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“You’ll drink to anything,” Nic said lightly.
Maybe she’d fooled them, Sarah thought as she lifted her glass. But she didn’t believe her own words. Not for a minute.
* * *
“A normal mom would be out here supervising every sweep of the broom,” Holly said when Nic and Janine had gone into the kitchen.
“You wouldn’t want a normal mom,” Sarah said. “If there were such a thing.”
“You do a pretty decent impression of one.” Holly’s smile quickly faded. “She wouldn’t let you see what she’s working on either?”
“Couldn’t slam the studio door fast enough.”
“I’ve got a friend with her own gallery,” Holly said. “In an artsy district, near downtown Minneapolis. She paints in a glass-walled studio in the corner. People watch her all day and she doesn’t mind a bit.”
“Mom never used to mind. Remember when we were kids? She did that series of Blackfeet portraits using the beaded gloves and moccasins Grandpa took in trade and let us play with them while she painted.”
“So what’s changed? What’s different? Her or the painting?”
Sarah swirled her wine glass and didn’t respond. The only answer was “everything.”
Holly plucked a grape off its stem. “I crawled around in the carriage house this afternoon. How did one family ever accumulate so much stuff?”
“One dish at a time,” Sarah replied, “for a hundred years. The first thing to do is make a plan. See what’s here and set some priorities. Though even then … what a mess.” She raised a hand, gesturing to include the carriage house, the attic, the cellar, but what she really meant was the silence and resentment that had crept in between them and become a habit they couldn’t break. And the threat none of them had seen coming.
“Hol,” she started as her sister raised her head and said “Sally …”
“You first,” Holly said. “Age before beauty.”
An old joke between sisters only a year apart who shared a strong resemblance. Though Sarah knew she was thinner now, her cheekbones and jaw more prominent. When she’d ordered the pie to go for her mother, Deb the waitress had insisted on boxing up her mostly uneaten piece, too. She’d forgotten it, on the front seat in her car.
“I don’t want to sound like I’m blaming you,” Sarah said, “but is there some other reason Lucas sent you that letter? Something you haven’t mentioned?”
“No.” Holly shook her head. “I swear, I don’t know anything more than the rest of you do. Well, except …”
“Any sane person would absolve us both of guilt over that.”
“That assumes we’re sane.”
The crack was meant as a joke, but Sarah felt no humor. Only heaviness. The same dark weight she’d felt that night, so long ago. “Most people would have done the same thing. Even if I had spoken up, said I’d dreamed something terrible was going to happen, we didn’t know exactly what it was going to be.”
“Yes,” Holly said, earnestly. “You did. You knew Janine was in danger. It had to be from Lucas. And I told you it was just a dream, that it meant nothing. If I hadn’t kept you from warning her …”
“Holly, stop. I decided for myself not to say anything. It’s not your fault.”
“You stop,” Holly replied. “You feeling guilty is equally ridiculous. Neither of us is responsible for Lucas trying to force himself on her, or for racing off in Jeremy’s car. And we sure as hell aren’t responsible for his death now.”
Sarah wanted to believe her. Oh, dear God, how she wanted to believe her.
* * *
After dinner, Sarah grabbed her jacket and snuck out the front door. The skies were still light, that turquoise-y blue with a hint of gold that you didn’t see in Seattle. She could hear a power boat on the lake, a faint whirr of traffic up on the highway, and if she listened hard, birdsong. It wouldn’t be full dark for another hour or so.
In Seattle, it never got truly dark or truly silent, except when the power went out. If her children were home, the silence would have been almost immediately broken by one of them wondering what was up and when would the power be back on. They weren’t whiny kids. Just kids. They’d had fun on visits here, sure. They’d swum in the lake and gone sailing and canoeing, but they could do those things at home. Playing with the cousins and hiking the hillsides—that was fun, too. But not enough to draw them back to the lodge for more than a few days.
And with Connor immersed in work, Holly firmly entrenched in the city, their mother content in her studio in town, who was left to enjoy these evenings, when the birds were flitting from tree to tree, the colors turning to shadow?
Maybe it was time to turn Whitetail Lodge over to another family.
