Chapter no 2 – ‌‌BEFORE‌

The House Across the Lake PDF

I see it out of the corner of my eye.

A breach of the water’s surface. Ripples.

Sunlight.

Something rising from the water, then sinking back under.

I’ve been watching the lake at a mental remove, which happens when you’ve seen something a thousand times. Looking but not really. Seeing everything, registering nothing.

Bourbon might have something to do with that. I’m on my third.

Maybe fourth.

Counting drinks—another thing I do at a remove.

But the motion in the water now has my full attention. Rising from the rocking chair onto legs unsteady after three (or four) day drinks, I watch the lake’s glassy surface again break into sun-dappled circles.

I squint, trying to emerge from the bourbon haze long enough to see what it is. It’s useless. The movement is located in the dead center of the lake—too far away to see clearly.

I leave the back porch of the lake house, step inside, and shuﬄe to the cramped foyer just beyond the front door. A coatrack is there, buried under anoraks and rain slickers. Among them is a pair of binoculars in a leather case

hanging from a frayed strap, untouched for more than a year.

Binoculars in hand, I return to the back porch and stand at the railing, scanning the lake. The ripples reappear, and in the epicenter, a hand emerges from the water.

The binoculars drop to the porch floor. I think: Someone’s drowning.

I think: I need to save them.

I think: Len.

That last thought—of my husband, of how he died in this same deep water—propels me into action. I push off the railing, the movement jiggling the ice in the bourbon glass next to the rocking chair. It clinks lightly as I leave the porch, scurry down the steps, and spring across the few yards of mossy ground between the house and the water’s edge. The wooden dock shudders when I leap onto it and continues to shake as I run to the motorboat moored at its end. I untie the boat, wobble into it, grab a paddle, and push off the dock.

The boat twirls a moment, doing a less-than-elegant pirouette atop the water before I straighten it out with the paddle. Once the boat’s pointed toward the center of the lake, I start the outboard motor with an arm-aching tug. Five seconds later, the boat is gliding over the water, toward where I last saw the circular ripples but now see nothing.

I start to hope that what I saw was merely a fish leaping out of the water. Or a loon diving into it. Or that the sun, the reflection of the sky on the lake, and several bourbons caused me to see something that wasn’t really there.

Wishful thinking, all of it.

Because as the boat nears the middle of the lake, I spot something in the water.

A body.

Bobbing on the surface. Motionless.

I cut the motor and scramble to the front of the boat to get a better view. I can’t tell if the person is faceup or facedown, alive or dead. All I can see are the shadows of outstretched limbs in the water and a tangle of hair floating like kelp. I get a mental picture of Len in this very position and yell toward the shore.

“Help! Someone’s drowning!”

The words echo off the flame-hued trees on both sides of the lake, likely heard by no one. It’s the middle of October, and Lake Greene, never crowded to begin with, is all but abandoned. The only full-time resident is Eli, and he’s gone until evening. If someone else is around, they aren’t making their presence known.

I’m on my own.

I grab the paddle again and start to row toward the person in the water. A woman, I see now. Her hair is long. A one-piece bathing suit exposes a tanned back, long legs, toned arms. She floats like driftwood, bobbing gently in the boat’s wake.

Yet another image of Len pushes into my brain as I scramble for the anchor tied to one of the cleats on the boat’s rim. The anchor isn’t heavy—only twenty pounds— but weighty enough to keep the boat from drifting. I drop it into the water, the rope attached to it hissing against the side of the boat as it sinks to the lake’s bottom.

Next, I snag a life vest stowed under one of the seats, stumble to the side of the boat, and join the anchor in the water. I enter the lake awkwardly. No graceful dive for me. It’s more of a sideways plop. But the coldness of the water sobers me like a slap. Senses sharpened and body stinging,

I tuck the life vest under my left arm and use my right to paddle toward the woman.

I’m a strong swimmer, even half drunk. I grew up on Lake Greene and spent many summer days more in the water than out of it. And even though fourteen months have passed since I’ve submerged myself in the lake, the water is as familiar to me as my own bed. Bracing, even on the hottest days, and crystal clear for only a moment before darkness takes over.

