The House Across the Lake(77)

Which means it isn’t. There’s no way it could be.

Relief starts to seep into both my body and brain as I realize that this is all a dream. Nothing but a bourbon-induced nightmare. There’s a very real possibility that I’m still on the porch, passed out in a rocking chair, at the mercy of my subconscious.

I run a hand along my cheek, wondering if I should slap myself awake. I fear it will only lead to disappointment. Because this doesn’t feel like a nightmare. Everything is too vivid, too real, from the mismatched antiques crowding the corners of the room like bystanders to the creak of the bed to the twin smells of body odor rising off Len and piss wafting from the nearby bucket.

A different thought occurs to me.

That instead of dreaming, maybe I’m actually dead and am only now realizing it. God knows how it happened. Alcohol poisoning. A heart attack. Maybe I drowned in the lake and that’s why I’m seeing Len in Katherine’s body. It’s my personal limbo, where my good and bad deeds are now colliding.

But it doesn’t explain Tom’s presence. Or why my heart is still beating. Or why sweat pops from my skin in the stifling basement. Or how the storm continues to rage outside.

“After what you did to me, of course you wouldn’t be happy,” Len says. “But don’t worry. I didn’t tell Tom about that.”

I’ve said exactly five words to my long-dead husband, which is five too many. Yet I can’t resist adding two more to the tally.

“Why not?”

“Because our secrets are as wedded together as we are. I did a bad thing, which caused you to do a bad thing.”

“Yours was far worse than mine, Len.”

“Murder is still murder,” he says.

“I didn’t murder you. You drowned.”

“Semantics,” Len says. “You’re the reason I’m dead.”

That part is true, but it’s only half the story. The rest—memories I never want to think about but am always thinking about—crashes over me like a thousand waves. All those details I’d try to chase away with whatever liquor I could get my hands on. They’re back.

Every.

Single.

One.

And I’m drowning in them.

I remember leaning over the edge of the boat, watching Len splash and sputter for what was probably minutes but felt like hours, thinking the whole time that it wasn’t too late, that I could dive in, save him, take him ashore and call the police, but also realizing I had no desire to do that.

Because he’d done terrible things and deserved to be punished.

Because I had loved him and trusted him and adored him and now hated him for not being the man I thought he was.

So I stopped myself from diving in. From saving him. From taking him ashore. From calling the police.

I stopped myself and watched him drown.

Then, when I was certain he was dead, I hauled up the anchor and rowed the boat back to shore. Inside the house, the first thing I did was pour a bourbon, beginning a pattern that continues to this day. I took it to the porch and sat in one of the rocking chairs, drinking and watching the water, fearful that Len hadn’t really drowned and I’d see him swimming to the dock at any second.

After an hour had passed and the ice in my empty glass had melted to shards, I decided I needed to call someone and confess.

I chose Marnie. She had a level head. She’d know what to do. But I couldn’t bring my finger to tap the phone and make the call. Not for my sake. For Marnie’s. I didn’t want to drag her into my dirty deeds, make her complicit in something she had nothing to do with. But there’s another reason I didn’t call her, one I only realized in hindsight.

I didn’t want her to turn me in.

Which she would have done. Marnie is a good person, far better than me, and she wouldn’t have hesitated to get the police involved. Not to punish me. Because it was the right thing to do.

And I, who had definitely not done the right thing, didn’t want to risk it.

Because this wasn’t a cut-and-dried case of self-defense. Len didn’t try to physically hurt me. Maybe he would have without that potent cocktail of alcohol and antihistamine churning in his system. But he was drunk and drugged and I had plenty of ways to get away.

Even if I did claim self-defense, the police wouldn’t see it that way. They would only see a woman who drugged her husband, took him out on the lake, shoved him overboard, and watched him drown. It didn’t matter that he was a serial killer. Or that those locks of hair and stolen IDs were proof of his crimes. The police would still charge me with murder, even though I hadn’t killed my husband.

He drowned.

I just chose not to save him.

But the police would make me pay for it anyway. And I didn’t want to be punished for punishing Len.

He deserved it.

I didn’t.

So I covered my tracks.

First I removed the hair and licenses from the dresser drawer, wiped them clean with the handkerchief I’d found them in, and hid everything behind the loose plank in the basement wall.

Then I brewed a pot of coffee, poured it into Len’s battered thermos, and returned to the basement. There, I grabbed everything Len took with him when he went fishing. The floppy green hat, the fishing rod, the tackle box.

When I exited through the blue door, I left it open just a crack to make it look like Len had also used it. I then carried everything to the boat, which wasn’t easy. It was dark and I couldn’t use a flashlight because my arms were full and I feared someone on the opposite shore would notice it.