Page 56 of The Woman By the Lake

I felt bad the Riggs boys weren’t going to get to go fishing.

But I felt kind of excited that afternoon that I could don the cute, pink slicker I’d bought before I came there, the hiking boots I already had, but had used minimally, and I headed out.

I looked where Riggs looked earlier, at the side of the cabin, on the stable trail and around the stable area, but I saw what he probably saw.

A bunch of earth that was smooth, wet through, and I knew that because, in some parts the water on top of it gently washed down toward the lake.

I then took the trail that Roosevelt probably cut, but it was Riggs running it that kept it clear, and for the first time, began to make my way around the lake.

The trail didn’t stay clear the deeper I got into the forest. It was there, but the stone edge ran out about a hundred yards deep, and sometimes I went off it altogether because it disappeared, but I’d eventually find a swatch of it again.

It took a while for me to see them. In fact, I was nearly to the north end of the lake by the time I did (and I noted, to my surprise, the lake was bigger than I expected, curling around the trees and opening wide, which made me pause to reflect, if Riggs owned this whole lake, and a good fifty yards up it, if the signs I spied were anything to go by, he owned a ton of land).

I trudged through the trees to the signs, the back of which I saw were painted a bright, Don’t Miss This! orange.

When I made it to them, nailed to the tree, I saw they weren’t rinky-dink plastic signs bought at a hardware store, but steel ones that were full-on orange at the front, with black words.

And there were three tacked one on top of the other.

Private Property

Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted

No Hunting

The warning wasn’t vague.

As I returned to move along the trail, I didn’t miss the others. They weren’t copious, but they were hard to avoid. If you were traversing the area, you’d definitely run into a set of them, eventually.

I finally made it all around the lake and saw Riggs’s crazy house from a different point of view.

I could see how the living room was built into the earth, as was the arm of the house that spread down the other side, with the lower floor (that being the kitchen level) naturally being shorter because the lay of the land made it that way.

As such, I could further see the kitchen rising above it before that level fed into the slope.

I could also see it looked like there was a circular room that jutted out, and from what I could tell, was a dining room off the kitchen.

Above it was another floor that meandered deep into the trees, the option we didn’t take when Riggs was leading me to privacy the day before.

And topping it all was Riggs’s bedroom, which was a lot bigger than what I experienced, because it undoubtedly had a bathroom and closet I wasn’t invited to peruse.

The winding staircases were visible outside, looking like truncated turrets built into the structure.

I also saw how it was all stabilized with beams built into the ground and buried posts that were hidden with trees, shrubbery and paint purposefully chosen to meld with the earth around it.

It was totally nutty, and totally Riggs. Imposing and inviting. Earthy and otherworldly. Understandable and contradictory.

And it gave me pause for more reflection, making me wonder what hand Lincoln Whitaker had in designing it. And if he had a heavy hand, just what it said (because it was big, I hadn’t taken much in, but I also hadn’t missed the sheer size of his kitchen, living room and bedroom) about Lincoln and what the cabin said about Roosevelt.

Last, what it all said about Sarah.

Sure, a man would want room for his family, but Lincoln’s family didn’t actually live there.

Roosevelt, year-round, lived in only the space he needed.

As wild as that house was, it was interesting, and I liked it.

I also liked my cabin.

---