Page 33 of The Woman By the Lake

“Or seriously, you can join us.”

“Well, for now,” she looked again to the lake, “I need to do…other things.”

He agreed.

He just didn’t think those other things should be diving deeper into her head. He knew what a shitshow that could be. He’d lived it a long, fucking time.

And she needed that wisdom.

“I figured out a while ago that the best way to fuck him was to get as much out of life as I can, be as happy as I can, do the things I enjoy as much as I can, without my dad casting a pall over it, which is what the asshole would want.” He bumped her thigh with his. “Just to say, you should think on that.”

She was watching him closely when she replied, “It’s good advice, Riggs, so I will.”

“Right,” he replied, turning his own attention to the lake because that look on her face made him want to kiss her, and that was not where this was going.

“And what I have to just say is you’re not getting out of explaining why no one has been in this cabin for three years.”

It wasn’t three.

For all intents and purposes, it was fifteen.

And the same thing could be said for his house, but he wasn’t going to tell her that either.

“Riggs?” she called.

Goddamn it.

“It’s bullshit,” he said.

“What’s bullshit?” she asked.

He sucked in breath through his nose and looked back to her.

“Do you know who Roosevelt Whitaker is?”

Her brows knit. “Why is that name familiar?”

“Because he’s half of the identical twin brother team of thriller writers known as Roosevelt Lincoln. The second half was Lincoln Whitaker.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I’ve heard of them.”

“You would. They were John Grisham, Dan Brown, Tom Clancy big. Seriously successful. Three movies were made of the first three books in their flagship series before shit went south.”

Her interest was piqued, and she showed that to him with more than her question of, “What was the shit that went south?”

“Roosevelt lived here, year-round,” he said, swinging out his glass of wine to indicate the cabin.

“Really?” she asked, her surprise as evident as her interest.

“Yup.”

“It’s amazing, but it doesn’t seem very ‘abode of a big-time author.’”

“True. But he was known as kind of a recluse. Lincoln Whitaker was the opposite. Friendly guy. Social. Everyone knew him even if he lived in Seattle. He’d come out here six months of the year to research and write with his brother. Eventually, he got married to a woman named Sarah, and they had kids. They bought a patch of land from Roosevelt and built my house.”

“Ah,” she murmured.

“Roosevelt owned the lake and all the land around it,” Riggs explained. “Now I own the lake and all the land around it, except the three acres that go with this house.”

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