-Chapter 22-

Ice Lake, Washington

Some years after Fortin stood in the cemetery overlooking the lonely Cypress Hills, Ren Carter rose from her swivel rocker to check on the apple pies baking in her oven.

She loved watching the Ellen show but judging from the aroma, they should be ready soon. She bent down and looked through the glass, studying the crust edges and the filling bubbling under the slits she’d cut to let the steam escape.

A little more time and they’ll be ready, she estimated, before starting her kettle.

Tipper, her golden retriever, nuzzled her leg.

“I know, calm down, you. I know.”

Ren gave him a doggie treat from the cupboard and patted his head. Tipper was smart, loyal, gentle, and good company over the years she thought, rubbing his head and looking through her window at the mountains.

Ren and Tipper lived in a small log house perched on a hill crowned by tall ponderosa pines on the shore of Ice Lake, about ten miles north of Jade Falls along Little Timber Road. She never tired of the North Cascades. They were always there, like old friends.

“We may not be rich, but we’ve got a million-dollar view,” Chet, her husband, used to say.

Ren smiled at the memory.

Ten years since the good Lord took him from her and not a day went by that she didn’t miss him. She remembered the afternoon they’d met. She was waitressing at the Dawna-Ray’s Road House at Three Rock River. An old Patsy Cline song, “I Fall to Pieces,” was playing on the radio when this trucker – “a big hunk of handsome,” she told her friends – started talking to her.

Chet Carter.

Oh boy, he was a real charmer – “Does heaven know it’s missing an angel?” But Chet was always a gentleman. Not all hands, or vulgar, like the others who ate at the place. Chet talked to her, actually talked; asked about her family, her hopes, her dreams, even her favorite color.

Robin-egg blue, she told him.

She’d told him that her real name was Reneta, which she hated so everyone called her Ren. He’d said he’d grown tired of long hauls, from Miami to Anchorage, Bangor to San Diego, Seattle to Boston, and wanted to settle down in a pretty part of the country.

“Like this place right here,” he winked over the brim of his coffee cup.

Every time he stopped at Three Rock he looked for Ren.

Even on that day she wasn’t working.

Chet came in and when he could find Ren he’d insisted the other waitress get her to come into the diner – without telling her why.

“It’s mighty important,” Chet said.

So Ren hauled herself in, mystified at what the crisis could be, when they pointed to Chet sitting alone at his usual booth in the corner.