Page 268 of It Happened on the Lake

“Not today,” she told the pesky insect as it landed on the glass-topped table. “I won’t be needing you today, and, if I’m lucky, never again.” She smashed her glass down on the black and white creature before taking a long, calming drag.

Today, she hoped, she’d gotten rid of that scumbag she’d been married to for far too many years. Today, it seemed God, with the help of a hornet or two, had done her dirty work for her and that miserable son of a bitch she’d been married to—yoked to—for ages was finally meeting his maker.

“Good.”

She figured it was really God’s hand that had guided the hornets to George’s bare face and neck, God’s will that they had caused him to panic, had even stung him with their deadly venom. Because he was so allergic to them. Anaphylaxis. What a long exotic term for severe, even fatal, allergic shock. And he already had a weak heart, which, of course, was God’s doing as well.

It wasn’t murder.

It was diabolical. Well, maybe.

But murder?

Not really.

That would be a sin.

She sketched the sign of the cross over her chest and sent up a small prayer of thanks for what she believed to be the end of her torment, the end of her husband.

She picked up her glass, scraping the remains of the lifeless hornet off the bottom and finished off her drink.

Then she decided to pour herself another.

Just one, mind you.

To celebrate.

1989

Epilogue

The 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.