15 Summers Later

Chapter 4

One harrowing night, we find ourselves scrambling up a rocky scree, loose stones cascading beneath our feet. The jagged terrain threatens to betray us, and I feel my sister’s hand slip from mine as we stumble and slide down the unforgiving slope. Bruised and battered, we rise again, our determination

unbroken.

—Ghost Lake by Ava Howell Brooks

After greeting her dogs, Mabel and Mo, who were both eager to see her at the end of a long day, Madi settled the kitten into a small crate in her bedroom, still smiling about her encounter with Luke.

She had no idea if he would actually come that night to the Burning Tree. She hoped so. He really did need to let go.

The man was fiercely dedicated to his patients, his family and his community. She wasn’t sure he had even dated anybody since his wife, Johanna, died four years earlier. If so, he had kept it quiet from everyone, even his family. Madi was quite certain his sister would have told her, if Nicki had known.

What would she have done without him in her life? It was a question she often thought about.

For one thing, she never would have been able to open the rescue. Luke and his semiretired partner, Ray Gonzales, both insisted on providing care free of charge to the animals who wound up at the sanctuary. Whenever she encountered something unusual or out of her comfort zone, Luke was always willing to drop everything and come to the rescue.

Luke sat on the board of the Emerald Creek Animal Rescue Foundation and had also been instrumental in convincing Eugene Pruitt, a huge animal lover and conservationist, to donate his property for the animal rescue.

She owed Dr. Gentry a gigantic debt.

Her smile faded as memories pushed in. Her debt to Luke and the rest of his family was mammoth, so enormous she knew she would never be able to repay it.

She was continually amazed that his entire family—Luke, Nicki, their brother, Owen, their mother, Tilly, even Sierra—was so willing to accept and embrace her. By all rights, the Gentrys should hate her. Because of her, their family had suffered a loss so profound, they were still bereft, fifteen years later.

Why didn’t they hate her?

She had wondered that often over the past fifteen years. No one could blame them, especially after reading Ava’s stupid book, which painted the whole story in bitter, painful detail.

The reminder of Ghost Lake soured her mood all over again.

She had been foolish to think everything would blow over. When Ava first told her about the book, originally written as her master’s thesis, Madi had stupidly assumed it would be one of those dusty academic tomes nobody ever bothered to read.

Yet one more thing she had been wrong about.

Instead, the world had embraced the story about two lost girls trying to survive amid people, groups and circumstances beyond their control.

Madi glanced at her watch. She still had two hours before she needed to be ready to go out that night with Nicole. That would give her plenty of time to stop by and drop off the dog food for her grandmother and maybe squeeze in a quick visit.

After making sure the kitten was now sleeping in her crate, she grabbed her truck keys from the wooden bowl on the counter.

While she typically used her own small SUV as it had better gas mileage, she loved every chance to climb behind the wheel of her grandfather’s old pickup truck. Driving it provided plenty of exercise, working the clutch and the gearshift, plus it was a moving advertisement for the sanctuary, keeping it fresh on the minds of townspeople and tourists alike. Only a few weeks ago, she had received a lovely Venmo donation given by a tourist couple from Virginia who had seen her out and about in the truck and subsequently researched the mission of the organization.

The evening was mild, with a light breeze blowing down out of the Sawtooths. The old truck did not have air-conditioning, so she drove with the windows down and the wind blowing through her hair. By the time she reached her grandmother’s house on Elkridge Drive, she felt almost sanguine about the world.

Her grandmother had a visitor. A small sporty SUV she didn’t recognize, with Oregon plates, was parked in the driveway behind Leona’s old four-door sedan. Madi parked in front of the house so she didn’t block the other car from leaving if the visitor needed to go.

She hefted the bag of dog food in both hands, ignoring the pain in her weak leg at the weight, then carried it up the long sidewalk to the house.

Madi propped the bag next to the door and walked in without knocking. Leona would have been offended, especially as this had been Madi’s de facto home since that summer fifteen years ago.

After college in Boise, she had returned to live with her grandmother for a few years, until she and Nicki rented a basement apartment together from a friend of Tilly’s about three years ago. They’d both been happy to move out of the basement to Gene Pruitt’s old farmhouse, despite all the work they still needed to do at the place.

To her surprise, Leona was not in the living room chatting with a friend, as Madi expected, or in the kitchen, sitting over a cup of coffee and a piece of huckleberry pie, though she did find Oscar, Leona’s German shepherd mix. She petted the dog, her concern growing.

Had she missed her grandmother out in the lush garden somewhere? She didn’t think so. And if she were in the garden, she would have had Oscar with her, since the dog loved being out in the yard.

Leona wasn’t in the living room, either, Madi found. As she stood trying to figure out the mystery, she suddenly heard muted voices from upstairs. It sounded as if they were coming from the bedroom Ava had used for the two years they had lived here together, before her sister left for college in Oregon.

With a vague sense of foreboding that seemed to spring up out of nowhere, Madi walked up the stairs, trying to identify the other female voice speaking with her grandmother.

As she reached the top of the staircase, her unease ratcheted up as the voice became clearer.

“I really am sorry about the mess,” Leona was saying. “Once we clear out these boxes, you’ll be able to find the bed.”

“I told you, we don’t have to move anything,” a second voice, now familiar, said. “Especially not tonight. I’m fine working around them. I only need a bed and a desk and maybe a few drawers for my things.”

A hot wave of fury mingled with disbelief washed over Madi.

No.

It couldn’t be.

Not here.

She should have known when she saw the Oregon plates.

