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“Bloom where you’re planted,” proclaimed a poster Abby had hung on her bedroom wall.
The world is full of such contradictory advice.
Clearly if she were going to take up riding again, it would not be here.
Beyond the corral lay the first pond, the road dipping below it, then moving on to the next,
each pond ringed in last year’s cattails, a red-winged blackbird perched on one. No wildflowers, and the pussy willows hadn’t opened yet. Maybe the woman in the blue car had found some forsythia in bloom, or a wild fruit tree by the side of the road.
She kept going. Above the largest pond stood the old ice house. Two stories, deeply weathered, the cupola on top tilted slightly, and something inside her seemed to heat up, freeze, and melt again.
The barn road was a wreck. Her front tire hit the edge of a pothole, the SUV swerving sharply to the right. The vehicle bounced and she swore and jerked it back. If she weren’t careful, the soft dirt along the edge could grab her tires and pull her off into the narrow drainage ditch.
Steady, Sarah. Don’t get stuck up here. Even if her cell worked, she did not want to get stuck up here.
The spring that fed the old homestead had turned the meadow green already, and the pond shimmered in shades of chilly blue. A pair of mergansers swam effortlessly on the far side. A hundred years ago, ice had been cut here for the railroad and townspeople. She parked beside the ice house, near where the road teed into Hoyt Lane. Over a small rise to the east, she saw the chimney of the house where George’s mother had lived when Sarah was a kid.
She swung her car door open, testing the ground with one tennis shoe, then the other. Took a deep breath. Took one step, a second and a third, bypassing the ice house until she stood in front of the homestead shack. No picturesque logs here. Rough lumber but well-built—it was still standing, after all—that had been whitewashed once, so long ago it was nearly impossible to tell.
A creeper clung to the door frame, last year’s leaves dry and brown, and they rustled in the soft breeze. The upper half of the door stood open, the screen torn in one corner. A squirrel or a racoon? A tree branch tossed by the wind?
She stretched out a hand, then pulled it back. She didn’t need to go inside. She didn’t want to go inside.
Jeremy would not be waiting for her.
13
When she reached the North Shore Road, she jammed her foot on the brake and slammed her fist into the steering wheel, the impact vibrating up her hand.
“God damn you, Lucas Erickson.” It wasn’t rational, blaming the man for his own death, for his death interfering with her grief.
But very little made sense anymore, and she saw no point pretending that it did.
She turned toward town. Her destination was her mother’s house, her mission—what? No family was perfect. No one got everything they wanted from the people closest to them. But was it expecting too much to think that after inviting her home, only nineteen days after her husband’s death, that her mother would be eager to help her at the lodge? To comfort and console her?
No, it was not too much. And her mother’s absence was unlike her. So what was going on?
In town, she turned left off Lake Street. Passed the post office and made a right. The crime scene tape that had surrounded the law office was down, and a woman stood in the entrance, about to open the door.
Sarah parked and quickly crossed the sidewalk. “Hello,” she called. “I was hoping to catch someone here. I’m so sorry—”
“The office is closed,” the woman said, glancing over her shoulder, then stopping, her mouth open.
Sarah was equally startled. It was the woman she’d seen yesterday, searching for wildflowers.
The other woman recovered first. “Are you here for the files?”
Sarah’s turn to be puzzled.
“For the lumber company,” the woman added. “You are a McCaskill, aren’t you?”
How did she know who Sarah was? And what files? Did Lucas do legal work for the company? No reason Connor shouldn’t have hired him, and no reason she should have known. But the thought didn’t sit well.
“No,” she said. “I mean, yes, that’s my family. I’m Sarah McCaskill Carter. My brother runs the business. I—I went to college with Lucas, and I stopped by to offer my condolences.”
The door was open now and the woman held it, stepping back for Sarah to enter.
“I’m Renee Harper.” Now that they were face-to-face, Sarah could see that the other woman appeared to be a few years older, sharp-eyed, hair colored a shade of red that didn’t match her skin tone. And too thin, her black-and-white striped blouse loose on her frame, the skin around her eyes drawn. “Secretary, bookkeeper, mail clerk. You name it.”
