The House Across the Lake(36)

“You’re right,” I say, trying to sound appropriately contrite. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t need you to be sorry,” she says. “I need you to get better.”

Marnie ends the call before I can say anything else—an unspoken warning that, while all is forgiven, it’s certainly not forgotten. And when it comes to Katherine and Tom Royce, I’ll need to leave her out of it.

Which is fine. Maybe she’s right and nothing’s really going on except the unraveling of the Royces’ marriage. I sincerely hope that’s the worst of it. Unfortunately, my gut tells me it’s not that simple.

I return to Katherine’s Instagram and examine that picture of her apartment, thinking about Marnie’s theory that she posted an old photo to deceive her husband. The idea makes sense, especially when I take another look at the view of Central Park outside the apartment window. The leaves there are still green—a far cry from the blazing reds and oranges of the trees surrounding Lake Greene.

I zoom in until the picture fills my phone’s screen. Scanning the grainy blur, I focus on the Mondrian calendar on the wall. There, printed right below an image of the artist’s most famous work—Composition with Red Blue and Yellow—is the month it represents.

September.

Marnie was right. Katherine really did post an old photo. Faced with proof that she’s being deceitful, most likely to fool her husband, I realize I can stop worrying—and, yes, obsessing—over where Katherine is or what happened to her.

It’s none of my business.

It’s time to accept that.

I swipe my phone, shrinking the photo down to its original size.

That’s when I see it.

The teakettle on the stove, polished to a mirrorlike shine. It glistens so much that the photographer can be seen reflected in its surface.

Curious, I zoom in again, making the kettle as big as possible without entirely blowing out the image. Although the photographer’s reflection is blurred by the amplification and distorted by the kettle’s curve, I can still make out who it is.

Tom Royce.

There’s no mistaking it. Dark hair, longish in the back, too much product in the front.

Katherine never took this photo.

Which means it was saved not on her phone but on her husband’s.

The only explanation I can think of is that Marnie was right about the deception, wrong about who is doing it and why.

Tom posted this photo on his wife’s Instagram account.

And the person being deceived is me.





The hardest part about doing Shred of Doubt eight times a week was the first act, in which my character had to walk a fine line between being too worried and not suspicious enough. I spent weeks of rehearsal trying to find the perfect balance between the two, and I never did get it completely right.

Until now.

Now I’m perched precisely between those two modes, wondering which one I should lean into. It’s easy now that I’m living it. No acting required.

I want to call Marnie for guidance, but I know what she’d say. That Katherine is fine. That I should leave it alone. That it’s none of my business.

All of that might be true. And all of it could be dead wrong. I can’t be sure until I have a better grasp on the situation. So it’s back to social media I go, leaving Instagram behind and diving into Tom Royce’s brainchild, Mixer.

First, I have to download the app to my phone and create a profile. It’s a brazenly invasive process requiring my full name, date of birth, cell phone number, and location, which is determined through geotracking. I make several attempts to do an end run around it, entering Manhattan as my location instead. The app changes it to Lake Greene every time.

And I thought I was being nosy.

Only after my profile is created am I allowed to enter Mixer. I have to give Tom and his development team credit. It’s a well-designed app. Clean, good-looking, easy to use. Within seconds, I learn there are several ways to find contacts, including by company, by location, and by entering your favorite bars and restaurants and seeing who else has listed them.

I choose a location search, which lets me see every user within a one-mile radius. Right now, four other users are currently at Lake Greene, each one marked with a red triangle on a satellite view of the area.

The first is Tom Royce.

No surprise there.

Eli and Boone Conrad also have profiles, which would be a surprise if I didn’t suspect both joined as a courtesy to their neighbor. Like me, neither has filled out his profile beyond the required information. Eli hasn’t listed any favorites or recently visited locations, and the only place on Boone’s profile is a juice bar two towns away.

The real surprise is the fourth person listed as currently being at Lake Greene.

Katherine Royce.

I stare at the triangle pinpointing her location.

Just on the other side of the lake.

Directly across from my own red triangle.

Seeing it sends my heart skittering. While I have no idea about the app’s accuracy, I assume it’s pretty good. Since I wasn’t able to change my location despite multiple attempts, it’s likely Katherine can’t, either.

If that’s the case, it means she either left Lake Greene without taking her phone—or that she never left at all.

I stand, shove my phone in my pocket, and go inside, heading straight for the kitchen. There, I dig the binoculars out of the trash, blow stray crumbs from my lunch off the lenses, and carry them out to the porch. Standing at the railing, I peer at the Royces’ glass house, wondering if Katherine is there after all. It’s impossible to tell. Although the sun is close to slipping behind the mountains on that side of the lake, the shimmering reflection of the water masks whatever might be going on inside.