow lanes and up half-abandoned logging roads on both sides of the highway. Several times, Sarah hopped down to drag branches out of their way. Twice, they had to back up, the road blocked. No storm damage at the horse barn, thank goodness, although barn was a fancy word for the two-stall shed her father and grandfather had built when she and Holly got serious about riding. In the distance, she could make out the roofs of the larger Hoyt horse barn and the ice house.
“Looks like you’ve got some merchantable timber down on your place, too. Call my brother to clean it up for you.”
George grunted. “Wouldn’t want to trouble a busy man like him for a few sticks.”
“He’s gonna bring a crew out here anyway. He’d be happy to help.”
The old man pressed his lips together. “I’ll manage.”
Pride? A reluctance to admit he wasn’t as young, or capable, as he used to be?
Back at the lodge, George stopped the truck to let her out.
“Appreciate you coming over to check on us,” she said as she climbed out.
“Shoulda stopped to see you Sunday when you got here. I thought I saw headlights.”
“Monday. I took the train and rented a car in Whitefish.”
“No,” he said. “Sunday. When I came back from town. I been taking my granddaughter to the Blue Spruce for Sunday supper since she was ten years old. Now she brings her own daughter. White SUV, but smaller. Not one of them monsters the summer folk drive.”
Sarah’s rented SUV was smallish and charcoal gray. Janine’s van was white, a popular color right now. Was George mistaken? Had he seen someone else down here?
Had her childhood friend lied?
10
The cat was sitting on the front porch.
“Ohhh, fudge. I forgot to ask George about you.” She rubbed the magic spot on the top of the cat’s forehead with her thumb, and heard a satisfied purr in response. “Or have you decided you’re mine now, since I fed you?”
First, she checked Grandpa Tom’s office, at the southeast corner of the house, off the main room. No broken windows and no visible damage to the log walls or the twelve-foot tongue-and-groove ceiling.
Upstairs, in the master bedroom, she scanned the walls, then knelt to inspect the chinking on the lower logs. Were those cracks new? Impossible to tell. She dusted off her knees and opened one of the French doors leading to the balcony. A-okay.
The oak door connecting the bedroom to the sewing room stood open. At some point, probably in the 1950s, a small closet between the rooms had been converted to a bathroom, though the white porcelain fixtures and hex floor tiles were a good match for the other baths. Nothing amiss.
But in the sewing room, everything was amiss. The exterior door had popped open, though the glass hadn’t broken, and cones and needles lay strewn across the Persian rug. She picked her way through the debris and peered outside. The spruce she’d seen from below lay across the broken railing, the top branches snagged on the eave, the soffit and fascia splintered. A strong woodland must stung her nostrils. Whitetail Lodge was a treasure, and not just to her family. If George was right and there were more pretenders these days than real craftsmen, would they be able to get the damage repaired?
Every time she pushed the door shut, it resisted. What could she find to hold it? Chair, no. Table, no. What about the oak bookcase, only thirty inches high but heavy? First she had to clear a few things. A ceramic meadowlark, the state bird. A lopsided clay cup, the name “Connor” scratched in the bottom. She set them on the library table her grandmother had used for cutting fabric. Stacked the framed photos she’d dusted yesterday and put them on the table, too.
She took hold of the end of the bookcase and began wiggling backwards, toward the damaged door. The bookcase barely moved, so she grabbed a few fat, heavy volumes from the bottom shelf. As she tugged, one slipped from her grasp and slid to the floor, flopping open. She groaned, hoping she hadn’t damaged the fragile spine.
