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

years ago this month, Sarah had graduated from the university, along with their friend Nicole. The new grads and Sarah’s sister Holly, a year younger, had come to the lodge to celebrate, Janine in tow. For a week, the four friends and roommates had been the only ones here—swimming, hiking, laughing, drinking too much wine, and falling asleep in the sun. Enjoying their last carefree days before time and plans separated them.

Then Lucas and his buddies showed up. And everything changed.

“Oh, God, Sally, it was awful. It was hideous. I wanted to throw up.” Janine bent over, clutching her elbows. Then she stood and began to pace between the ancient white enamel range and the equally ancient refrigerator.

No one had called Sarah “Sally” in decades, except occasionally when someone in the family slipped. Or a friend from way back.

“He wanted to make sure I kept my mouth shut. Rumor is he intends”—Janine paused—“intended to run for office.”

“Political office?” As if there were another kind. But Lucas?

“Congress, I heard. He might have lacked political experience, but he never lacked confidence.”

Why not Lucas? He’d been smart and ambitious. Lawyers often leaned toward politics. And officially, he had no criminal record.

“Lucas?” she repeated, this time out loud. The cat shifted in her lap.

“I thought—I thought—” Janine stopped, then grabbed her chair and rocked it backward. “He always blamed me for the wreck. Because I said no, because I wouldn’t sleep with him—”

“He attacked you. He all but raped you.” Sarah didn’t bother stemming her anger as the memory spilled out of her. “I saw you, we all saw you, racing out of the cabin, your shirt ripped, your shorts half off. Running barefoot down the gravel driveway to get away from him.”

“Instead, he jumped in Jeremy’s car and tried to leave.”

“I remember,” Sarah said, her voice breaking. She would never forget. Jeremy had left the keys in it. He and Michael ran after Lucas. Somehow, both young men—boys, really, barely older than her son was now—had ended up in the car, too. Trying to get Lucas to stop, to figure out what had happened, to keep him from careening up the road and down the winding, two-lane North Shore Road in a blind, foolish rage. Holly had jumped in their father’s old Jeep and raced after them. She’d seen Lucas picking up speed on the blacktop, weaving across the center line and back again. Seen Jeremy trying to wrench control of the car. Seen the moose amble up out of the borrow pit and straight into their path.

Sarah could see it all as if she’d been there. She could hear the squeal of rubber, the rip of metal on asphalt, the wild bellowing. The terrible sounds had rolled down the slope to where the other three had stood, clinging to each other, in front of the lodge. Nic—Nicole, always the sensible one—had run inside to call for help while Sarah and Janine rushed up the hill, terrified of what they would find but too terrified to stay put.

“Lucas may have blamed you,” she said quietly, “but Jeremy never did. He knew what Lucas had done. Even though you’d told him no over and over, all weekend, Lucas boasted that he could get you into bed, one way or another. Michael and Jeremy told him to shut up, to let it go. He always knew it wasn’t your fault.”

Janine collapsed onto the chair and buried her face in her hands. Careful of the cat in her lap and the years between her and her friend, Sarah touched Janine’s arm, then scooted closer and slid her hand onto her old friend’s back.

Jeremy had been raced to the hospital in Whitefish, then flown to the trauma center in Seattle. He’d been in one hospital or another for the better part of the summer. And when Sarah had gone to visit him, they’d begun building a serious relationship. His parents hadn’t welcomed her, not at first. Not until they saw that their only son was determined to keep her close.

And no one ever said that Jeremy Carter lacked determination.

Lucas’s injuries had been minor. So minor that people assumed he was drunk, the way it often seemed to happen—the passengers or the innocent occupants of the other vehicle bore the worst of the trauma while the drunk driver walked away with barely a scratch.

But he hadn’t been drunk, except maybe on anger and pride, and there had been no other vehicle. Just Jeremy’s little red sports car, a graduation gift from his parents, flipped on its top, Jeremy seriously injured and Michael Brown, sweet, playful Michael Brown, thrown across the highway and killed.

And the big cow moose dead, her calf standing beside her, bawling. A neighbor, George Hoyt, had taken charge of the calf until state wildlife officers could come for it.

Janine straightened, letting Sarah’s hand fall away, and sniffed back her tears. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to call the sheriff,” Sarah replied. “Like you should have. I still don’t get why you didn’t.”

Janine turned to face her, her words urgent. “Lucas was dead, and I didn’t see the gun. I was covered in blood, and I was not going to be the next person shot.” Her shoulders slumped. “Besides, the cops don’t believe women like me.”

Her simple statement was a gut punch. An echo of the past.

Maybe Montana hadn’t changed so much after all.

“The sheriff is my cousin, Leo,” Sarah said. “I’ll make him believe you.”

Janine lifted her chin a few degrees, then nodded. She’d moved to Deer Park in seventh grade with her mother, a waitress at the Blue Spruce. Town was small enough that rumors flew, and the kids all heard their parents talk about Sue Nielsen and her errant ways. Sarah and Holly had thrown a Halloween party at the house in town that year and Peggy McCaskill suggested Sarah invite Janine, saying “that girl needs a friend.” Becca Smalley and her beady-eyed buddies said if Janine came, they would stay