The Cabin (33 page)

have so many wonderful memories. But it’s true.”

“Because of Jared Herrington?”

She smiled. “Jared Rutherford Herrington. Isn’t that

a name?” Her smile faded, but there were no tears in

her eyes. “I’ve experienced such tragedy here. I should

have warned Susanna not to buy this place—to pick an-

other lake.”

“You love this lake,” Jack said. “You can’t hide that,

Iris. You do.”

“I’m a part of its past. Almost a century. I’ve been

gone for sixty years. My Lord, when I was in my twen-

ties, I thought I’d be old and shriveled up in sixty years.

And look at me. I am!” She patted the hand he still had

over her shoulder, hanging on to it. “Yes, Jack, I love

Blackwater Lake with all my heart and soul. I should

have come back long ago and made my peace with it.”

“Gran, that’s not what this is about—”

“Yes, it is. On some level, yes, that’s exactly what it’s

about.”

She was adamant, and Jack planted a kiss on her

white hair, smelling the mountains in it. “I’ll bet you

were hell in a pair of hiking boots, tramping up these

hills, catching trout in your teeth and taking a rich Ivy

Leaguer for a lover.”

“I was very independent.” This time, her smile reached

her eyes, reminding him of her granddaughter. “It was no

surprise to me when Susanna ran off with a Texas Ranger.”

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275

“I wasn’t a Ranger then. I was a Harvard grad. An-

other Ivy Leaguer.”

“Oh, no. You were a Texas Ranger then, too. You just

didn’t have the badge yet.”

When dinner was served, she claimed she wasn’t

hungry and took a glass of milk up to bed with her.

Jack could see the fatigue in her as she mounted the

stairs. Susanna watched her grandmother uneasily,

and if there was any good in these past months, he

thought, it was for these four women he loved—Iris,

Susanna, Maggie and Ellen—having this opportunity

to be together.

But he wanted it to end. He wanted his family back.

And somehow he didn’t think Iris would want him

under her roof for more than a few days at a time.

Maggie and Ellen fought at the dinner table. They

were tired, too. Ellen was mad at herself for “freaking

out” when she found the place torn apart, which made

her mad at Maggie for charging upstairs to check under

the beds—and Maggie obviously thought she was very

courageous for having done so.

Jack told them they both had screwed up. Ellen

should have stayed calm, and Maggie should have got-

ten the hell out of there.

“Gee, Dad,” Maggie said, “like you could have taken

on an armed burglar with your stupid ski pole.”

Before he could articulate who’d been in law en-

forcement for twenty years and who wasn’t even eigh-

teen, Susanna intervened. “We all handle stress in

different ways,” she said. “What’s important is to learn

something about yourself from this experience and work

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on what you want to change.” She eyed her husband

across the table. “Right, Jack?”

He smiled at her. “Does that mean next time you’re

stressed, you won’t beat up on my snowman?”

��

Seventeen

Alice pushed through a butt-deep snow drift and came

out on the other side of a stand of naked trees, the snow

only knee-deep here. She was breathing hard, and it

was dark, with only the quarter-moon and the glow of

the snow to relieve the blackness. She would come upon

the teahouse or run into Destin soon. She had to. Either

that or just trip over a rock, hit her head and die a quick,

clean death.

She wished she’d brought Destin the damn hot cof-

fee she’d promised. She could drink it herself. Hell, she

could warm her hands and feet with it.

She didn’t want to freeze to death. She was from

south Texas. Fire ants, poisonous snakes, tornadoes,

heat stroke all sounded better to her than dropping face-

first in the snow and freezing into a block of ice out here

in the northern wilderness.

She hung on to a thin tree trunk and caught her

breath. A few bright stars had appeared in the night sky.

And Venus. That had to be Venus up there, beaming

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Carla Neggers

down at her. When she got to Australia, she’d have to

learn all new stars, not that she knew northern hemi-

sphere stars that well.

Right now, she liked the idea of the southern hemi-

sphere. Anything south. Well, maybe not the South Pole.

A gust of wind howled through the woods, scaring

her, making her more cold. She wouldn’t mind the

mountain parka now instead of her basic parka, but it

had cost more than she’d paid for her car. A damn coat.

She coughed, then went still, listening for wild ani-

mals. What would she do if a big old moose walked up

to her? What if she woke a bear up from his winter nap?

She’d be pissed herself, waking up to temperatures in

the single digits.

At least it’d be an active death, fighting off a bear.

This business of freezing to death was so passive. Hy-

pothermia was a danger in Texas, on cold, rainy days

when people didn’t dress right, let their core tempera-

ture drop too low. Sheer stupidity, usually. She’d never

seen anyone die of it, but she knew the process—the

shivering, the slurred speech, the muscles getting

weaker and weaker, not being able to think straight,

then lying down, losing consciousness and dying.

If she died of hypothermia out here, who knew when

anyone would find her? Someone would be walking

around looking for wildflowers or a place to pee, and

they’d trip over her dead body, the way Iris Dunning had

come upon her rich lover, the father of the baby she was

carrying.

Except, Alice thought, nobody who loved her would

find her dead body.

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279

More stars came out, and the wind in the trees cre-

ated eerie shadows on the blanket of snow. She had no

flashlight, no food, no water, no sleeping bag. She’d

started into the woods before dark, expecting to fetch

Destin and clear out. She was late getting to the Her-

rington place to begin with. After her tête-à-tête with

Miss Susanna and Iris, she’d packed up her and Destin,

checked out of the inn and tried to take a back way up

to the north end of the lake. And got lost. It was her day

for getting lost.

