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

“Leo’s already on it,” Nic said. “I can’t imagine how it might be connected to the murder, but you never know.”

“Could be totally innocent. Griz fan with a long memory,” Holly said. “Found a photo of him online and printed it out. Though why now, after all these years?”

Sarah picked up her pop can. “A sports fan that attentive, that obsessed, is probably male. I’ve always assumed it was women who decorated roadside crosses.”

“Tempe took drivers’ ed last fall,” Nic said. “The teacher made them work in teams and research newspaper stories about roadside fatalities. They had to visit the cross, take pictures, and give a report in class.”

“That’s cruel,” Holly said.

“And there’s a judge in Billings who makes that part of the sentence after a DUI,” Nic continued. “Leo said nothing like that goes on up here, but I think he liked the idea.”

“While you three were in town, I went up to the carriage house apartment,” Sarah said. “No interior damage, thank goodness. That’s where all the stuff from the third floor is. And the dollhouse.”

“I loved that old dollhouse,” Holly said. “But not half as much as you did.”

“None of you have gone out there?” Sarah asked, though there had been no footprints on the dusty steps. No’s, all around. “So how do you suppose these got on the bedroom floor?” She fished the three pennies out of her pants pocket.

“They look brand-new.” Janine plucked one out of Sarah’s palm and held it up. “It’s dated this year.”

If you’ve got something to say, Jeremy, just tell me.

Below the highway, Sarah pulled off McCaskill Lane onto the trail leading to the horse barn, then further east to the Hoyt place. She passed the weathered building, its stalls holding nothing but horses’ dreams, and kept going. In her bag, her phone pinged, but she ignored it.

She ignored the boundary between Hoyt and McCaskill land, too, certain George wouldn’t mind. She slipped her foot off the brake, then pressed the gas gently, steering the rig between the high spots and the muddy potholes frost heave left behind. Clearly, the road hadn’t been used much in the current century.

Ahead loomed the Hoyt barn, where George had kept his stock. Never much interested in managing the timberland he’d inherited, he’d turned to outfitting once he sold the sawmill. He’d run several crews of guides and hands, using horses and mules to carry guests into the backcountry to hunt or fish. The stock were long sold off and the barn looked lonely. The rails of the old corral had splintered and collapsed in the middle, like a shallow V, the posts leaning, as though they’d lost the will to stand up for themselves. Hints of wild brush and grasses greened the ground on either side of the road, but inside the corral, the dirt held only the faintest greenish sheen, as if all the hooves over all the years had pounded too hard even for weeds to take hold.

An illusion. Weeds were the sturdiest plants around. “A weed is just a plant in the wrong place,” her grandmother had liked to say.

“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