The House Across the Lake(15)

I raise my own glass in a silent toast and time my sip to hers.

Above her, Tom Royce is out of the bathroom. He sits on the edge of the bed, examining his fingernails.

Boring.

I return to Katherine, who’s back at the window, her drink in one hand, her phone in the other. Before dialing, she tilts her head toward the ceiling, as if listening to hear if her husband is coming.

He’s not. A quick uptilt of the binoculars shows him still preoccupied with his nails, using one to dig a smidge of dirt out from under another.

Below, Katherine correctly assumes the coast is clear, taps her phone, and holds it to her ear.

I let my gaze drift back to the bedroom, where Tom is now standing in the middle of the room, listening for his wife downstairs.

Only Katherine isn’t talking. Holding her phone and tapping one foot, she’s waiting for whoever she just called to answer.

Upstairs, Tom tiptoes across the bedroom and peeks out the open door, of which I can see only a sliver. He disappears through it, leaving the bedroom empty and me moving the binoculars to try to catch his reappearance elsewhere on the second floor. I swing them past the exercise room to the office.

Tom isn’t in either of them.

I return my gaze to the living room, where Katherine is now speaking into the phone. It’s not a conversation, though. She doesn’t pause to let the other person talk, making me think she’s leaving a message. An urgent one, from the looks of it. Katherine’s hunched slightly, a hand cupped to her mouth as she talks, her eyes darting back and forth.

On the other side of the house, movement catches my attention.

Tom.

Now on the first floor.

Moving out of the kitchen and into the dining room.

Slowly.

With caution.

His long, quiet strides make me think it’s an effort not to be heard. With his lips flattened together and his chin jutting forward, his expression is unreadable. He could be curious. He could be concerned.

Tom makes his way to the other side of the dining room and he and Katherine finally appear together in the binoculars’ lenses. She’s still talking, apparently oblivious to her husband watching from the next room. It’s not until Tom takes another step that Katherine becomes aware of his presence. She taps the phone, hides it behind her back, whirls around to face him.

Unlike her husband’s, Katherine’s expression is easily read.

She’s startled.

Especially as Tom comes toward her. Not angry, exactly. It’s different from that. He looks, to use Marnie’s description, intense.

He says something to Katherine. She says something back. She slips the phone into her back pocket before raising her hands—a gesture of innocence.

“Enjoying the view?”

The sound of another person’s voice—at this hour, in this place—startles me so much I almost drop the binoculars for a second time that day. I manage to keep hold of them as I yank them away from my face and, still rattled, look for the source of the voice.

It’s a man unfamiliar to me.

A very good-looking man.

In his mid-thirties, he stands to the right of the porch in a patch of weedy grass that serves as a buffer between the house and rambling forest situated next to it. Appropriate, seeing how he’s dressed like a lumberjack. The pinup-calendar version. Tight jeans, work boots, flannel shirt wrapped around his narrow waist, broad chest pushing against a white T-shirt. The light of magic hour reflecting off the lake gives his skin a golden glow. It’s sexy and preposterous in equal measure.

Making the situation even weirder is that I’m dressed almost exactly the same way. Adidas sneakers instead of boots, and my jeans don’t look painted on. But it’s enough for me to realize how frumpily I always dress when I’m at the lake.

“Sorry?” I say.

“The view,” he says, gesturing to the binoculars still gripped in my hands. “See anything good?”

Suddenly—and rightfully—feeling guilty, I set the binoculars on the wobbly table beside the rocking chair. “Just trees.”

The man nods. “The foliage is beautiful this time of year.”

I stand, make my way to the end of the porch, and look down at him. He’s come closer to the house and now gazes up at me with a glint in his eyes, as if he knows exactly what I’ve been doing.

“I don’t mean to sound rude,” I say, “but who are you and where did you come from?”

The man takes a half step back. “Are you sure you didn’t mean to sound rude?”

“Maybe I did,” I say. “And you still haven’t answered my question.”

“I’m Boone. Boone Conrad.”

I barely stop myself from rolling my eyes. That cannot be his real name.

“And I came from over there.”

He jerks his head in the direction of the woods and the house slightly visible two hundred yards behind the thinning trees. The Mitchell place. An A-frame cabin built in the seventies, it sits tucked within a small bend of the lakeshore. In the summer, the only part of it visible from my family’s house is the long dock that juts into the lake.

“You’re a guest of the Mitchells?” I say.

“More like their temporary handyman,” Boone says. “Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell said I could stay for a couple of months if I did some work on the place while I’m here. Since we’re neighbors, I thought I’d stop by and introduce myself. I would have done it earlier, but I was too busy stuck inside refinishing their dining room floor.”