Jason typed in the security code on the new state-of-the-art security system he’d installed. After he’d read the threatening words left for Lotty, he wanted to hire her a personal body guard. She was more realistic when she suggested an alarm system. He’d searched for a company to install one, but there were no such companies in Walden and the ones in Kalispell couldn’t come until next month. He couldn’t wait that long.

He’d bought an elaborate system online, complete with wireless surveillance cameras. Today was the third morning he’d spent installing it, but he figured he’d easily be done by ten, when he was scheduled to meet with a new client. A series of loud beeps pierced the silence and the control box flashed red.

Ty ran to him. Swim goggles sat on his forehead, aluminum foil wrapped around his wrists, and several kitchen utensils were tucked into his pants. “Dad, that’s perfect. I’ll use my blaster to get rid of the bomb before it gets you.”

“Thanks, Ty,” he said, before entering the security code one more time.

“No, keep the sound going.”

“Don’t keep the sound going,” Lotty yelled from the kitchen.

Jason smiled as he double checked the wires to the back of the unit and headed upstairs, where the main screen for the cameras was.

Things with Lotty were slightly less tense than usual. They still didn’t say much to one another, but they also weren’t constantly throwing angry words back and forth. They both seemed to be trying harder since the robbery and the fire and he didn’t want to jinx anything by questioning it too much. When he’d joined her in the Grantham’s backyard the day of the fire, he’d seen a glimpse of the Lotty he married. But then Cade interrupted. His stomach twisted as he thought of it, of Lotty walking away with him.

He wondered for the hundredth time if she regretted choosing him over Cade. When they’d first starting dating, he’d had no doubt she preferred him to everyone else. She’d moved to Montana for the summer. Her plans were to complete her internship and return to Santa Barbara. Then Jason showed up at The Lakeside Chateau with a few friends and her plans slowly began to change. Even with Cade in the picture, Jason had never felt threatened. Not until after she and Jason were married and had two children. Their rocky marriage made him question everything. 

He turned on the monitor and it flickered. Then it perfectly displayed eight rectangles, each one a different area of the house. The master bedroom rectangle caught his eye as Lotty walked several extra steps to avoid close proximity with his mirror. He wondered what it was with her and that mirror. She’d been fine with it when his Dad gave it to him, but lately she acted really strange about it. She walked to the dresser and glanced side to side, checking to make sure she was alone. She had been so jumpy ever since the charcoal message on the wall, but this seemed like more. What was she up to? She opened a drawer and pulled out a colorful stack of papers several inches high, then jammed them into a garbage bag.

Was it actually possible Lotty was hiding something? Maybe she knew more than she was saying. He’d assumed she was innocent before, that he knew the type of woman she was, but did he really? She’d fooled him before. He still remembered the shock of returning home to an empty house a year and a half ago. For days, Lotty wouldn’t answer her phone. The only communication was a couple of texts telling him she and the boys were at her parents’ house and had no immediate plans to return to Montana. His stomach rolled as he replayed those days in his mind. He’d been terrified, afraid something sinister had happened to his family. He couldn’t be sure those texts were actually from Lotty. They were so formal and void of personality. So, he went to Santa Barbara to her parents’ house to make sure she was okay. And when he got there, he felt like his entire marriage had been a fraud. 

He turned his attention back to the monitor and spotted her on the square showing the kitchen. She walked toward the door, with the garbage bag swung over her shoulder.  Jason jumped up and moved quickly down the stairs. If she was hiding something, he was going to figure out what it was. As he entered the kitchen, Lotty jumped.

She held her hand to her heart. “Oh, you scared me,” she said, letting out a deep breath. “Why are you running?” 

He tried to act as casual as possible. “I’m testing out the system and wanted to get down here to the control panel before the alarm went off.” His explanation made no sense, but he was pretty sure she wouldn’t know that. He nodded at the bag hoisted over her shoulder. “What’s that?”

“It’s ah, just you know, a bunch of papers.” He locked his gaze on hers and she looked uncomfortable. Her eyes darted to the floor.

“What kind of papers?”

She groaned. “You’ll think I’m terrible.” She set the bag on the counter.

“It can’t be worse than what I’m imagining,” Jason mumbled.

Lotty stared at him with wide eyes. Her shoulders drooped. She’d heard him. Now he wanted to wrap his arms around her. Stop it, he chastised himself. She was hiding something. Why did he care if her feelings were hurt?

She opened the bag to reveal a jumbled mess of construction paper, popsicle sticks, stickers, pom-poms, and straws. He put his head closer. The papers were covered in little doodles and messy writing. Jason pulled some of it out of the bag. His brows furrowed together as he turned to her for an explanation.

