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

“And to think I ran into his secretary right when it was happening,” Becca continued. “At the post office. She was in a gabby mood. Hard to get away, but I didn’t have time to talk.”

Since when did Becca let that stop her? Though Sarah was beginning to find her chattiness endearing. Still, it was hard to imagine Renee Harper going gabby, and her description of the encounter was just the opposite of Becca’s.

“I’ll leave you with our brochure and a sample listing agreement.” Becca slid a folder toward Peggy, who slid it over to Sarah, and they all stood. “By the way, I hear you met my son.”

Sarah tilted her head, puzzled.

“Matt,” Becca said with a smile. “Looks just like his father, doesn’t he?”

Sarah’s gaze flicked to Becca’s left hand. Sure enough, a slim gold wedding band. Not that she knew who every high school classmate had married—the reunions had never come at a good time, and she only kept up with a few girlfriends—but Becca and Matt, one of the nicest men she’d ever met? Or had she just never noticed Becca’s good side?

“Good job, Becca,” she replied. “Good job.”

“What do you think?” Peggy asked as Becca drove away.

“I think we have a lot to think about.” She held the front door for her mother. Inside, Peggy ducked into the powder room.

Everything Becca had said—and she could hardly believe this, but it was true—made perfect sense. The lodge needed serious help. Serious capital. Serious commitment.

It was crazy. Nuts. What would Jeremy think?

She glanced at the coffee table where the scrapbook and albums lay next to the box of letters. When she remembered Caro’s words, she knew Whitetail Lodge belonged in the hands of a woman. Her hands. Though the lodge had come to her mother through JP, it had been Ellen Lacey’s vision and Caro’s passion. Mary Mac’s domain. She, Sarah McCaskill Carter, could not be the one who let it go. How she was going to manage, how convince her mother, and her brother and sister, she had no idea.

She didn’t care. It was what Caro would have wanted. It was what she wanted.

An empty wine glass sat on the side table, left over from last night. She picked it up and caught a glimpse of something shiny. Caught her breath as she stared, open-mouthed, at the penny that lay on the Navaho rug.

And knew in a flash what Jeremy thought.

“Mom,” Sarah said as she, Peggy, and Janine admired the windows Janine had shined to a sparkle. “What do you know about our great-grandmother, Caroline? Caro?”

Peggy’s brows arched well above her zebra-striped glasses frames. Specks of green paint dotted the gray-blond hair at her temple. She ran a hand through her hair, remnants of more green paint in her cuticles and under her nails. Funny that she hadn’t minded Becca seeing the paint. More likely, she hadn’t noticed. She’d ridden out with the real estate agent, planning to take Sarah up on yesterday’s invitation to stay for dinner and get a ride back into town.

“Caro is the reason I married your father,” Peggy said. “I was crazy in love with him, of course. But when I met her, I knew I wanted to be part of this family. Years later, Mary Mac told me she’d had a similar feeling when she married Tom. Her mother died when she was seven and her father didn’t have a clue how to raise a girl. She always said Caro taught her what it meant to be a woman, and to tend to a family. When we told Caro your name, she cried. She died a month later.”

“I’m so sorry I never knew her.”

“Now you’ll dismiss this as woo-woo,” Peggy said. “You kids all like to be practical. But I think that once she met you, she was ready to go.”

“Mom. You can’t mean that.”

“Peggy, seriously?” Janine said. “Like Sarah was her daughter come back to life?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. More like she knew that with a great-grandson, Leo, and now a great-granddaughter, Sarah, the family legacy was in good hands.”

From the kitchen, they heard the oven beep, and Janine excused herself.

“Does the name Lakeside Ladies’ Aid Society mean anything to you?”

“Sarah, what is this? Where are all these questions coming from?”

She showed her mother the box of letters.

Peggy took the top envelope from the stack and read the address. “‘Mrs. Cornelius McCaskill, Whitetail Lodge, Deer Park, Montana.’ Back when that was enough to get your mail to you. They still name houses in England.”

Sarah flashed on the letters sent by owl to Mr. H. Potter, the Cupboard Under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, informing him of his acceptance to Hogwarts. Letter after letter, owl after owl, until Uncle Vernon screwed the mail slot shut, and the owls began shooting letters down the chimney. Her eyes darted involuntarily to the stone chimney, thirty feet high.

And she sometimes thought her mother was a bubble off plumb.

H. Caro’s journal mentioned H, but there was little chance they’d ever know who H had been.

“We named Connor for him, you know,” Peggy was saying. “For Con. The McCaskills love naming themselves after themselves, but I could not call my child Cornelius.”

Sarah smiled, then told her mother about the trunk. About Caro’s journal and how they’d pieced it all together. “The letters in the Whitman’s Sampler box are mostly thank-you notes for loans the Society made to women in need. Women who’d been abandoned, or who wanted to leave an abusive marriage. Small loans, from what we can tell, repaid promptly. No interest, so it was clearly a benevolent undertaking.”

Peggy stared at her, the envelope from Mrs. Pennington of Cincinnati now forgotten in her lap. “And who—who was this girl? You said her name.”

“Anja. It’s spelled A-n-j-a, but Caro described her as the Laceys’ Swedish housemaid, so we’re saying the j as a y.”

“Anja,” Peggy repeated. “And she died tragically?”

“We think so, but we’re speculating, based on Caro’s comments. Nic’s in town,