Her boys were too much like their father. They all loved the outdoors. They loved working with their hands. Caleb and Sam had started Velasquez Brothers Construction after they graduated from trade school, and they already had a great reputation in Bridger. Jake had wandered from one thing to another for a while but seemed to have found his niche doing handyman work and planning outdoor adventures for the hotel.
Monica’s children were thriving. Her own business was taking off.
And her daughter had circled back around to her love life.
“You know,” she said, “you should get one of those online profiles. Just to see.”
“My daughter, the future psychologist, is recommending online dating to me?”
“Why not? It’s a perfect way for busy career women to meet men. If nothing else, you can get an idea of what men are out there and what you might be interested in. Maybe you just want someone to go out to dinner with every now and then. Or go dancing. Don’t you miss dancing?”
She did miss dancing. She and Gilbert had regularly driven down to Bridger City to dance at the single salsa bar or go to a salsa night at a local club. They had friends they only saw dancing. One of the women they knew had called after Gil passed and encouraged Sylvia to still join them and maybe find a new partner, but Monica just hadn’t felt the urge to dance with anyone at that point.
But now…? She could admit she missed it.
“Maybe I should just go to a salsa night or two,” Monica said. “I could dance with some of our friends—”
“I mean, you should definitely do that if you want, but dancing with some of Dad’s old friends might just feel kind of weird, you know? I don’t know. Don’t listen to me. Do what you want.” The words rushed out. “But I’m glad you’re thinking about doing something, and I still think an online profile is a cool idea. But have Val and Robin help you fill it out, because you’ll be too modest about your accomplishments.”
Monica snorted. “My accomplishments? My business isn’t even two years old. I think I’ll hold off on bragging.”
“Uh, you were also married for twenty-five years and raised four nondysfunctional kids who all have jobs and all speak to each other. You’re practically a unicorn, Mami.”
Monica smiled and sipped her lukewarm coffee. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Sylvia made long kissing noises on the phone. “I have a three-day weekend soon, and I’m coming for a visit.”
“Please.”
“And Jake and I will make Caleb bring his girl to dinner. Six weeks is past time to introduce her to the Velasquez crazy.”
Monica laughed. “Don’t scare her off.”
“Pfft. If she can’t handle us, she’s not the right girl for Tiny.”
“Yes, make sure you call him that in front of her. She’ll be nice and confused.”
Tiny had been a joke since Caleb was seven years old and had shot past his brothers and sister in height. He’d eventually slowed down and topped out at just under six feet, but he had Gilbert’s chest and muscular frame, so the nickname was still hilarious.
“Hey, Mom, I’m thinking about using Glimmer Lake as part of my research project.”
Monica frowned. “Glimmer Lake? I thought your new project was about generational trauma or something like that.”
“It is, but I’m thinking about giving it an environmental focus. How does losing an environment or experiencing gentrification and removal affect a community and the individuals in it? Something along those lines.”
Monica looked at her nearest neighbor, whom she could barely see through the thick sugar pine and cedar trees that surrounded the house. “I don’t know how much gentrification Glimmer Lake has experienced, Syl.”
“I’m not really talking about Glimmer Lake. I’m talking about Grimmer.”
Grimmer was the old ranching town that had been flooded to make way for the dam and modern development at the beginning of the twentieth century. The new town of Glimmer Lake had grown on the edge of the lake that had formed.
According to Robin, more than one ghost in town was from Grimmer, still haunting the lake that had taken their home.
Even the thought of the town at the bottom of the lake gave Monica chills. “You want to research Grimmer?”
“Yeah, like… why Grimmer? I know it was flooded because of the dam, but why did they pick Grimmer? Was it because of the river? Or was it something else? How did they get permission? And what happened to all the families who lost their homes?”
“You know, I think Robin’s done some research on that” —when she was solving an eighty-year-old murder— “and I know the library in town has a lot about town history. Not sure about the families though.”
“I just thought it would be an interesting historical example since most of my research is more contemporary.”
Did this have anything to do with her dreams of Glimmer Lake burning?
The loss of Grimmer. Generational trauma?
Why Grimmer?
“Yeah, it’s an interesting avenue. What weekend are you coming to visit?”
“Labor Day. I know it’s the end of the summer season and you’re probably busy, but—”
“Never too busy for you or your brothers, baby.” Monica sat up straight. “Why don’t I stop by the library today and talk to Gail? She’s probably closed Labor Day weekend, but if she knows it’s for a research project, she might make an exception.”
“Give her my email! I’d love to talk with her.”
“Sure thing.”
Monica sat across from a library table while she chatted with Gail, the town’s librarian and the closest thing they had to a historian.
“Why Grimmer?” Gail smiled. “Such a good question. I love that Sylvia’s doing this project. And I’m very relieved she has a bigger library to access now.”
Monica laughed. “I think she may have met her match at the university library.” Sylvia was a notorious bookworm and had read her way through pretty much every novel and biography in the Glimmer Lake library when she was a child.
