Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
The trail didn’t stay clear the deeper I got into the forest. It was there, but the stone edge ran out about a hundred yards deep, and sometimes I went off it altogether because it disappeared, but I’d eventually find a swatch of it again.
It took a while for me to see them. In fact, I was nearly to the north end of the lake by the time I did (and I noted, to my surprise, the lake was bigger than I expected, curling around the trees and opening wide, which made me pause to reflect, if Riggs owned this whole lake, and a good fifty yards up it, if the signs I spied were anything to go by, he owned a ton of land).
I trudged through the trees to the signs, the back of which I saw were painted a bright, Don’t Miss This! orange.
When I made it to them, nailed to the tree, I saw they weren’t rinky-dink plastic signs bought at a hardware store, but steel ones that were full-on orange at the front, with black words.
And there were three tacked one on top of the other.
Private Property
Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted
No Hunting
The warning wasn’t vague.
As I returned to move along the trail, I didn’t miss the others. They weren’t copious, but they were hard to avoid. If you were traversing the area, you’d definitely run into a set of them, eventually.
I finally made it all around the lake and saw Riggs’s crazy house from a different point of view.
I could see how the living room was built into the earth, as was the arm of the house that spread down the other side, with the lower floor (that being the kitchen level) naturally being shorter because the lay of the land made it that way.
As such, I could further see the kitchen rising above it before that level fed into the slope.
I could also see it looked like there was a circular room that jutted out, and from what I could tell, was a dining room off the kitchen.
Above it was another floor that meandered deep into the trees, the option we didn’t take when Riggs was leading me to privacy the day before.
And topping it all was Riggs’s bedroom, which was a lot bigger than what I experienced, because it undoubtedly had a bathroom and closet I wasn’t invited to peruse.
The winding staircases were visible outside, looking like truncated turrets built into the structure.
I also saw how it was all stabilized with beams built into the ground and buried posts that were hidden with trees, shrubbery and paint purposefully chosen to meld with the earth around it.
It was totally nutty, and totally Riggs. Imposing and inviting. Earthy and otherworldly. Understandable and contradictory.
And it gave me pause for more reflection, making me wonder what hand Lincoln Whitaker had in designing it. And if he had a heavy hand, just what it said (because it was big, I hadn’t taken much in, but I also hadn’t missed the sheer size of his kitchen, living room and bedroom) about Lincoln and what the cabin said about Roosevelt.
Last, what it all said about Sarah.
Sure, a man would want room for his family, but Lincoln’s family didn’t actually live there.
Roosevelt, year-round, lived in only the space he needed.
As wild as that house was, it was interesting, and I liked it.
I also liked my cabin.
Did Sarah somehow love both men?
Or did she yearn for a simple, uncomplicated man, and the life he led, in a one-room cabin twenty minutes from anywhere?
I would never know.
And something else I was learning about being an outdoorsy girl, when it was cold, you didn’t stop moving.
It was faster to walk through the Riggs space to get to my place.
But I figured they were home, and I didn’t want to disturb them, so I turned back and retraced my steps.
Halfway home, my phone vibrated in my back pocket.
I pulled it out of my jeans and saw a text from Riggs.
Brats. 5:00.
See you then, I returned, and I did it smiling, because I had plans that night, and that made me happy. Because those plans were with Riggs and Ledger, and that made me happier. And because a great idea struck me, and I was excited about it.
Then I shoved my phone back in my pocket, and with determined strides, trekked through the drizzle the rest of the way home.
TWELVE
Beer Theme
Riggs
Riggs was learning that vodka princesses could be shy, were sweet, and definitely funny.
And annoyingly late.
Sure, Nadia had texted to share how sorry she was that she couldn’t get there until 5:30.
But she wasn’t there at 5:30.
He heard her pull up in her car at 5:45.
And by that time, he and his boy were hungry.
So he wasn’t in a great mood when the doorbell rang, and he knew by the look on Ledger’s face, his son wasn’t either.