Page 51 of The Woman By the Lake

“You’ve got a great kid,” I told him.

“I know. What did you two do?”

“I showed him the cabin.”

He threw back more martini before he said, “He’s been here before.”

“I know. That’s how I know he’s a great kid. He humored me even though we both knew he’d been here before.”

Riggs grinned.

I enjoyed it in the way I could, and tucked the way I couldn’t somewhere I hoped it never escaped, because I knew, the more I got to know this man, the more power it would have to hurt me.

“I also like your mom,” I shared.

“She’s awesome,” he muttered.

“Is your sister like her, or you?”

Another cock of his head, this one curious, when he asked, “What am I like?”

“A really great guy, but one who doesn’t wear crisply ironed, blemish-less white, cotton prairie shirts, but instead, lives in a house that it’s good no one in it is living with a disability, and it’s as weird as it is frightening and fantastic.”

He let out a bark of laughter.

There it was.

His friend had been assaulted by an unknown attacker, and it only took two martinis, some history sharing and me to crack a lame joke to get him to laugh.

Good.

“My sister, Kate, is like Kate,” he answered after he stopped laughing. “She’s the branch manager of a bank in Seattle. She moved about a year and a half ago when her partner got a promotion and had to head that way.”

“Right.”

“We miss her. Them. Her man is a good man, and they’ve been together since high school. She isn’t far, but it also isn’t easy to fit the trip into life.”

“I bet.”

His gaze became searching. “You okay about the bullshit Kimmy landed on you?”

“I heard some stones cracking together, maybe a couple of minutes before you showed.”

His brows drew together ominously. “Where? Out here?”

I pointed in the direction of where the stables used to be.

Then I had to shift my legs unexpectedly because he instantly got up, putting down his glass and pulling out his phone to engage the flashlight.

I got up as he jogged down the steps, and with the light aimed to the ground, he moved in the direction of the derelict trail that used to lead to the stables.

“You come this way at all?” he asked, having stopped with his light still to the ground.

I went from house to pier and back. I hadn’t explored. Something else I intended to do, and soon. I hadn’t even put out the hammock.

“No,” I called back. “Are there footprints?”

“No.”

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