The House Across the Lake(26)

Vodka. Neat.

Another vodka. Also neat.

Cry in the shower.

Grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.

Bourbon.

Bourbon.

Bourbon.

My mother calls at her regularly scheduled time, using my cell and not the landline still stuffed into a drawer in the den. I let it go to voicemail and delete her message without listening to it.

Then I have another bourbon.

Dinner is steak with a side salad so I can pretend my body isn’t a complete nutritional wasteland.

And wine.

Coffee to sober up a tad.

Ice cream, just because.

It’s now a few minutes after midnight and I’m sipping cheap whiskey poured from an unopened bottle I found stuffed in the back of the liquor cabinet. It’s probably been there for decades. But it does the trick, smoothing the peaks and valleys of intoxication I’ve experienced over the course of the day. Now I’m enveloped in a dreamy calmness that makes all of it worthwhile.

I’m on the porch, snug in a heavy sweater, the blanket from the boat once again wrapped over my shoulders. It’s not as foggy as last night. Lake Greene and its environs sit encased in a silvery crispness that provides a clear view across the water. I take in each house there.

The Fitzgeralds’. Dark and empty.

The Royces’. Not empty, but dark all the same.

Eli’s. A single light aglow on the third floor.

I turn to my side of the lake. The Mitchell house, also dark, can barely be glimpsed through the trees. I assume that means no midnight swim for Boone.

Pity.

I’m contemplating going to bed myself when a light appears at the Royces’. Seeing it makes me immediately reach for the binoculars, but I stop myself before my fingers can snag them.

I shouldn’t be doing this.

I don’t need to do this.

What I should do is drink some water, go to bed, and ignore what my neighbors are up to. Not a difficult task. Yet that rectangle of brightness on the other side of the lake tugs at me like a rope around my waist.

I try to resist, hovering my hand over the binoculars while counting Mississippis just like I did yesterday with my bourbon. This time, I fall well short of forty-six before grabbing them. In fact, I barely make it to eleven.

Because resistance also has its drawbacks. It makes me want something—watching the Royces, knocking back a drink—even more. I know how denial works. You withhold and withhold and withhold until that mental dam breaks and all those bad urges come spilling out, often causing harm in the process.

Not that this behavior is hurting anyone. No one will ever know but me.

Binoculars in hand, I zero in on the window glowing in the otherwise dark night. It’s on the second floor, coming from the home office where I saw Tom yesterday. Now, though, it’s Katherine who sits at the desk by the window, staring at the laptop.

Wrapped in a white robe, she looks worse than she did this morning. A pale imitation of her usual self. Not helping is the glow from the laptop, which gives her face a sickly blue tinge.

I watch as Katherine types something, then squints at the laptop’s screen. The squint grows more pronounced as she leans forward, engrossed in whatever she’s looking at.

Then something surprises her.

It’s clear even from this distance.

Her lower jaw drops and a hand flies to her bottom lip. Her eyes, released from their squint, grow wide. Katherine blinks. Rapidly. A full two seconds of fluttering eyelids.

She pauses.

She exhales.

She turns her head slowly toward the office door, which is completely open.

She listens, head cocked, on alert.

Then, seemingly satisfied she won’t be interrupted, Katherine turns back to the laptop in a flurry of activity. Keys are tapped. The cursor is moved. All while she keeps sneaking occasional glances back to the open door.

I do the same, jerking the binoculars to the right, where the master bedroom is located.

It’s completely dark.

I return my gaze to the office, where Katherine spends the next minute typing, then reading, then typing some more. The surprise on her face has dulled slightly, morphing into something that to my eye looks like determination.

She’s searching for something. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. It’s not the expression of someone casually scrolling through emails in the middle of the night. It’s the look of someone on a mission.

On the other side of the house, another light appears.

The bedroom.

Sheer white curtains cover the tall windows. Through them, I see the diffuse glow of a bedside lamp and the silhouette of Tom Royce sitting up in bed. He slides out from under the covers and, wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms, takes a few stiff-jointed steps across the room.

At the slice of door that’s visible, Tom pauses, just like he did in the dining room when I watched them yesterday.

He’s listening again, wondering what his wife is up to.

Two rooms away, Katherine continues to type, read, type. I move back and forth between the two of them, like someone watching a tennis match.

Tom still listening at the bedroom door.

Katherine’s face lit by the laptop’s glow.

Tom slipping out of the room.

Katherine leaning forward slightly, getting a better look at the computer screen.

Tom reappearing in the doorway behind her.

He says something, alerting Katherine to his presence.