Catching her breath, she moved to the doorway of Ava’s old room, where she found her beloved grandmother, usually a source of unending support and love, consorting with the enemy.

Leona was poking through boxes while Ava sat on the bed, blonde and lovely and traitorous.

They both must have sensed her presence. They looked up simultaneously, and if she hadn’t been so stunned, Madi might have been amused at their reaction.

Leona looked apprehensive, her eyes widening and her gaze flitting between the two sisters, as if she expected them to start pulling hair any minute.

For one brief instant, Madi almost thought Ava looked terrified before she blinked away any emotion, returning to the cool, composed stranger she had become over the years, at least to her.

“What is she doing here?” she demanded of her grandmother, her voice harsh. She didn’t trust herself to say a word to Ava yet.

“Good news.” Leona’s voice took on a chipper edge, though her expression remained wary. “Your sister has come back to Emerald Creek for an extended stay. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Wonderful?Madi could think of a dozen words that fit the situation far better than that particular one.

“Why?”

Her voice sounded gruff, ragged, as if she had scooped up a handful of pebbles from the garden walkway and swallowed them all on her way inside.

Leona appeared at a loss for a long time, as if words had escaped her.

Finally, Ava spoke up. “Cullen is working on an excavation in the Sawtooth Mountains about an hour from here. Rather than stay by myself at our apartment in Portland over my summer break, I...thought it would be nice to spend some time with Grandma. Plus this way, I’ll be closer to him.”

She was lying. While in many ways, her sister was a complete stranger these days, Madi still knew her well enough to sense when she was skirting around the whole truth.

Ava’s tells hadn’t changed. When she lied, she shifted her gaze away and blinked about twice as often as usual.

After everything the two of them had survived together, Madi once thought they would always have an unbreakable bond, forged through fear and loss.

She could not have been more wrong.

“You don’t b-belong here anym-more.”

Madi screwed her eyes closed, hating that whenever she was upset, the connection between her brain and her words seemed slippery and undependable.

Communication skills had never been her strong suit. Surviving a bullet to the brain certainly hadn’t helped matters.

Ava ignored her stammer, giving her a cool look in return. “I don’t believe that is your decision to make. This is our grandmother’s house and she welcomed me into her home.”

“Grandma, seriously?” Madi exclaimed, filled with frustration and helplessness, feelings that were only too familiar. “How c-can you even let her in the house after everything she has d-done!?”

“Madison Howell. That’s enough. This is your sister. She will always be your sister, just as she will always be my daughter’s oldest child and welcome in my home.”

Leona didn’t take that firm tone with Madi very often. It made her feel like a child being scolded, not a fully capable adult with eminently reasonable objections.

“I know she’s your granddaughter. But she certainly was n-not thinking about you, Mom or me when she decided to spill our family’s story to the entire world.”

Once more, she thought she saw a flicker of raw emotion in her sister’s green eyes, one of the few physical traits they shared. It disappeared so quickly, she couldn’t be sure.

“Don’t tell me what I was or was not thinking about when I wrote Ghost Lake,” Ava said quietly, her voice expressionless.

Who was this cool, composed stranger in her sister’s body? She knew Ava could be passionate, fierce, when the situation demanded it. Madi was grimly aware she wouldn’t be alive right now if not for her sister’s determination and pluck.

She missed that sister.

“I hear your book is a runaway New York Times bestseller. Congratulations.”

She did not bother to mask the bitterness in her tone.

“Thank you,” Ava said. “I’m thrilled.”

She sounded far from it, though Madi wasn’t quite sure why.

“I’m sure you are. You’re our town celebrity now, aren’t you? Have you seen the d-display at the bookstore? It’s quite impressive. Too bad I’m the one who has to live here and deal with the fallout from your runaway b-bestseller.”

Ava said nothing, though her jaw tightened.

“I can’t walk through the grocery store without people wanting to s-stop and talk to me about the book. Did you know that? And every single volunteer at the animal rescue seems to be reading it. How thrilling it all must be for you.”

“Stop.” Leona’s voice held a warning that Madi couldn’t ignore. “I know you are upset with your sister right now. I understand. But she is still your sister and I have invited her to stay with me as long as she would like. When you’re here, within the walls of my house, I expect you to be civil to each other.”

She glowered. “I can’t believe you’re choosing her s-side!”

“I’m not choosing anyone’s side.” Leona’s voice was soft but firm. “I love you both and I hate seeing this book come between you.”

“I’ll remind you that I am n-not the one who chose fame and fortune over family loyalty.”

“Would you like to stay for dinner, Madison?” Leona asked, a slightly desperate edge to her voice. “I’m making that chicken pasta bake you like so much.”

Her stomach growled suddenly, reminding her she hadn’t eaten nearly enough that day.

She did love her grandmother’s cooking, but the thought of eating in the same kitchen as her sister took away any hunger pangs. She found a petty satisfaction in seeing her sister’s features turn slightly green at the mention of food.

Maybe Ava’s guilty conscience was making her queasy. It was exactly what she deserved.

“I don’t think so. I’m suddenly not very hungry,” she said, her tone flat. “Anyway, I need to go. Nicki and I have plans.”

“I meant to remind you that Sunday is our monthly get-together with the Gentrys. Six o’clock. Don’t forget.”

Leona and Tilly Gentry Walker, Luke’s mother, had been friends for years, long before the events of that August fifteen years ago linked their families together forever.

Usually Madi looked forward to their monthly dinner, when the people she loved most were all gathered in one place.

Would Ava ruin even that?

She wouldn’t let her, Madi vowed. Her sister had taken enough from her by publishing the memoir. Madi wasn’t going to let her take that, too.