Page 110 of It Happened on the Lake

T he summer breeze caught in Harper’s hair as she stood on the terrace and looked across the lake.

She was healed, if not emotionally, at least physically.

As she had predicted, it was a long, slow journey.

Even now, standing on the flagstones, she couldn’t look at the spot where Marcia had fallen without her skin crawling.

Maybe that’s the way it would be for the rest of her life.

Staring across the water, she saw Rand, working on his boat, wiping it down with a towel. Her heart swelled a little, but she cautioned herself to tread slowly.

All the men in her life had ended up disappointing her.

Still . . . she wasn’t going to stop living just because of past mistakes. She’d been seeing Rand this past year and was taking it slow, knowing she was falling in love and fighting it.

Trusting a new man, even an old friend, proved difficult.

She turned her attention to the house next door to Rand.

At the Hunts’ cottage, Levi stood at a barbecue grill where Beth was serving drinks.

He’d survived a gunshot wound in the fight with Trick Vargas, and Beth had been at his side as he’d healed.

Harper, too, had visited and tried to mend the ripped fences between them, but it was still a very tentative work in progress.

As she looked at Beth, she noticed a sparkle, sunlight catching on the diamond at her throat.

Beth, it seemed, was happy, Levi settled.

Possibly for the first time in his life.

The odd part about that little party was that on the picnic table nearby Dawn and Max were playing a game of cards.

If Harper still owned a telescope, she could probably check out Dawn’s hand, but she’d given up watching other people’s lives through high-powered lenses and concentrated on her own.

For the most part.

Though it was still a thorny path. Dawn had accepted that Levi was her “next” father as Joel was gone.

That had been a blow, and they both had wept at his funeral, but Dawn had been satisfied that she’d helped put his killer in prison for the rest of his life.

Tristan “Trick” Vargas would never see the light of day as a free man again, and the gun he’d used to threaten Dawn was part of her grandfather’s set, the very weapon Marcia had planted on Evan to make his death look like a suicide.

Later, Trick, fascinated with the “cowboy” gun, had twisted Tom Hunt’s arm into retrieving it from the evidence room.

And Tom had complied.

Did Gerald Watkins know that his partner had lifted the pistol from the evidence room? He claimed not. Harper would probably never know.

As for Craig, Beth’s once-upon-a-time husband, he was living his own quiet hell.

Harper hadn’t pressed charges as she’d threatened, but Beth had divorced him immediately.

Currently he was living in Central Oregon somewhere, working construction when he could get a job while Beth sold the family home and now lived with Levi and Max in the Hunts’ cottage.

Now, it seemed, Levi was content with Beth.

She had sold her family home to a young couple who were expecting their first child.

“A new generation here on the lake,” Beth had told her after lunch one afternoon in June.

She’d also announced that she was listing the Musgrave cabin.

“It’s not your house, of course, and it doesn’t come with its own private island,” she’d pouted as Harper had told her she was definitely staying in Almsville.

“But it’s something and waterfront. But, Harper, seriously, if you ever change your mind about selling, let me know! Kisses!”

Harper wasn’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future.

Dawn had made noise about moving back here permanently after graduation, and Rand lived just across the water.

Harper’s own relationship with Levi was complicated.

As she watched him now, standing over a grill, looking like a suburban dad for the first time in his life, she wished they could be as they once had been, when they’d been childhood friends.

Unfortunately often the tension between them was palpable.

Even though they were trying.

Or at least she was.

They had a child.

And it was difficult.

Maybe someday they’d find the connection they’d lost over the years. Harper hoped so, but it would take time and a lot of forgiveness on Levi’s part.

What were the chances? Too many years, too many doubts, too many lies had grown between them.

“You should live so long,” she said, thinking that it was something Gram might say. God, she missed that woman. She probably always would.

She glanced down at the boathouse or what was left of it.

Months before, Chase’s body had been retrieved and the boathouse sealed off.

There had been a small funeral and a splashy news story and reporters calling and asking questions as she’d healed from her wounds.