“I can’t keep all of it. There’s too much.”

Jason looked at Ty’s artwork and crafts again. “So, why the secrecy? What’s the big deal?”

She raised an eyebrow. “He thinks I keep every treasure he ever makes me. It would crush him to see me throwing it out.”

Jason shook his head. Guilt filled his body as he thought back to the awful things he thought she was capable of. If she felt this bad for throwing out a four-year-old’s artwork, she probably wasn’t capable of anything too menacing.

“I know. I’m awful,” she said. Jason started to laugh, but bit the inside of his cheek when he saw how serious she was. “Trinity has canvases made of all of her kids’ stuff and the whole playroom is covered in their artwork from over the years.” She set her face in her hand. “Nikki takes pictures of everything and then gets it made into a book. A lady at the gym was talking about how she uploads the images of her children’s drawings and turns them into postage stamps or placemats or something.” Her voice picked up volume as she spoke. “Then she makes sensory bins to help brain development and feeds them an organic snack of homemade crackers and hummus because she doesn’t want her children to be toxic. And me? I forget the paper is artwork and end up using it to wipe frosting, which is non-organic, by the way, off my face before I greet the UPS man. Then I throw everything away because I know I’ll never be organized enough to turn his dinosaur doodles into custom wall paper for his bedroom.” She let out a deep breath. Then she looked at Jason with apprehension like she’d done something truly wrong.

He couldn’t believe the confident woman he’d married was so worked up about throwing away some of Ty’s doodles. And he was slightly hurt that she thought he’d think so little of her for doing so. Yet, a part of him was excited. She had opened up to him about something. It may have been tiny, but for once she didn’t shrug and turn away angrily. Usually when he asked what she was doing or why, she was offended and stormed off.

“Lotty,” he said with a smile. She stared up at him and he forgot what he was going to say. Her eyes seemed brighter than usual and there was something hypnotic about the amazing blue. She looked at him expectantly. Whatever wonderful comforting words he was going to say were gone. “Uh, it just seems that, um, Ty doesn’t care about postage stamps or placemats. He cares about time with you.”

The corners of Lotty’s mouth turned up. It wasn’t quite a smile, but close. Then a tear rolled down her cheek, followed by several more. “Um, I need to get this out of here before Ty sees me,” she said, turning and rushing out of the house.

“And I don’t even know what sensory bins are,” Jason hollered after her. He sighed and fell into a chair. He’d made her cry. Even when he was trying to be helpful, he made her cry. Still, he wasn’t sure the exchange had been a complete failure. For a second, he’d felt closer to her.

He got up and headed to the bedroom to change into a suit. He was supposed to meet Gary Schreken in forty minutes to discuss the possible courses of action Gary could take against his neighbor over infringement of his water rights.

As he headed out the door, his phone buzzed. “This is Jason,” he answered.

“Jason, you need to get down here,” Mateo, the owner of Wild Wyatt’s Grill, boomed through the phone.

What now? Had the crime spread to his office? Dread filled Jason. “I’m on my way. What happened?”

“Your secretary parked in fr—”

“In front of your place,” Jason finished the sentence for Mateo. Relief washed over him when he realized nothing was wrong. It was the same old problem with parking spots. 

“Yes,” Mateo said. “And it’s one fewer spot my customers can park in.”

“Did you ask her to move?”

“That’s what I would like you to do. I don’t know what it is with the women in your life parking in my spots. It used to be your wife. Now your secretary.”

“Maybe you should try getting signs that say, “Wild Wyatt’s Customer Parking.”

Mateo sighed and let out a rant in Spanish. Then he took a breath and said, “The city won’t let me lay claim to any parking spots in town square.”

“Ah, I see.”

“If you’d talk to your secretary, I’d appreciate it. And I’ll bring you a Bighorn Buffalo Burger for lunch.”

“I’ll talk to her. We’ll stay out of the spots in front of your place.”

“Thank you,” he grunted before hanging up. Mateo was a bit rough around the edges, but he and Jason got along well. This time of year seemed to make most of the town a little crazy. Tourists were beginning to trickle in and with them, an elevated level of stress. If keeping the parking spots in front of Wild Wyatt’s open would keep him happy, Jason would do it.

A steady drizzle of rain trickled down from the sky as he drove. Large, gloomy clouds were looming over the tops of the mountains and the lake was gray. However, he could feel a spark of excitement, of light inside him. He felt one step closer to the Lotty he remembered from before.