Stranger in the Lake(89)
Her eyes narrow into slits. “Is that a threat?”
I stare at her across the teacups and that ridiculous dog, and my heart gives a warning thud. It wasn’t a threat, not an intentional one at least, but she’s already killed one woman to keep her son’s secret. Maybe it was a crime of passion—an impulse, a threat that threw her into a sudden rage—or maybe it’s something more sinister. Maybe she lured Sienna to the lake, to a place where the murder weapon was within reach. Either way, who’s to say Diana wouldn’t do it again?
Leave.
Suddenly, it’s the only thing I can think about, getting out of this house, this family. I glance around the room, taking inventory. The cut crystal figurine, the base of the candlestick, the pokers by the fireplace. For the first time, I am afraid of the woman before me. I have no doubt she saw silencing Sienna as a necessary sacrifice to protect Paul, but Diana’s reasoning is just as faulty as her son’s. Loyalty can’t cancel out a wrong. Love, no matter how big and broad, can’t balance these scales.
Only justice can.
“Congratulations,” I say, standing. “You finally achieved what you’ve been trying for all this time, because I’m done. I’m walking out this door and out of this family, and there’s not enough money in the world to stop me.”
I’m out the door seconds later, jogging down the steps to Chet’s Jeep, motioning for him to hurry up and start the car.
Every person has a single defining moment. A moment that veers their life in a new direction, that changes them at a cellular level and makes them question everything they thought they knew, that colors every thought and decision afterward. For Paul and Micah and Jax, it was that moment they landed in the lake. It turned Micah into a killer, drove Jax into the woods, made Paul secretive, turned him inward.
But this moment, this one right here, this is mine.
39
It’s only six blocks from Diana’s house to the police station, but Chet takes the long way, weaving up and down side streets so I can give him the highlights of my visit with Diana. The bribe. The jewelry. What I plan to do now that I know.
Because my goal hasn’t changed. I went there to protect the littlest Keller, and that’s still my plan, in the best way I know how.
“You’ll be here when I come out?” I say as he pulls to a stop in front of the door.
Chet’s eyes go wide, and he gives me an enthusiastic nod. “Dude, I am going nowhere. Now get in there and give ’em hell.”
By now it’s late afternoon, and the station is mostly empty, all but Doris, who runs the reception desk, and Sam, riffling through a file cabinet behind a waist-high wooden partition. He pulls out a well-thumbed file and points it at a sign on the wall to my left. I missed visiting hours by a whole twenty minutes.
“You can’t be serious.”
He gives me an apologetic shrug, though he doesn’t look the least bit sorry. “Rules are rules.” He sinks into a swivel chair at his desk and pretends to ignore me.
Frustration rises, bubbling in my chest and up my throat. “Sam, please. If you and I were ever friends, you’ll give me this. Ten minutes, that’s all I need.”
He looks up, his head tilted to the side. “Were we ever friends? Because, honestly, I can’t remember.”
“You know we were.” I think back to his face when he stormed out of the church, the way he shoved the door open with a sharp bang, and I actually flinch. “To tell you the truth, you kinda broke my heart.”
“Yeah, well, you broke mine first. So I guess that makes us even, doesn’t it?”
At that, Doris gives up all pretense and her head snaps up, her gaze flicking between us. By bedtime, everybody on both sides of the mountain will know what happened here, how after all this time, Sam and I finally had it out. He waits, watching me from the other side of the partition.
“You were right. Is that what you wanted to hear? I married a guy you warned me about, and now it’s blown up in my face, just like you said it would. Does that make you happy?”
“No, Charlie. None of this makes me happy.” He still looks pissed, but the sharpest edge is gone from his tone. “And for what it’s worth, I remember us being friends. That’s what makes this so damn hard. Because for a while there, I honestly and truly thought we were on the road to being more than friends. I thought that’s where this thing between us was headed.”
I nod because I know. If I’m being completely honest, I’ve always known. All those times Sam went quiet, watching me with a blend of frustration and longing. All the times he stood too close or stayed too long, like he was waiting for something to happen. He wanted me, and I wanted Paul. No wonder he spent this past year angry.
“I should have been more sensitive to that, and I’m sorry. If I could go back and do it all over again, there are a lot of things I’d do differently. Like tell you how much I loved you, just not in that way. But that was the whole problem. I loved our friendship too much to risk it.”
“So you sabotaged it instead.”
“You can’t help who you fall in love with, Sam. If you’ve learned anything from this shitshow, surely you know that.”
He puffs a pained laugh, and when I smile at him, he smiles back. It’s not a big smile. It’s not an easy one. But it’s a crack in that big, angry wall he’s put up between us, and I’m just stubborn enough to keep hacking.