Gail was sorting through a stack of children’s picture books, erasing marks and taping pages as they talked. It was something Monica remembered doing when she’d volunteered at the library when the kids were young.
“Why Grimmer? It’s a complicated question, and it wasn’t an easy decision. Believe it or not, there was something of a competition to be the valley that got the lake.”
“You mean some towns wanted to be flooded?”
“Oh yeah.” Gail finished one book and opened another. “Because the power company that built the dam was offering money to all the property owners, quite a few towns wanted to be the one. I’m sure not everyone in the towns was on board, but we’re talking about small communities that were mostly run by the richest man in town, whoever that might have been.”
“In Grimmer?”
“The Russells obviously. Very wealthy. But the Grimmers had money too, and they definitely had the most property. But Grimmer was split on whether to submit.”
“Do you know what the deciding factor was?”
“It was pretty well covered in the Sacramento papers. The dam was big news.” Gail frowned. “I think everything from that era has been digitized, so you can look on the computer. But the main reason it ended up being Grimmer was the fire.”
Monica felt a chill go down her back. “There was a fire?”
“It happened years before they started building. This was all in the early thirties.” Gail set a picture book down and opened the laptop on the table next to her. “Let me see if I can find the article.”
“A forest fire?”
“Oh yeah. Big one. Nearly destroyed the entire town.” Gail frowned at the screen. “No way of knowing how it started.”
“It wasn’t natural?” The dry air of the late summer and fall in the Sierras combined with electrical storms meant some fires were inevitable. Lightning strikes happened, and fires were part of the ecological cycle.
Flames burned though underbrush, clearing the way for new trees to sprout. Meadows were opened. The natural cycles were older than any manmade structures and had zero respect for humans making homes in the middle of the forest.
“Here it is.” Gail flipped her computer around. “It started in a house, but we have no way of knowing what happened really. A cooking fire is the most likely explanation.”
Monica skimmed the article about the Sanger family and their home that burned, causing the tragic 1932 fire that destroyed most of Grimmer.
“Families along the river were able to save their homes, and they were the most prosperous anyway, like the Russells, the Grimmers, and the Roberts clan. But many of the smaller ranchers lost their houses and barns. There was no insurance back then, so most of them just left. By the time the subject of the dam came up, at least a third of the town had already been abandoned.”
“Interesting. So if the power company that built the dam had to compensate the residents of whatever town they flooded, and Grimmer was already two-thirds of its original population…”
“Exactly. The Russells made the argument that the town would cost more to rebuild than it was worth, that they should take the deal from the power company and start over.”
“And the power company got a good deal because the town was already partly abandoned.”
“Gordon Russell had a point. The town really had been devastated. The fire that killed the Sangers—”
“They died?” Monica’s head shot up. “The family whose house burned down?”
“Oh yes. A father and two daughters. They burned in the house, according to reports. Those were the only deaths though. They were fortunate; a storm rolled in the day after the fire started. The rest of the town was able to shelter by the river.”
“Huh.” Monica turned the computer back to Gail. “Thanks, Gail. Let me give you Sylvia’s email. I think she’d really love to talk to you.”
“I’d love to catch up with her!”
While Monica jotted down her daughter’s information for the librarian, her mind was whirling. Grimmer hadn’t been random. A fire had destroyed the town and sealed its fate.
Now another fire threatened Glimmer Lake, and something in Monica’s gut told her that somehow there was a connection. She needed more information. She needed to know more about what had happened to Grimmer.
She needed to talk to Robin.
Chapter 6
“So you think the old fire is related to your vision?” Robin looked up from her turkey-and-avocado sandwich. It was Tuesday, and Monica, Robin, and Mark were eating lunch at Misfit Mountain Coffee, and Val was joining them for five-minute bursts while she juggled the lunch rush.
“I think it’s a weird coincidence that I’m dreaming about a fire when the old town at the bottom of the lake was destroyed by one too.”
Mark looked skeptical. “But forest fires happen. I mean, it’s kind of predictable even. Forest gets too dense, fire happens, forest thins out. The town is kind of incidental.” Robin’s husband was a computer programmer, knew all about their psychic “gifts,” and believed them. He was a good sounding board when things got weird.
“Not here.” Monica was sure of it. “Not now. What I’m dreaming about isn’t an ordinary fire.”
Robin asked, “Do you think it’s arson?”
“Oh yeah. There’s something behind it. I’m positive on that. It’s not random or natural.”
“How are you so sure?” Mark asked.
“Because in my last dream there was a… presence. I’m not sure if it was male or female. I’m not sure what it was, but there was something there and it felt terrified. Excited too, but kind of with this desperate, panicky edge.”
“Sounds like it could definitely be an arsonist,” Mark said. “What do we know about arsonists? Is there like a… profile or something on them?”
Val sat down at the table with half a sandwich in her hand. “Okay, I’m taking a real break. What are we talking about?”
“The fire in Monica’s dream,” Robin said. “She’s pretty positive it’s arson.”
