BITTERROOT LAKE
A NOVEL
Alicia Beckman
For Ramona DeFelice Long in friendship and gratitude
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
—Mary Oliver, “The Journey”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Whitetail Lodge, Deer Park, and Bitterroot Lake are all fictional, though I have drawn heavily on the history of northwestern Montana and its logging, its mill towns, and its historic lakeside lodges. The region is home to a small lake called Little Bitterroot and a Deer Park Elementary, but their fictional namesakes live only in my mind, and I hope, yours.
Women’s clubs were a critical part of life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, often providing the only social opportunities some rural women had. While the Lakeside Ladies’ Aid Society is fictional, I suspect many organizations did good works that fell far outside their charter.
Book research takes many forms. Thanks to my cousin, Dawn Schwingler McQuillan, for helping me try to solve the mystery of Mrs. O’Dell, known only as a family friend of our great-grandparents, the Beckmans, and a namesake in two generations. We didn’t succeed, but it’s clear the real woman was as well loved as the Mrs. O’D of my imagination.
Jordonna Dores opened her treasure trove of family albums and scrapbooks, allowing me to connect with and better describe what I had imagined lay inside Caroline McCaskill’s trunk. Francesca Droll of Abacus Graphics, LLC created the map of Bitterroot Lake. Our collaboration was a joy, a chance to see how a professional artist and designer can add a critical visual layer to a novel from a rough sketch and a draft manuscript.
My sweet hunny, Don Beans, spent a glorious, clear blue spring afternoon exploring local cemeteries with me and scouting out an old ice house, not far from home but which neither of us knew about before I started researching them for this book. Thank you, love.
What a treat to work again with editor Terri Bischoff, now at Crooked Lane Books, and the rest of the CLB staff. Thanks to Edith Maxwell for reading the proposal, and to the late Ramona DeFelice Long for commenting on a draft. I’m lucky to share a terrific critique partnership with Debbie Burke, who read the proposal and a draft, and brainstormed with me when Terri said “more of this, and less of that” and my brain froze! Mystery writers are the most generous people I know.
My agent, John Talbot, pivoted on the proverbial dime when a series proposal turned into an invitation to write the stand-alone I’d long wanted to write. I deeply appreciate your knowledge of the business and your wise counsel.
Readers, it’s all for you. Thank you.
What Sarah remembered most about that day twenty-five years ago were the sounds.
The words that twisted Lucas’s full lips, that ripped away all the innocence of the weekend, that scraped her to the bone even still.
Janine sobbing, rasping for breath.
Lucas revving the engine of the little red sports car, grinding the gears as he pulled away from the lodge. Michael and Jeremy yelling, then jumping in as they tried to keep him from certain disaster.
The tires squealing on the highway. Metal crumpling. An animal bellowing.
And all of it echoing off the rocks and water and mountains, drowning out the birdsong and the chirping squirrels and the laughter of people at play on the lake. Winding through the spruce and pine and piercing her in the gut.
The siren. Jeremy moaning, strapped to the gurney, its wheels snapping as the EMTs loaded him into the ambulance. The doors slamming shut. The ambulance screeching back toward town.
Did they cry, the girls left to watch and wait? Scream, shout? They must have. She didn’t remember.
Fear and terror, and grievous loss, erase every other sense, wiping the memory blank, leaving time as clean and empty as her grandmother’s ironstone dishes. As she had too recently been reminded.
MONDAY
Seventeen Days
1
A light glowed in the window of the far cabin, the cabin closest to the lake.
Sarah McCaskill Carter squinted and tightened her lips. She was seeing things again. She’d thought that once she came home to Montana, to Whitetail Lodge, the apparitions, the ghosts, the specters—whatever they were—would go away. That she would be herself once again. Although the therapist in Seattle had told her it might take months, or longer, to feel she was back on solid ground. Everyone responds to grief differently, the woman had said, in their own way, on their own time.
The light was gone. Sarah blew out a breath and took her foot off the brake, aiming the rented SUV down the last stretch of the winding lane that led to the lodge. She touched the gas and focused on the road. Deer, even elk and the occasional moose, were known to jump out of the shadows that filled these woods, especially when twilight was fading. She knew what damage they could cause, to a car and to a life.
She glanced back at the cabin. The light was on.
“Get a grip, girl,” she said out loud. “Or your next trip will be to the funny farm.”
Moments later, her headlights hit the double doors of the carriage house. Even in the fading light, the roof appeared to be sagging and the siding dull, in need of oil. Less schlepping if she parked in front of the lodge. But high winds and evening rainstorms were common in the mountains, and it was better to be safe and sore than sorry.
Wait. Was one door ajar?
“Don’t get spooked,” she told herself. “It’s just loose. There’s no one here.” When her mother asked her help getting the lake place ready for the summer and making a plan for the future, she’d warned her that the lodge needed serious cleaning. Sarah could deal with that. She’d dealt with worse than a little dirt.
Even so, her mother would have expected her to stop by the house in town first.
Not yet. Sarah could not stomach the thought of staying in Seattle one more minute, but she wasn’t
