The House Across the Lake(62)

Boone slides a plate piled with pancakes and bacon on the side, and my stomach gives off a painful twinge.

“Truth be told, I’m not very hungry,” I say.

Boone joins me with his own plate heaped with food. “Eating will do you some good. Feed a hangover, starve a fever. Isn’t that how the saying goes?”

“No.”

“Close enough,” he says as he tops his pancakes with two pats of butter. “Now eat.”

I nibble a piece of bacon, nervous it might send me running to the bathroom with nausea. To my surprise, it makes me feel better. As does a bite of pancake. Soon I’m shoveling the food into my mouth, washing it down with more coffee.

“We should have picked up some maple syrup at the store yesterday,” Boone says casually, as if we have breakfast together all the time.

I lower my fork. “Can we talk about last night?”

“Sure. If you can remember it.”

Boone immediately takes a sip of coffee, as if that will somehow soften the judgment in his voice. I pretend to ignore it.

“I was hoping you could fill in the blanks a bit.”

“I was just about to go up to bed when I saw Tom’s Bentley drive by the house,” Boone says. “Since there’s no reason for him to be driving on this side of the lake, I assumed he was coming to see one of us. And since he didn’t stop at my place, I figured he had to be going to see you. And I didn’t think that was a good thing.”

“He caught me watching the house,” I say. “Apparently he picked up his own pair of binoculars while at the hardware store.”

“Was he mad?”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“What happened while he was here?”

I eat two more bites of pancake, take a long sip of coffee, and try to bring my blurry memories of Tom’s visit into focus. A few do, snapping into clarity right when I need them to.

“I turned off all the lights and hid by the door,” I say, remembering the feel of the door against my back as it rattled under Tom’s knocking. “But he knew I was here, so he yelled some stuff.”

Boone looks up from his plate. “What kind of stuff?”

“This is where it starts to get foggy. I think I remember the gist of what he said, but not his exact words.”

“Then paraphrase.”

“He said he knew that I’ve been spying on him and that it was me who told Wilma about Katherine. Oh, and that he knew I’d broken into his house.”

“Did he threaten you?” Boone says.

“Not exactly. I mean, it was scary. But no, there were no threats. He just told me to leave him alone and left. Then you came to the door.”

I pause, signaling that I can’t remember anything else and that I’m hoping Boone can tell me the rest. He does, although he looks slightly annoyed at having to remind me of something I should have been sober enough to recall on my own.

“I heard you inside after I knocked,” he says. “You were mumbling and sounded dazed. I thought you were hurt and not—”

Boone stops talking, as if the word drunk is contagious and he’ll become one again if he dares to utter it.

“You came inside to check on me,” I say, hit with the image of him looming over me, swathed in shadow.

“I did.”

“How?”

“The ground floor.”

Boone’s referring to the door to the basement. The one with faded blue paint and a persistent squeak that leads directly to the backyard beneath the porch. I didn’t know it was unlocked because I haven’t been down there since the morning I woke up and Len was gone.

“I found your phone out there, by the way,” he says, gesturing to the dining room table, where the phone now sits.

“Then what happened?”

“I picked you up and carried you to bed.”

“And?”

“I made you drink some water, put a garbage can by the bed in case you got sick, and left you alone to sleep it off.”

“Where’d you sleep?”

“Bedroom down the hall,” Boone says. “The one with the twin beds and slanted ceiling.”

My childhood bedroom, shared with Marnie, who I imagine would be both amused and mortified by my completely unromantic night with the hot ex-cop next door.

“Thank you,” I say. “You didn’t need to go to all that trouble.”

“Considering the state you were in, I kind of think I did.”

I say nothing after that, knowing it’s pointless to make excuses for getting so blitzed in such a short amount of time. I focus on finishing my breakfast, surprised when the plate is empty. When the mug of coffee is also drained, I get up and pour myself another.

“Maybe we should call Wilma and let her know what happened,” Boone says.

“Nothing happened,” I say. “Besides, it’ll require too much explanation.”

If we tell Wilma Anson about Tom coming to my door, we’ll also have to reveal why. And I’m not too keen on admitting to a member of the state police that I’ve illegally entered a person’s home. Tom’s the one I want in jail. Not me.

“Fine,” Boone says. “But don’t think for a second I’m leaving you here by yourself while he’s still around.”