“Okay, so we have a future arsonist in Glimmer Lake.” Val took a bite. “Not great. Any clues on identity?”
Mark waved at someone behind Monica’s back. She turned to see Sully enter the coffee shop. He was walking toward them, carrying a travel mug.
Sully dragged a chair over and wedged it next to Val. “Hey.”
He wasn’t a man of many words.
Val glanced at him. “Hi. I’m not sharing my sandwich, but I’ll tell Jojo to make you one if you’re hungry.”
“Nice.” He reached out and snagged one of the chips on her plate. “I’ll go up to the counter and order.”
She slapped a hand over her chips. “Careful.”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “She doesn’t share her food.”
“Not in the middle of the day I don’t.”
Sully turned to the rest of the table. “Val mentioned something about a fire?” Sully knew about their psychic gifts too, and he wasn’t a skeptic. His face was already grim. “I’m not gonna lie, this is looking like a bad fire season already. We had a lot of snow, so there’s a lot of brush and it’s all dry now.”
“It’s not a fire yet,” Monica said, keeping her voice down. “But I’m having a recurring vision of Glimmer Lake on fire.”
Sully frowned. “And with that stuff, how certain is it? I mean, can you change things you see in a vision? Or if you see it, that means it’s gonna happen for sure?”
“Not for sure. Things change all the time. It changed slightly from the first vision to the second. Seeing the future is…”
“Tricky,” Robin said.
“Fuzzy.” Val took another bite of her sandwich. “You’re really only seeing one possible future.”
Sully swiped another chip. “You really shouldn’t talk with your mouth full.”
“Bite me.”
“I do. You like it.”
Val must have kicked him under the table, because Sully’s half smile turned into a full grin.
“Okay, you two, stop flirting,” Robin said.
“Don’t,” Monica said. “It’s adorable.”
“See?” Val pointed at her. “You’re a romantic. You need to start dating again.”
Sully frowned. “I actually just ran into an old friend—”
“I’m not looking for a date.” Monica cut him off. “These two think I should be dating. I am not looking.”
Robin said, “So the friend you’re going to set Monica up with, what is he—?”
“Stop.” She slapped a hand over Robin’s mouth. She hissed, “Can we talk about the possible disaster that is going to descend on our home please?”
“Right.” Sully stole another one of Val’s chips. “We need to figure out how to change the future.”
“Some things seem to be set in stone,” Monica said. “And some don’t. How do we know that if we try to change this, that won’t bring on the fire?”
“We need a physicist,” Val said. “Aren’t they the time experts?”
Mark perked up. “We actually know a physicist.”
“Do you?” Monica was curious. “But would she believe in a psychic vision?”
“I don’t know, but Kat’s pretty flexible mentally. She might not rule it out.”
“Oh, is that…” Robin was snapping her fingers. “That really nice girl who didn’t marry Dan?” She turned to them. “Dan was one of Mark’s roommates in college.”
“He was my best man.” Mark took a drink. “He and Katherine were engaged for almost a year, but they ended up breaking it off. I think it was mutual.”
Robin said, “They stayed friendly. I remember that.”
Mark continued, “She’s superbrilliant. We ended up being in the same running club, and she still emails me sometimes when there’s a trail run at the coast.”
“Where is she?”
Mark said, “She’s a professor now, Central Coas
t State. She married another professor—I don’t know him though—and they live in Swann Cove.”
“That’s such a pretty town,” Monica said. “Gil and I went there for our anniversary one year.”
“Yeah, she likes it.” Mark frowned a little. “If you wanted to talk to Katherine about your vision, I bet she’d be open to it.”
Monica cringed at the idea of exposing herself to an actual scientist. “I don’t know. She’d probably think I was just… out there. Silly housewife imagining things.”
“I doubt it,” Mark said. “If I remember correctly, she was really interested in theoretical stuff. She took a lot of philosophy and psychology classes too. She’s a really interesting woman.”
“Also,” Robin said, “you’re not a silly housewife. You were a badass domestic goddess for twenty-five years, and now you’re a successful hotelier.”
Val reached over and gave Monica a fist bump. “Badass domestic goddess.”
Sully stole another chip while Val was distracted. “Might be a good idea to talk to her. You’re seeing a fire that sounds pretty devastating. Might be worth knowing if this is a foregone conclusion and we need to figure out a way to convince people to evacuate or whether something we do might change it.”
Mark looked at her. “I really don’t think she’d be dismissive. If you want, I’ll give you her number.”
Monica spent the rest of her afternoon at Russell House. After paperwork was done, she found herself walking around the perimeter of the house, examining the tree canopy and trying to imagine a way to expand the safe zone without sacrificing the lush, forested look of the hotel.
They could expand the garden, maybe even create another event space in the back of the house where now there was only forest. The ropes course Jake had built was closer to the lake, and the back of the house only had a broad porch with a view of the trees.
If they pushed the tree line back and created a forest gazebo…
“Hey, Mom!”
She was standing on the north lawn, which led to the boathouse, when she heard Jake running up.
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