Bitterroot Lake, Alicia Beckman [good books to read for 12 year olds .TXT] 📗

Then, a second door? Had Nic brought her family? Tempe must be fourteen or fifteen by now, but she would be in school. Or was it just the sound of the back door as Nic got out an overnight bag?

Then Sarah heard the voices.

She watched from the doorway as Janine released Nic from a hug and turned to greet the other woman. Not a teenager at all. It was her sister. It was Holly.

What the hell was she doing here?

 8

An invisible band tightened around Sarah’s chest, squeezing out all the air. Bad enough that when they’d gathered at the house after Jeremy’s funeral, she’d overheard Holly on the phone saying “so much for her perfect life.” Meaning her, Sarah. Meaning the cracks in their relationship had become gaps too wide to bridge.

Now Holly was here, not fifteen feet away, glaring at her. But in her own fury and confusion, she couldn’t read her sister’s eyes.

Maybe she never could. Maybe she never had understood her only sister.

“What are you doing here?”

“I called her,” Nic said. “She caught the first flight.”

“But why? This isn’t bridge. We didn’t need a fourth.”

“I want a chance to explain,” Holly said.

“I don’t want your explanation,” Sarah snapped. “Mom asked me to help her with the lodge. We don’t need you.”

Holly’s fair skin paled and her neck stiffened. She was being cruel, Sarah knew. And she didn’t give a damn.

“I came because of this.” Holly pulled an envelope from her brown leather bag and held it out.

And Sarah’s very bad feeling got even worse.

“It has to have come from him,” Janine said a few minutes later. “From Lucas. No one else knows everything that happened.”

Outside the four of them, a point that hung heavily in the air over the dining room table, swirling like the cigar smoke of a hundred years ago. The letter lay on the table. Cups of tea and coffee and glasses of wine sat, untouched. That one of them could have done something so awful, so hurtful, was impossible.

Or was it? Sarah shuddered involuntarily, and she drew her wine glass closer. It gave no comfort, the smell, the thought of drinking it turning her stomach sour.

“Plus it doesn’t make any sense,” Nic said. She sat across from Sarah, her back to the view. “The letter says ‘only you know the truth.’ That can only be one person, not two. Not both Holly and Janine.”

“He didn’t expect us to talk to each other,” Holly said. “But how could he have known …” She let the words trail off, the question unfinished, its import clear.

“You mean, how could he have known we aren’t close anymore?” Nic asked. “Not like we were, anyway. He could only know if he’d talked to one of us.” Her piercing blue eyes rested on each of them in turn, but no one flinched.

Could Lucas have heard the truth from someone else? Jeremy might have told him, innocently enough, that “the girls” had drifted apart. That would have been years ago, though—he hadn’t talked to Lucas in ages. He’d reached out to a lot of people from the past as he got sicker—she’d find him in a T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms, on his phone, his dog-eared address book on the table next to him, dialing away. Well, not dialing. The address book was hilariously retro, when you thought about it, for a tech guy. He hadn’t been a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs tech guy, whose name and products everyone knew, though his banking apps and payroll accounting software touched a lot of lives. But Lucas? No, she couldn’t imagine Jeremy making that call. He’d known how she felt.

But then, she couldn’t have imagined anything that had happened in the last few months.

“You ever run into him?” Holly asked Nic. “Professionally?”

“I haven’t talked to Lucas Erickson since law school,” Nic replied. She’d grown up in Billings, in the eastern end of the state, and had gone back there after graduation. “Other than seeing him across the room at a seminar or two, our paths never crossed. Not that I minded.”

A movement caught Sarah’s eye. Janine had stiffened, her jaw tight, her shoulders rigid.

“How did you know he lived in Deer Park?” Sarah asked.

“I googled him,” Janine said sharply, but a flush crept up her cheeks.

“What? You saw him, didn’t you? Recently, I mean. Did you at least tell Leo?” Not waiting for an answer, she swiveled her attention from Janine to Holly and back. “We have to tell Leo. About your letter and about—I can’t believe you saw him and you never said. You sat right here and you never said.”

“It was more than a year ago.” Janine’s voice held a note of irritation. “I’d delivered an order of desserts to a restaurant downtown and when I walked out, there he was. Standing on the sidewalk, in a suit, talking to someone. It was near the court—I assumed he came down for some legal thing.”

“Did you talk about—what happened?” Holly asked. “About any of us?”

“We didn’t talk at all. I just stood there and he—” She clenched her jaw and swallowed hard. “He recognized me right away, I could tell, and he had this look on his face. A sneer, like he thought he had some kind of power over me. Then he just walked away, like I wasn’t worth acknowledging.”

“He didn’t threaten you?” Nic’s tone was probing but careful.

Slowly, Janine shook her head.

Unbelievable. This was all so unbelievable. Sarah scanned the letter again. Unless … She sat back and folded her arms, hands gripping her elbows. “Unless there’s something else only you two knew. You two, and Lucas.”

“No,” Janine snapped. “I told you everything that happened. How he got me into the cabin. What he did, what I said. How he wouldn’t stop and I finally got away and ran. You saw me, all of you. And I told the sheriff everything, fat lot of good it did me.”

“But the letter,” Nic