Chapter 7: Widowed

Cal's POV

She stood in my woodshed doorway and told me about a ring, and I believed her before she finished.

I had known Samantha Ames for four days, and she did not lie well. She was too angry to.

"Give me an hour," I said.

I went into the lodge office and shut the door and sat down at the old gray filing cabinet I had not opened since my mother's funeral.

Everything about my camp was in there. The deed, the loan papers, every membership form since the day I opened.

I told myself I was checking whether a man could really be married and engaged on my property for two years without my noticing.

I told myself I was a fool, and I was, because I had not looked.

I pulled the folder marked P.

Waylon Casto and Shanna Merrill had signed up fourteen months ago, and the application was one page, filled out in his handwriting.

Name. Address. Phone.

The address was his mother's house.

Emergency contact: Diane Casto, mother.

Then a line the form had carried for years, because my mother liked her members to feel known.

Marital status.

Waylon had checked a box and added a note in the margin in neat blue ink.

Widowed, it said. Wife passed 3 yrs ago. Prefers not to discuss.

I read it three times.

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