Bitterroot Lake by Alicia Beckman (best books for 20 year olds txt) 📗

“That we know of,” Leo said.

So they were checking. “Leo, she’s not a terrified girl anymore. She’s a grown woman. Not that I believe she’s guilty for one minute, but if she’d wanted to kill him, why not just kill him? Why go to all this trouble? And why drag the rest of us into it?”

But it made a certain kind of sense. They hadn’t been all-for-one, one-for-all for a long time. What if Janine hadn’t been sure she could count on their support, not without manipulating them to rally ’round her.

Leo was eyeing her closely, as if he could read her mind. She wouldn’t put it past him—he’d known her her whole life.

But he wasn’t necessarily on their side. He’d say he wasn’t on anyone’s side, that his goal was the truth. Justice. She wanted to believe him, believe that he was better than the sheriff who had subtly, but surely, pressured her and Janine to hold their tongues twenty-five years ago.

“Leo,” she said. “I know you have to investigate her. You have to investigate everyone who had a beef with Lucas—his ex-wife, his former partner.”

“Unhappy clients,” Holly said. “Unhappy not-clients.”

“Lucas left plenty of both,” Leo said.

As she’d heard that first day back, in the Spruce, when Deb the waitress had aired her grievances and the older couple had chimed in with their gossip. And her own brother was a client, though he’d said nothing to suggest he’d been unhappy with Lucas. Neither had Renee Harper.

She stepped between her brother and sister and looped her arms through theirs. “We trust you to do your job.”

“Thank you, Sally. Sarah,” Leo replied.

“Speaking of jobs.” Connor dropped her arm. “Better get back to mine.”

The two cousins shook hands. “I see your crews are working up on Lynx Mountain,” Leo said.

Sarah frowned. “Do we have land up there? I know it’s a checkerboard, but I thought that end of the ridge belonged to George Hoyt.”

“He sold,” Connor said curtly and turned to leave, gesturing to Leo to go first.

Now what was that about? She stared at the men’s muddy footprints and wondered.

 20

Didn’t matter if it rained buckets. If she came back cold and drenched and shivered and got the flu and spent a week in bed. Sarah needed to get out of this house and clear her head.

The woods were quiet. Connor had left, leaving young Matt to limb the downfall and pile up the debris. A full crew would finish the job next week and haul the merchantable timber back to the yard. But the roads on the property were clear and the threats to the buildings removed. The debris, the slash, they’d burn before the summer heat dried out the woods. She’d tended slash piles with her father in the spring and fall, rakes and shovels in hand, the smell of dank, mossy smoke working its way into her hair, her clothes, her nostrils. She should have hated it, but she hadn’t. She’d loved the time with him, time in these woods, time tending the family legacy.

Seems the family had another legacy, too. One whose depth she’d never guessed.

Secrets. And silence.

They were talking now. Could they undo the damage the silence had caused?

The rain had subsided, but the air was still heavy, cool in the way that it always was after a rain, and she caught a whiff of wood smoke from somewhere along the shore. A bald eagle perched on a tall snag.

“Take care of the land,” her father had liked to say. “We’ve been good to it, and it’s been good to us.”

God, she missed him.

Had she passed that legacy of secrets on to her own children? It was true that they hadn’t told the kids right away when Jeremy’s cancer came back. His first bout, the testicular cancer, had come months after their marriage, not long after he’d recovered from his injuries in the crash. The accident. Whatever it was. If he hadn’t been under close watch by so many doctors, they might not have caught it so early—early enough that he’d sailed through treatment and gone on to father two children. And the second time, the kids had been so young—four and six. They hadn’t understood enough to be scared. Or so she’d told herself. They’d teased Jeremy about going bald, seeming to forget all about his illness as soon as his hair grew back. As the kids got older, there had never been any reason to talk about it. It had all been in the past.

Last fall, after Jeremy finally admitted the low back pain wasn’t getting better and the physical therapist had sent him to his doctor who’d sent him to the oncologist—well, they’d waited to say anything. Why worry the kids? At least until they knew. Until they had their plans in place, with the doctors and lawyers and financial advisors.

Because the third time was not the charm. The cancer had moved quickly, settling deep into his bones. They’d told the kids before he started chemo, and when that first round failed and he’d decided he didn’t want to go through another round if the cancer was going to kill him anyway, just as quickly, they’d been upfront about the options and his decision.

She tightened the hood of her jacket and resumed her trek, following the trail uphill, the blood rushing to the skin of her thighs, the tingling sharp, almost painful.

So yes, they’d kept Jeremy’s illness a secret, but not long. Only until they knew that the future would be short.

True, they had never told the kids the details of the crash. Why should they? It had happened before they were born, before Sarah and Jeremy had been married.

But she hadn’t told him all her theories, all her conflicted imaginings, about that day. Why? Because she’d known—assumed—Jeremy wouldn’t share her feeling that they were both to blame, for not stopping Lucas? It wasn’t just because they’d been off together, making love in the abandoned homestead cabin. It wasn’t just because Lucas