The House Across the Lake(11)

One afternoon in late July, Len and I filled a picnic basket with wine, cheese, and fresh fruit bought that morning at a nearby farmers’ market. We hiked to the southern end of the lake, where the forest gives way to a craggy bluff. After stumbling our way to the top, we spread the food out on a checkered blanket and spent the afternoon snacking, drinking wine, and staring at the water far below.

At one point, Len turned to me and said, “Let’s stay here forever, Cee.”

Cee.

That was his nickname for me, created after he had deemed Case too hard-boiled for a term of endearment.

“It makes me think of a private detective,” he said. “Or, worse, a lawyer.”

“Or maybe I don’t need a nickname,” I said. “It’s not like my name’s that unwieldy.”

“I can’t be the only one of us with a nickname. That would make me incredibly selfish, don’t you think?”

We’d been officially dating two weeks by then, both of us sensing things were getting very serious very quickly but neither of us ready to admit it. It’s why Len was trying too hard that night. He wanted to dazzle me with wit. And even though the wit might have been strained, I was indeed dazzled.

I remained that way most of our marriage.

“Define forever,” I said that July afternoon, hypnotized by the sunlight sparking off the lake and the summer breeze in my hair.

“Never leaving. Just like Old Stubborn there.”

Len pointed to a petrified tree stump that jutted from the water about fifty yards from the shore below. It was legendary on Lake Greene, mostly because no one knew how this sun-bleached piece of wood came to be poking twenty feet out of the water or how much more of it stretched from the surface to the lake’s bottom. We all called it Old Stubborn because Eli, who researched such things, claimed it had been there for hundreds of years and would remain long after the rest of us were gone.

“Is that even possible?” I said.

“Sure, we’d still have to go to the city and LA a lot for work, but there’s no law saying we must live in Manhattan. We could live here full-time. Make this place our home base.”

Home.

I liked the sound of that.

It didn’t matter that the lake house technically belonged to my aunt and mother. Or that eastern Vermont was quite a hike from Manhattan, not to mention a world away from LA, where Len had been spending so much time. The idea was still appealing. Like Len, I longed for a life removed from our bicoastal grind.

“Let me think about it,” I said.

I never got the chance. A week later, Len was dead.

That’s Step Six, by the way.

Have your husband die while on vacation.

The morning it happened, I was tugged out of bed by the sound of Eli knocking on the front door. Before opening it, I checked the clock in the foyer. Seven a.m. Way too early for him to be paying a neighborly visit.

Something was wrong.

“Your boat got loose,” Eli announced. “Woke up and saw it drifting on the lake. Guess you didn’t tie it up right.”

“Is it still out there?” I said.

“Nah. I towed it back to my dock. I can take you over to get it.” Eli looked me over, noticing my nightgown, hastily-thrown-on robe, out-of-control bedhead. “Or I can take Len.”

Len.

He wasn’t in bed when I woke up. Nor was he anywhere in the house. Eli and I searched the place from top to bottom, calling out his name. There was no sign of him. He was gone.

“Do you think he could be out for a morning run or something?”

“Len’s not a runner,” I said. “He swims.”

Both of us looked to the lake, shimmering beyond the tall windows in the living room. The water was calm. And empty. I couldn’t help but picture our boat out there, unmoored, drifting aimlessly. Also empty.

Eli pictured it, too, because the next thing he said was, “Do you know if Len had any reason to take the boat out this morning?”

“Some—” I paused to swallow the lump of worry that had suddenly caught in my throat. “Some mornings he goes fishing.”

Eli knew this. He’d seen Len out on the water, wearing that silly fisherman’s hat and smoking his disgusting cigars, which he claimed kept the mosquitoes away. Sometimes the two of them even went fishing together.

“Did you see him go out this morning?” Eli took another look at my bedclothes and puffy eyes, rightfully concluding that he was the reason I got out of bed. “Or hear him?”

I answered with a short, scared head shake.

“And he didn’t tell you last night that he was thinking about going fishing?”

“No,” I said. “But he doesn’t always tell me. Especially if he thinks I won’t be up for a few hours. Sometimes he just goes.”

Eli’s gaze drifted back to the empty lake. When he spoke again, his voice was halting, cautious. “When I fetched your boat, I saw a rod and tackle box inside. Len doesn’t always keep them there, does he?”

“No,” I said. “He keeps them—”

In the basement. That’s what I intended to say. Instead, I went there, down the rickety steps to what’s technically the first level of the lake house but is treated like a cellar because it’s built into the steep hillside that slopes to the water. Eli followed me. Past the room with the furnace and hot-water heater. Past the Ping-Pong table that had last been used in the nineties. Past the skis on the wall and the ice skates in the corner. Stopping only when I stopped.