Stranger in the Lake(67)
“In other words, you.”
He lifts both hands from the table. Paul has always been a shrewd businessman.
“But how come this is the first I’ve heard about it? If I hadn’t looked in the safe, I wouldn’t know about Pitts Cove or any of the other properties.”
“None of this is a secret. There are copies of the deeds all over the office, in the file cabinets and on the server. I just don’t talk about them much because they’re long-term investments. I can’t do anything until I own all the land, and that takes time.”
He looks me in the eye as he says it, and his words come without the slightest hesitation, not even the tiniest pause to think. So far, all his answers have come this way, and they all make a weird sort of sense. I want to believe it, but I can taste the lie buried underneath his words, the way this explanation is meant to deceive.
“You own all the land on Pitts Cove,” I remind him. “Every single inch.”
He nods. “True, but I can’t really do much with it just yet. The timing’s not exactly ideal.”
“Because Pitts Cove is haunted?”
He laughs, the first genuine one I’ve heard from him in days. “Come on. You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“No, but plenty of other people do. There’s not a soul around who doesn’t know what happened there, who’s been sitting on the lake bottom for the past twenty years. Nobody wants to live there.”
He shrugs. “So I’ll sit on the deeds a little longer.”
Before Paul, I thought being rich meant a full refrigerator. I thought it meant an insulated roof over my head and the ATM spitting out cash every time I tapped in my pin code. I never dreamed it meant sitting on a million-dollar investment until a collective memory fades. Who knows how long that will take? Maybe decades, maybe never. But Paul doesn’t seem the least bit worried.
And he’s so good at this, at explaining away all this baggage he’s kept locked away for years. It’s part of what attracted me to him—not the baggage, but his battle scars. The way we’d both emerged from our respective tragedies, damaged but still breathing.
Now, though, the answers seem too easy. The deeds, Katherine’s finances, his complicated history with Jax. I’m still missing an essential piece of the puzzle, and he’s still intentionally leaving it out. If Sam were here, he’d say it’s because my husband is a killer.
I think back to our roadside chat earlier today, those ugly words he said about the man I married. That Paul doesn’t have an alibi for Wednesday morning. That he and Katherine had been fighting before she died. That last one he’d heard from Micah—Paul’s lifelong best friend, the best man at our wedding—and he wasn’t the only one of Paul’s friends issuing a warning. Watch your back, Jax said to me, and I didn’t want to listen to him, either.
I look at Paul—the man I love, the father of my unborn child, the man I stood before in a church and made such beautiful promises—and I can’t separate the truth from the fiction. What is real? I have no idea.
“Are you cold?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“But you’re shivering.”
I sit on my hands, but it doesn’t stop them from shaking.
“Come on. Let’s get you home before you freeze.”
Paul gathers up the trash, stacking everything in a neat pile, tossing it into the barrel a few feet away. When he returns, he reaches out a hand, and I let him pull me off the bench. Tessie Williams, a former friend who filled her belly with shrimp cocktail and champagne at our wedding, snickers with her boyfriend as we pass.
We stop at the car, and I’m digging out my keys when he wraps a hand around my wrist. “Are we good?” No smile this time, but the message is clear. Do you believe me? Do you still love me like you used to?
Before this week, I wouldn’t have had to think about my answer, not even for a second. From the first time Paul and I met at my gas station counter, my feelings for him haven’t wavered. Not when my friends stopped waving when I walked down the streets of town. Not when every restaurant like this one fell silent, even though it’s filled with folks who talk plenty behind my back. Not once have I ever doubted my love for Paul, or that marrying him was the right thing.
But now... He steps up to me, so close I can feel his breath on my skin, his warm body pumping blood next to mine, my own cells responding. He looks like the man I’ve loved for fourteen months now, the one I fell for the instant he smiled across the counter, the one who can make me shiver just by touching me, but tonight the shiver is from fear. Fear I’ve made the wrong choice. Fear that by ignoring the rumors and pushing away all my doubts, I’m just as self-serving as my mother.
Fear of Paul, of what he’s done.
I look at him, and my heart revs with a heavy, cloying dread. “Yes, Paul. Everything’s perfectly fine.”
I’ve gotten so goddamn good at lying.
29
June 13, 1999
1:27 a.m.
Jax opened his eyes, and the first thing he noticed was the quiet. No blaring music, no engine vibrating under his seat, no Paul and Micah arguing up in the front. Just crickets and the cool mountain air, blowing through the open windows. He shivered and sat up.
“Hey, Paul,” he shouted. “Micah.”