Thankfully all the dart pricks had healed, and even the gunshot to her shoulder hadn’t hit bone.

She’d ended up with a scar and a brutal memory.

Of Marcia Reed.

Her stepmother.

Her father’s wife.

Harper hadn’t found it in her heart to forgive him.

She couldn’t. Not yet.

He should have seen Marcia for what she was.

And Harper couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been na?ve as Marcia had claimed or had turned a blind eye to how mendacious she was, how cunning, and how evil.

Harper couldn’t really believe that Bruce would have gone along with his first wife’s and son’s murders, nor would he have condoned or been a part of the intended killing of his daughter and granddaughter.

But what did she know?

Just that she would never trust him again.

Nor forgive him.

“Too bad,” she said now.

Bruce Reed was a widower. Again. And back on the market.

After suffering for several weeks after her fall, Marcia had finally died and now Dawn, who still kept in touch with him, reported that he was dating again.

Oh. Joy.

He’d sure put all the recent horror of their lives behind him. Had he ever realized that his death was a part of Marcia’s plan? That’s why she kept saying, “It isn’t his time.”

Because he could die only after he’d inherited the Dixon fortune.

It had taken months for news of the sensational events to die down.

Rhonda Simms’s series on the lake had expanded with the latest developments and had gained national attention.

She was now reportedly writing a book about her experiences, again using Ned Gunderson, now retired from the Almsville Police Department, as her source.

At least Rhonda was actually writing a book.

In that regard, she was ahead of Harper, who had put off her writing project until she’d healed from her wounds and renovations on the house were complete.

She’d hired a local builder and architect to construct a new gatehouse and renovate the manor house after Dawn returned to school in the fall.

This summer they were living here together and Harper had relented, allowing Dawn to take over the tower room while she moved her office to Gram’s old bedroom on the first floor. She had to admit, it did have a spectacular view of the lake.

And Rand’s A-frame.

And sometimes, as dusk was settling as she sat at her desk, she imagined she smelled that unique blend of cigarette smoke and Chanel No. 5 and heard Gram sigh. See, Harper girl, life isn’t so bad. It’s just exactly what you make it .

As she leaned over the terrace railing, she watched an osprey soaring high over the lake before she let her gaze fall to Rand again.

He must’ve felt her watching him because she saw him look over at the house. He was wiping his hands on his towel and grinned, then waved.

She waved back, her heart beating a little faster as he climbed into his boat and headed across the water.

Rand had admitted to being with Chase on the night of his death. He’d admitted that Chase had talked about disappearing, a secret Rand had kept. He’d also confided to Harper that Chase had asked him to look after her.

And now he is , she thought, twenty-odd years later .

If she let him.

She heard a loud meow and turned to find Jinx at the French doors, inside the house.

She walked in, and the cat greeted her by doing figure eights between her legs.

“Hey, buddy.” She picked him up, glad that his wandering days were over.

Craig had admitted to having found the cat on the property in the days after Cynthia Hunt’s tragedy on the lake.

Already plotting to push Harper into renovating, then selling, the house, he’d taken the opportunity to steal the cat and had kept Jinx in a cage under the deck of his house, near the woodpile.

Craig had sworn he never intended to hurt him, just “borrow” him.

Beth supposedly never knew that Jinx was locked outside, she just wasn’t home often enough to hear him cry.

Really?

It seemed wrong, but Beth assured her the catnapping had been all Craig.

Sick bastard , she thought, petting Jinx’s sleek head.

She heard the motor of Rand’s boat fast approaching.

“You stay here,” she told the cat. “And don’t get into any trouble.” Then she slipped out the back door to the terrace again. Sunlight was shimmering on the surface of the lake, and she watched as Rand tied up at the dock.

Maybe this really was her home, this place Olivia Dixon loved.

“You were right,” she said as if her grandmother could hear her over the sigh of the wind through the stately firs surrounding the house. “Life is what you make it.”

And from here on, she was going to make it right.

She thought she heard her grandmother’s voice in the rustle of the breeze whispering through the fir trees.

You do that, Harper girl, you do just that. And I’ll be watching.