The House Across the Lake(42)

“Damn right it is,” I say.

This earns me another look from Wilma, although this time her eyes seem to say, Let’s not get too cocky.

“Here’s what I’m going to do.” She stands, stretches, gives the scrunchie on her wrist one last twirl. “I’ll do a little digging and see if anyone else has heard from Katherine. Hopefully someone has and this is all just a big misunderstanding.”

“What should we do?” I say.

“Nothing. That’s what you should do. Just sit tight and wait to hear from me.” Wilma starts to leave the porch, gesturing to the binoculars as she goes. “And for God’s sake, stop spying on your neighbors. Go watch TV or something.”





After Wilma leaves, taking Boone with her, I try to follow the detective’s advice and watch TV. In the den, sitting in the shadow of the moose head on the wall, I watch the Weather Channel map the storm’s progress. Trish, despite no longer being a hurricane, is still wreaking havoc in the Northeast. Right now, she’s over Pennsylvania and about to bring her strong winds and record rains into New York.

Vermont is next.

The day after tomorrow.

Yet another thing to worry about.

I change the channel and am confronted by an unexpected sight.

Me.

Seventeen years ago.

Strolling across a college campus strewn with autumn leaves and casting sly glances at the blindingly handsome guy next to me.

My film debut.

The movie was a vaguely autobiographical dramedy about a Harvard senior figuring out what he wants to do with his life. I played a sassy co-ed who makes him consider leaving his long-term girlfriend. The role was small but meaty, and refreshingly free of any scheming bad-girl clichés. My character was presented as simply an appealing alternative the hero could choose.

Watching the movie for the first time in more than a decade, I remember everything about making it with dizzying clarity. How intimidated I was by the logistics of shooting on location. How nervous I was about hitting my marks, remembering my lines, accidentally looking directly into the camera. How, when the director first called action, I completely froze, forcing him to pull me aside and gently—so gently—say, “Be yourself.”

That’s what I did.

Or what I thought I did. Watching the performance now, though, I know I must have been acting, even if it didn’t feel like it at the time. In real life, I’ve never been that charming, that bold, that vivid.

Unable to watch my younger self a second longer, I turn off the TV. Reflected in the dark screen is present me—a jarring transformation. So far removed from the vibrant young thing I’d just been watching that we might as well be strangers.

Be yourself.

I don’t even know who that is anymore.

I’m not sure I’d like her if I did.

Leaving the den, I go to the kitchen and pour myself a bourbon. A double, to make up for what I missed while Boone was here. I take it out to the porch, where I rock and drink and watch the house on the other side of the water like I’m Jay Gatsby pining for Daisy Buchanan. In my case, there’s no green light at the end of the dock. There’s no light at all, in fact. The windows were dark by the time I returned to the porch, although a quick look through the binoculars at Tom’s Bentley tells me he’s still there.

I keep watching, hoping he’ll turn on a light somewhere and provide a clearer idea of what he might be up to. That’s what Wilma wants, after all. Something solid onto which we can pin our suspicions. Even though I want that, too, I get queasy thinking about what, exactly, that something solid would be. Blood dripping from Tom’s newly purchased hacksaw? Katherine’s body washed ashore like Len’s?

There I go again, thinking Katherine is dead. I hate that my mind keeps veering in that direction. I’d prefer to be like Wilma, certain there’s a logical explanation behind all of it and that everything will turn out right in the end. My brain just doesn’t work that way. Because if what happened with Len has taught me anything, it’s to expect the worst.

I take another sip of bourbon and bring the binoculars to my eyes. Instead of focusing on the still frustratingly dark Royce house, I scan the area in general, taking in the dense forests, the rocky slope of mountain behind them, the jagged shore on the far edges of the lake.

So many places to bury unwanted things.

So many places to disappear.

And don’t even get me started on the lake. When we were kids, Marnie would tease me about Lake Greene’s depth, usually when both of us were neck-deep in the water, my toes stretched as much as possible to retain the faintest bit of contact with the lake bed.

“The lake is darker than a coffin with the lid shut,” she’d say. “And as deep as the ocean. If you sink under, you’ll never come back up again. You’ll be trapped forever.”

While that’s not technically true—Len’s fate proved that—it’s easy to imagine parts of Lake Greene so deep that something could be forever lost there.

Even a person.

That thought takes more than a gulp of bourbon to chase from my brain. It takes the whole damn glass, downed in a few heavy swallows. I get up and wobble into the kitchen, where I pour another double before returning to my post on the porch. Even though I’ve now got a hearty buzz going, I can’t stop wondering, if Katherine really is dead, why Tom would do such a thing.