Chapter 22
The house was quiet. Too quiet.
Jewel stood at the kitchen window with her coffee, gazing out at the lake, but even that couldn’t soothe her the way it usually did.
This morning, the water was still, glass-like and dark, reflecting the tree line on the far shore with perfect, unmoving clarity.
And the trees lining the lake, just wow.
She had thought she understood what people meant when they talked about fall in the Adirondacks.
She’d certainly heard about it enough times since she arrived, but nothing had prepared her for this.
The maples had gone completely, spectacularly, almost violently into color.
Deep crimson, blazing orange, and a yellow so saturated it seemed lit from within, all of it stretching along the ridgeline and spilling down to the water’s edge in a blaze that made the lake look like it was on fire from below.
The birches had turned gold. The oaks were a dark, burnished rust. Even the pines looked deeper and more saturated against all that color, their darkness somehow richer for the contrast.
She’d been here through the summer and into early fall, thinking she’d seen everything the mountains had to offer. But she hadn’t. This was the slow, stunning arrival of autumn.
She looked at it and felt nostalgic, sad, and quietly undone by its beauty.
With a sigh, she turned away and looked around the kitchen.
This wasn’t the first time the house had been this quiet.
Cole usually left early, heading out to the lodge, the trails, or whatever the day called for, and she had spent many mornings alone in the kitchen with her coffee.
But little Beck had always been there. His small sounds filtered through the ceiling as he woke up, his feet on the stairs, his voice reaching the kitchen before he arrived, already lost in some thought he’d been having since before he was fully awake. This morning, he was gone.
Earlier, right after Cole had left, she had ridden over to Susan’s with him, Beckett on Cookie Monster and herself on Sundancer. The trail through the trees was so vibrant with color that even Beckett rode in unusual silence for a full five minutes just staring at it.
“Jewel, the trees are on fire.”
“I know.”
“Is that okay?”
“It’s very okay. That’s just what they do this time of year. The leaves are getting ready to let go and fall to the ground, so the trees can be ready for winter and the snow.”
He’d thought about this with a serious face. “It’s pretty. But also a little bit sad.”
“Why sad?”
He’d looked at the trees again. “Then they’ll be gone, and it’ll be winter.”
She hadn’t come up with an adequate answer, so she just agreed, and they’d ridden the rest of the way in the companionable quiet, each with their own thoughts.
By the time they arrived at Susan’s house, Conrad was already loading the last of his bags into the truck.
Susan was on the porch, wrapped in her good cardigan, looking much better than she had a month ago.
Her eyes shifted between her son and grandson, her expression showing she was consciously taking stock of her blessings.
Conrad and Beckett’s goodbye was brief and physical, with Conrad stooping to the boy’s level and softly saying something that made Beck nod seriously before wrapping his arms around his uncle’s neck. Conrad held on for a moment longer than she expected.
She and Conrad had shaken hands, which had felt both insufficient and exactly right.
“You did good work here.” He’d said it simply and directly, the way he said most things.
She hadn’t trusted her voice, so she’d just nodded.
Then he got in the truck and drove down the hill. She and Beck watched until it was gone, then she kissed Beckett goodbye and left him with Susan and Carol, riding back through the blazing trees to the quiet house.
And now here she was, staring out the window in a house that was too still, and thinking thoughts she didn’t want to think about.
It had been two weeks since she had returned from Albany.
Two weeks since she sat across a small table from Trevor Montgomery in a rodeo trailer and finally got the answers to all the questions she had been working on for months.
That same night, sitting at his kitchen table after Beck was in bed, she told Cole everything, laying it all out without softening any of the details.
Vivian was alive. She was in Nevada with another man.
And it had been her standing in the woods outside this house, watching him grieve, watching her son, and choosing to stay hidden anyway.
Through her entire narrative, she’d watched his face.
It was his face that stayed in her mind.
His expression in the kitchen that night, the way it shifted through various emotions she couldn’t even identify, until it finally settled on something that looked less like relief and more like the calm that follows a long, violent storm.
He hadn’t said much, and she hadn’t pressed him.
