Stranger in the Lake(22)
“I loved her for every day of our time together. I would have loved her the rest of our lives. That’s why all the talk afterward was so infuriating, so unbelievably appalling. Those people don’t know me at all. They didn’t see how I suffered.”
“God, Paul. I’m so sorry.”
He stopped in the middle of the path then, turning back. “No, I’m sorry for burdening you with all this. But I know I’m the elephant in every room in this town. I know how people talk, and I wanted you to hear it from me, not them. Even though, obviously, it’s still a painful subject.”
Obviously. And he’d waited until he was here, leading me up a hiking trail, rather than face-to-face across a dinner table. A group of rowdy hikers came bounding down the trail, and Paul slapped on a smile for them, for me. By the time they disappeared into the woods, the moment had passed.
We started back up the hill, and that was when I knew.
The thing I wanted more than anything, the only thing, was for Paul to love me like he had once loved Katherine.
10
A half-dozen trips up and down the hill later and I am officially done. Spaghetti legs, freezer-burn lungs, skin tingling like I’ve been slapped all over. I can’t keep up with the thirst of Micah and the others, at last count seven hungry bodies who’ve sucked down the coffee faster than I can make it, along with five packs of cookies and two banana breads I dug out of the freezer, defrosted and slathered in cream cheese.
By now the body is long gone, laid out on some cold metal slab at Harris Regional, being poked and prodded by the medical examiner. The cops have made a mess of the back hill, a crisscross of muddy tracks and footprints fanning out from a blue party tent they erected over a flat spot at the bottom. They’ve dragged over a teak table and some chairs, arranged them around a firepit they coaxed into a roaring bonfire. It sends up smoke signals people can see for miles. Dead woman found here. Rubberneckers welcome.
The mess inside is not much better, wrappers and crumbs and coffee grounds scattered like dirt across the marble of the kitchen island. I swipe the trash into the can and the grounds into the sink along with my breakfast, a bowl of oatmeal now congealed into a gooey chunk. I shove it down the disposal, and the way it clings to my spoon sends a wave of nausea rolling through. Eat or puke, I can’t decide. So far this pregnancy hasn’t been much fun.
Especially since there’s no one here for me to share it with. I think of Paul, of his trek to find Jax, and the tears rise unexpectedly, hot and sudden. Paul has told me almost nothing about his former best friend, why the summer after their senior year Jax went off the deep end, walked away from his family and friends, and disappeared into the woods.
Paul’s silence makes it all too easy to believe the rumors. That Jax cheated Paul out of money or popularity, or he slept with one of Paul’s girlfriends. That there was a fight that got out of control, a fit of jealousy, a push too hard. That Jax hit his head, knocked something loose. That the devil made him do it. Lake Crosby gossip and speculation because the people who know—Paul and Micah and Jax—aren’t talking.
I hate that Paul left me here to deal with Micah and Sam, with work and clients, with his mother, who has surely spotted the smoke signals by now. I hate that in a few hours, the sun is going to sink behind the trees and everybody will pack up and leave. The windows will go black with night, and I’ll be in this big house all alone.
The front door swings open, and I jump. “Hey, Charlie, what’s with all the cop cars?”
My brother, Chet, the only soul on the planet still allowed to call me Charlie. My cell has been lighting up with his messages all morning, and the truth is I’ve been expecting him. My brother is a needy guy, and he doesn’t take well to anybody ignoring him, least of all me.
I swipe my eyes with my sleeves, clear the tears from my throat. “In the kitchen.”
There’s the thump of him kicking the heavy door with a boot, the thuds of his soles echoing in the high atrium of the house as he heads straight for the back window. He presses his face to the glass, looking down the hill to where Micah and the others are trampling what’s left of the summer grass. “What’s going on? Did somebody get arrested or something?”
“No. Somebody died.”
His head whips around, his eyes bulging. “No shit. Like died, died?”
I nod, flipping on the water and rinsing out my bowl. “She washed up sometime last night.”
He glances back out the window, down the hill to the dock. “Popular spot.”
I don’t want to feel that little niggle of doubt, but it nudges me between the ribs anyway. One body under the dock is a tragedy. Two is a pattern. I tell myself that it is a coincidence, that Paul had nothing to do with either. He was in bed with me all last night, and he loved Katherine. Her death was an accident, one he mourns to this day.
And yet I still hear all Sam’s awful, horrible arguments, the words he said the night before I walked down the aisle to marry Paul. That former competitive swimmers don’t just sink to the bottom of the lake. That drowning is the hardest murder to prove. That one of the reasons Paul is so loaded is because he inherited all her wealth. I don’t know how much, but it’s got to be millions. Her family had even more money than Paul’s, and she got it all when they passed.
“Chet, stop. This is serious. They think she was murdered.”