Privacy was assured because this section of the lake was only accessible from Lake Lodge, and the entrance to the main house was easily missed from the road unless you knew where to turn. Hidden from view and mostly concealed by an overgrowth of azaleas and rhododendrons were large iron gates, and immediately behind those gates was the Gatehouse where her mother now lived. From there a long, graveled driveway wound its way to the house.

Clare’s mother had moved into the Gatehouse after Clare’s father had died, insisting that Clare and Todd move into the bigger property. Almost on impulse, they’d sold their small London apartment and moved back to a place where the pace of life moved slowly. Like others, they came to breathe the air, walk the mountains and sail on the many lakes.

Her friendship with Becca had grown and matured here. Maybe it would have ended here, but now she’d never know because Becca was gone.

The boathouse held no evidence of their final conversation, and she was glad of that.

But now she had written evidence, sent the day before Becca had died.

I wish I’d never told you.

Clare wished that, too.

Her eyes stung. Grief. Frustration. She wished they hadn’t had that last talk, because now it was the only one she could remember. Their decades of friendship had somehow shrunk down to that last stressful hour. She’d been so angry with her friend, her loyalties stretched to snapping point.

She hadn’t known that summer would be their last together. If she had, would she have tried harder to bridge the gulf that had opened up between them? Maybe not. She’d been angry, but now that anger was shaded with guilt, because death often brought guilt along as baggage.

Did loyalty still matter when the person was dead? Did honesty matter when all it would produce was pain?

“Clare!” Her mother’s voice drifted across the garden. “What are you doing out here in the rain? Come indoors.”

Clare raised a hand, but she didn’t turn.

She had a decision to make, and she’d always done her best thinking by the water. She considered herself an ethical and moral person. At school she’d been teased for always doing the “right thing,” which had made it all the more extraordinary that her best friend had been a girl who made a point of always doing the wrong thing.

And now Becca had left her with this.

She was so lost in thought she wasn’t aware of her mother until she felt her hand on her shoulder.

“You don’t have to go, you know.”

Clare stared at the lake. Its surface was dark and stippled by rain. In the summer it was idyllic, but with angry clouds crowding the sky and small waves snapping at the shore, the sense of menace matched her mood.

“She was my best friend.”