The House Across the Lake(14)

When I inevitably do lift them to my eyes, I’m not impressed. The focus is off, and for a few jarring seconds, everything is skewed. Nothing but woozy views of the water and the tops of trees. I keep adjusting the binoculars until the image sharpens. The trees snap into focus. The lake’s surface smooths into clarity.

Now I understand why Len was so excited.

These binoculars do indeed rock.

The image isn’t super close. Definitely not an extreme close-up. But the detail at such a distance is startling. It feels like I’m standing on the other side of a street rather than the opposite shore of the lake. What was fuzzy to the naked eye is now crystal clear.

Including the inside of Tom and Katherine Royce’s glass house.

I take in the first floor, where details of the living room are visible through the massive windows. Off-white walls. Mid-century modern furniture in neutral tones. Splashes of color provided by massive abstract paintings. It’s an interior designer’s dream, and a far cry from my family’s rustic lake house. Here, the hardwood floor is scratched and the furniture threadbare. Adorning the walls are landscape paintings, crisscrossed snowshoes, and old advertisements for maple syrup. And the moose in the den, of course.

In the much more refined Royce living room, I spy Katherine reclining on a white sofa, flipping through a magazine. Now dry and fully dressed, she looks far more familiar than she did in the boat. Every inch the model she used to be. Her hair shines. Her skin glows. Even her clothes—a yellow silk blouse and dark capri pants—have a sheen to them.

I check her left hand. Her wedding band is back on, along with an engagement ring adorned with a diamond that looks ridiculously huge even through the binoculars. It makes my own ring finger do an involuntary flex. Both of my rings from Len are in a jewelry box in Manhattan. I stopped wearing them three days after his death. Keeping them on was too painful.

I tilt the binoculars to the second floor and the master bedroom. It’s dimmer than the rest of the house—lit only by a bedside lamp. But I can still make out a cavernous space with vaulted ceilings and décor that looks plucked from a high-end hotel suite. It puts my master bedroom, with its creaking bed frame and antique dresser of drawers that stick more often than not, to shame.

To the left of the bedroom is what appears to be an exercise room. I see a flat-screen TV on the wall, the handlebars of a Peloton bike in front of it, and the top of a rack holding free weights. After that is a room with bookshelves, a desk and lamp, and a printer. Likely a home office, inside of which is Tom Royce. He’s seated at the desk, frowning at the screen of a laptop open in front of him.

He closes the laptop and stands, finally giving me a full look at him. My first impression of Tom is that he looks like someone who’d marry a supermodel. It makes sense why Katherine was drawn to him. He’s handsome, of course. But it’s a lived-in handsomeness, reminding me of Harrison Ford just a year past his prime. About ten years older than Katherine, Tom exudes confidence, even when alone. He stands ramrod straight, dressed like he’s just stepped off the pages of a catalogue. Dark jeans and a gray T-shirt under a cream-colored cardigan, all of it impeccably fitted. His hair is dark brown and on the longish side. I can only imagine how much product it takes to get it to swoop back from his head like that.

Tom leaves the office and appears a few seconds later in the bedroom. A few seconds after that, he disappears through another door in the room. The master bath, from the looks of it. I get a glimpse of white wall, the edge of a mirror, the angelic glow of perfect bathroom lighting.

The door closes.

Directly below, Katherine continues to read.

Because I’m unwilling to admit to myself that I picked up the binoculars just to spy on the Royces, I swing them toward Eli’s house, the cluster of rocks and evergreens between the two homes passing in a blur.

I catch Eli in the act of coming home from running errands—an all-day affair in this part of Vermont. Lake Greene sits fifteen minutes from the nearest town, reached by a highway that cuts southwest through the forest. The highway itself is a mile away and accessed via a ragged gravel road that circles the lake. That’s where Eli is when I spot him, turning his trusty red pickup off the road and into his driveway.

I watch him get out of the truck and carry groceries up the side porch and through the door that leads to the kitchen. Inside the house, a light flicks on in one of the back windows. Through the glass, I can see into the dining room, with its brass light fixture and giant old hutch. I can even make out the rarely used collection of patterned china that sits on the hutch’s top shelf.

Outside, Eli returns to the pickup, this time removing a cardboard box from the back. Provisions for me that I assume he’ll be bringing over sooner rather than later.

I direct the binoculars back to the Royces’. Katherine’s at the living room window now. A surprise. Her unexpected presence by the glass hits me with a guilty jolt, and for a moment, I wonder if she can see me.

The answer is no.

Not when she’s inside like that, with the lights on. Maybe, if she squinted, she could make out the red plaid of my flannel shirt as I sit tucked back in the shadow of the porch. But there’s no way she can tell I’m watching her.

She stands inches from the glass, staring out at the lake, her face a gorgeous blank page. After a few more seconds at the window, Katherine moves deeper into the living room, heading toward a sideboard bar next to the fireplace. She drops some ice into a glass and fills it halfway with something poured from a crystal decanter.