The legal pieces of the puzzle had taken most of a week to resolve.
His lawyer reviewed Trevor’s photographs, his written account, and the dates and locations until he had a clear, well-documented case.
His conclusion was final. Cole’s name would be cleared, and the missing person’s file would be closed.
Of course, there would still be discussions with the police and, eventually, with Vivian’s parents.
Cole planned to file for sole custody of Beckett, and she expected those conversations would bring their own challenges, but the heavy cloud over Cole was gone.
Vivian was alive. The rest was mostly paperwork.
As she was reaching for her second cup of coffee, her phone rang, and Sophie’s name flashed across the screen. She answered on the second ring. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself. You sound better.” Her friend’s voice was warm.
“I am better.”
“Good.” A pause followed, and she heard Sophie settle into a chair and get comfortable. “I stopped by your condo yesterday to check on things. Ran into Paul in the hallway.”
She walked to the island and sat as well. Apparently, this would be a longer chat. “Did he tell you he’d called me?”
“He did. He asked if you’d been able to straighten everything out with Robert.” Sophie’s voice indicated she was waiting to hear the full story. “I told him that I thought so, but you’d know better than me. So, tell me.”
She wrapped both hands around her mug. “When we finalized the divorce, Robert’s name never came off the deed, even though the settlement gave it to me.
I knew that, but he never mentioned it, so I just assumed he’d forgotten.
I let it go because it never seemed worth the fight, and I planned to take care of it before the end of the year.
Apparently, he suddenly remembered it and found himself a lawyer with some creative ideas about what that entitled him to.
He was trying to sell it out from under me and keep the money.
Thank goodness Paul got wind of it through the building management and called me the day after I got back from Albany to let me know. ”
“Wow. That snake.”
“Yeah, he is. That’s kind of how Ashley fits into things, too.
Once he remembered, he decided he needed me to stay up here long enough to finish all the paperwork.
Apparently, it was her job to keep me off balance and far enough away so I wouldn’t notice what he was doing back home.
” She looked out at the lake, the disgust still raw in her stomach.
“I called my lawyer the very same day Paul called me. He’s off the deed, and it’s done. Robert got nothing.”
“Thank goodness. Even though I know him, it’s still hard to believe just how scheming he really is.
I hate that I ever invited that snake to sit at my table.
You know, that’s what he must’ve been talking about when those people overheard him talking to Ashley in Syracuse.
” Sophie sounded just as disgusted as she felt.
“That she’ll break? Yeah, I think you’re right. He wasn’t talking about me leaving Cole. He was talking about getting me to sign whatever he needed me to. But you know, even though I think he genuinely believed it, I would never break in the way he meant.”
Sophie let out a snort. “He’s always underestimated you. Right from the very beginning.”
“Yeah. He did.” She held no bitterness. It was just true.
For a moment, Sophie was quiet. “Speaking of Ashley, what’s happening there? She’s clearly been involved in all of this for quite a while. Are you still talking to her?”
She traced the rim of her mug, feeling its smooth edge.
“It’s complicated. The last time I talked to her, she apologized, and I believe it was sincere.
She thanked me for finding Vivian and uncovering the truth, even if it wasn’t what she expected.
She said she was going to move on with her life and wanted to get away from here for a while.
I think she plans to try to work things out properly with Robert. ”
Sophie made a sound that said quite a lot without actually being a word.
She smiled into her mug. “Yeah, I know.”
“And what about Robert? Do you think his feelings for her are genuine? Will he just leave you alone now?”
She thought about Robert sitting in a corner booth in Syracuse, laughing about how he’d constantly seem to appear out of nowhere, always leaving her guessing and unsure.
About all the elaborate machinery he’d set in motion to unnerve her and how perfectly it had served his own purposes and nothing else.
“I really hope so. He gained nothing from all this despite his scheming. The divorce is final, his condo scheme failed, and the investigation didn’t break me the way he hoped.
Even Robert knows when to cut his losses and move on when something isn’t profitable anymore.
I’ve stopped being profitable, and for now, Ashley’s keeping him busy. ”
Sophie let out a sigh. “So it’s finally over then. All of it.”