With her gas tank practically on empty, she finally

came upon the big, boarded-up house. A miracle. She

parked at the end of the snow-covered lane that suppos-

edly led to the teahouse and started hiking.

She was still hiking, at least an hour later, maybe

close to two hours later now, with the temperature

steadily dropping. Destin must have given up and either

found proper shelter or hitchhiked into town. He

couldn’t still be out here waiting for her. She’d called

for him quietly a few times, but didn’t bother now that

it was dark and frigid, and she was so lost and exhausted

she could barely keep going.

She lurched from one tree to the next, trying, at least,

to keep herself moving in a straight line. She didn’t

want to wander around in circles. Eventually she had to

come to the lake or a road or a summer cottage. Even

these thick, dark, remote woods couldn’t go on forever.

Above her, barren treetops clicked together in a light

breeze. She gasped at the painful numbing in her cheeks

and pressed her palms to them, trying to keep off the

wind and the cold. The breeze died down, and she

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Carla Neggers

pressed on. Her chest was toasty warm, her vital organs

at least protected from the frigid air. She remembered

nights in prison when she’d ached for an open window,

a cool breeze.

Suddenly she couldn’t remember what had possessed

her to drive out to Beau McGarrity’s house that day and

offer Susanna’s tape in exchange for fifty thousand dol-

lars. And why the hell go all the way to Boston to im-

plement her scheme to make it look as if Susanna had

the tape all along? It would have been simpler to tell

Beau she’d hid it in the wall or something in her house

in San Antonio. Alice could have waited for Jack to head

off to work, torn up the place and gone on back to Beau.

Except Beau had needed time to come around, and

somehow, Alice knew it required Susanna Galway to be

firmly in the picture. Maybe because Beau had followed

her, maybe because he had unfinished business with

her. Alice was operating more on instincts than infor-

mation and logic, just as she had the night she found Ra-

chel dead—of course, her instincts that night had landed

her in prison.

Rachel had tried to get her to have more faith in her-

self. “If you want to be a Texas Ranger, Alice, go for

it,” she’d say. “Apply for a position in the Department

of Public Safety, get the training you need. You
won’t

be one if you just keep dreaming about it.”

“But what if I fail?” Alice remembered asking.

“What if it doesn’t work out? Then I won’t have that

dream anymore.”

“Then you’ll find a new dream.”

Australia…

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281

She broke into a halfrun, her eyes tearing with the

cold. She was losing strength. Soon she wouldn’t be

able to lift her legs high enough to manage the deep

snow. Then what? She didn’t want to die out here. She

almost wished she were back in prison.

She came to a hemlock with low-hanging branches

and ducked under them, thinking this would be a good

place to rest. What would happen if she sank into the

soft snow, leaned against the rough trunk and just went

to sleep?
You’ll wake up with grandma in heaven…

Or maybe she’d wake up in the fires of hell.

She needed time to make amends for her mistakes. And

Rachel…
I can’t die with her murder unsolved.
But black-

mailing Beau was about money and Australia, not justice,

not avenging Rachel’s death. And this scheme she’d fallen

into with Destin. It had nothing to do with putting Beau

McGarrity into prison for cold-blooded murder.

She burst onto the other side of the hemlock, and the

woods opened up, giving way to a rock ledge and the

open expanse of Blackwater Lake. She almost cried.

Her legs gave way, trembling and weak from pushing

through the snow, and she sank to her knees. She’d be

okay now. The teahouse, Susanna’s cabin, other cabins,

the inn, a marina and campsites were all on the lake.

She’d come to
something.

Alice slowly got back onto her feet and leaned

against a boulder as tall as she was. She looked out at

the lake, the black sky shining with stars now. She could

distinguish the outlines of an island just offshore and

tried to orient herself, remembering the geological sur-

vey map at the inn. She was still on the upper reaches

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Carla Neggers

of Blackwater Lake. The jagged shoreline, the rocks and

hills and trees—the sheer distance involved—obstructed

any view of lights to the south, the more populated end

of the lake.

She pushed back a crawling sense of panic at not see-

ing any lights. She felt very alone in a very big wilderness.

The lake made a deep moaning sound, and her heart

raced, even as she told herself it was just the ice. She

stood motionless, calling upon the techniques she’d

learned in prison to stem what she now recognized as

an oncoming panic attack. She thought of Texas, walk-

ing across open land with her grandma and breathing the

warm spring air, smelling the wildflowers.

The mountains and dark seemed to close in on her,

stealing her breath, but she didn’t gulp for air—she’d

learned not to hyperventilate. Instead, she stayed with

that peaceful image. In her mind, the bluebonnets were

real, and all her dreams were ahead of her, not laying

in shards at her feet.

“Honey, you can do anything if you put your mind

to it.”

Her grandma had believed in her. And all Alice had

wanted, even then as a little girl walking in a field, was

to be a Texas Ranger and do good for people. There

were women Rangers. Fine ones.

Australia. She reminded herself that was her new

dream. It was what she wanted now. She’d tried to do

good for people, and it hadn’t worked out.

She should find Destin, drop him off in Boston and

forget she’d ever gone down this road of trying to get

her money the easy way. Get a job. Save.

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283

“So, please, God,” she whispered, “please don’t let

me die out here.”

She hoped God wasn’t as unforgiving as Jack Gal-

way. She’d known he’d never look the other way when

she messed up the crime scene and came up with her