The House Across the Lake(20)

I pretend I don’t see it.

“You also have a place in the city, though, right?” I ask Katherine.

“An apartment on the Upper West Side.”

“Corner of Central Park West and 83rd Street,” Tom adds, which elicits an eyeroll from his wife.

“Tom’s a stickler about status,” she says as the binoculars sitting next to a chair catch her eye. “Oh, wow. I used to have a pair just like those.”

“You did?” Tom says as twin furrows form across his otherwise smooth forehead. “When?”

“A while ago.” Katherine turns back to me. “Are you a birder?”

“Are you?” Tom asks his wife.

“I used to be. Before we met. A lifetime ago.”

“You never told me you like birds,” Tom says.

Katherine turns to face the water. “I’ve always liked them. You just never noticed.”

From the other side of the porch, Eli gives me another look. He’s noticed the tension between them, too. It’s impossible to miss. Tom and Katherine seem so at odds that it sucks all energy from the area, making the porch seem stuffy and crowded. Or maybe it’s just me, overheated by inebriation. Either way, I feel the need to be out in the open.

“I’ve got an idea,” I say. “Let’s have our wine by a fire.”

Eli rubs his hands together and says, “An excellent suggestion.”

We leave the porch, descending the steps to ground level and the small courtyard nestled between the lakeshore and the inward corner of the house. In the center is a firepit surrounded by Adirondack chairs where I’d spent many a childhood summer night. Eli, no stranger to this area, collects a few logs from the woodpile stacked against the house and starts building the fire.

Armed with the corkscrew, I reach for the wine bottles that are still in Tom’s grip.

“Allow me, please,” he says.

“I think Casey knows how to open a bottle of wine,” Katherine says.

“Not a five-thousand-dollar bottle.”

Katherine shakes her head, gives me another apologetic look, and says, “See? Status.”

“I don’t mind,” I say, no longer wanting the bottles now that I know how crazy expensive they are. “Or we could open one of mine. You should keep those for a special occasion.”

“You saved my wife’s life,” Tom says. “To me, that makes this a very special occasion.”

He moves to the porch steps, using them as a makeshift bar. With his back toward us, he says, “You have to pour it just so. Allow it to breathe.”

Behind us, Eli has gotten a fire going. Small flames crawl across the logs before leaping into bigger ones. Soon the wood is emitting that satisfying campfire crackle as sparks swirl into the night sky. It all brings a rush of memory. Me and Len the night before he died. Drinking wine by the fire and talking about the future, not realizing there was no future.

Not for us.

Definitely not for Len.

“Casey?”

It’s Tom, handing me a glass of five-thousand-dollar wine. Under normal circumstances, I’d be nervous about taking a single sip. But gripped by a sorrowful memory, I gulp down half the glass.

“You have to sniff it first,” Tom says, sounding both annoyed and insulted. “Swirl it around in the glass, get your nose in close, then sniff. Smelling it prepares your brain for what you’re about to taste.”

I do as I’m told, holding the glass to my nose and inhaling deeply.

It smells like every other glass of wine I’ve had. Nothing special.

Tom hands a glass to Katherine and instructs us both to take a small sip and savor it. I give it a try, assuming the wine’s taste will live up to its price tag. It’s good, but not five-thousand-dollars good.

Rather than sniff and savor, Katherine brings the glass to her lips and empties it in a single swallow.

“Oops,” she says. “I guess I need to start over.”

Tom considers saying something in response, thinks better of it, takes her glass. Through clenched teeth, he says, “Of course, darling.”

He returns to the steps, his back toward us, one elbow flexing as he tilts the bottle, his other hand digging into his pocket. He brings Katherine a generous pour, swirling the wine in the glass so she doesn’t have to.

“Savor, remember,” he tells her. “In other words, pace yourself.”

“I’m fine.”

“Your tilt says otherwise.”

I look at Katherine, who is indeed listing slightly to the left.

“Tell me more about what happened today in the lake,” Eli says.

Katherine sighs and lowers herself into an Adirondack chair, her legs curled beneath her. “I’m still not sure. I know the water is cold this time of year, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. And I know I can swim across the lake and back because I did it all summer. But today, halfway across, everything just froze. It was like my entire body stopped working.”

“Was it a cramp?”

“Maybe? All I know is that I would have drowned out there if Casey hadn’t spotted me. Like that girl that vanished in Lake Morey last summer. What was her name again?”

“Sue Ellen,” Eli says solemnly. “Sue Ellen Stryker.”

“Tom and I were renting a place there that summer,” Katherine says. “It was all so awful. Did they ever find her?”