Splashing toward the floating woman, I search for signs of life.

There’s nothing.

No twitch of her arms or kick of her feet or slow turn of her head.

One thought echoes through my skull as I reach her.

Part plea, part prayer.

Please don’t be dead. Please, please be alive.

But when I hook the life vest around her neck and flip her over, she doesn’t look alive. Hugged by the life vest and with her head tilted toward the sky, she resembles a corpse. Closed eyes. Blue lips. Frigid skin. I connect the straps at the bottom of the life vest, tightening it around her, and slap a hand to her chest.

No trace of a heartbeat. Fuck.

I want to shout for help again, but I’m too winded to get the words out. Even strong swimmers have their limits, and I’ve reached mine. Exhaustion pulls at me like a tide, and I know a few more minutes of paddling in place while clinging to a maybe/probably dead woman might leave me just like her.

I put one arm around her waist and use the other to start paddling back to the boat. I have no idea what to do

when I reach it. Cling to the side, I guess. Hold on tight while also holding on to the likely/definitely dead woman and hope I regain enough lung power to scream again.

And that this time someone will hear me.

Right now, though, my main concern is getting back to the boat at all. I didn’t think to grab a life vest for myself, and now my strokes are slowing and my heart is pounding and I can no longer feel my legs kicking, even though I think they still are. The water’s so cold and I’m so tired. So scarily, unbearably exhausted that for a moment I consider taking the woman’s life vest for myself and letting her drift into the depths.

Self-preservation kicking in.

I can’t save her without saving myself first, and she might already be beyond rescue. But then I think again about Len, dead for more than a year now, his body found crumpled on the shore of this very lake. I can’t let the same thing happen to this woman.

So I continue my one-armed paddling and numb kicking and tugging of what I’m now certain is a corpse. I keep at it until the boat is ten feet away.

Then nine. Then eight.

Beside me, the woman’s body suddenly spasms. A shocking jolt. This time, I do let go, my arm recoiling in surprise.

The woman’s eyes snap open.

She coughs—a series of long, loud, gurgling hacks. A spout of water flies from her mouth and trickles down her chin while a line of snot runs from her left nostril to her cheek. She wipes it all away and stares at me, confused, breathless, and terrified.

“What just happened?”

“Don’t freak out,” I say, recalling her blue lips, her ice- cold skin, her utter, unnerving stillness. “But I think you almost drowned.”

Neither one of us speaks again until we’re both safely in the boat. There wasn’t time for words as I clawed, kicked, and climbed my way up the side

until I was able to flop onto the boat floor like a recently caught fish. Getting the woman on board was even harder, seeing how her near-death experience had sapped all her energy. It took so much tugging and lifting on my part that, once she was in the boat, I was too exhausted to move, let alone speak.

But now, after a few minutes of panting, we’ve pulled ourselves into seats. The woman and I face each other, shell-shocked by the whole situation and all too happy to rest a few minutes while we regroup.

“You said I almost drowned,” the woman says.

She’s wrapped in a plaid blanket I found stowed under one of the boat’s seats, which gives her the look of a kitten rescued from a storm drain. Battered and vulnerable and grateful.

“Yes,” I say as I wring water from my flannel shirt. Because there’s only one blanket on board, I remain soaked and chilly. I don’t mind. I’m not the one who needed rescue.

“Define almost.”

“Honestly? I thought you were dead.”

Beneath the blanket, the woman shudders. “Jesus.”

“But I was wrong,” I add, trying to soothe her obvious shock. “Clearly. You came back on your own. I did nothing.”

The woman shifts in her seat, revealing a flash of bright bathing suit deep within the blanket. Teal. So tropical. And so inappropriate for autumn in Vermont it makes me wonder how she even ended up here. If she told me aliens had zapped her to Lake Greene from a white-sand beach in the Seychelles, I’d almost believe it.

“Still, I’m sure I would have died if you hadn’t seen me,” she says. “So thank you for coming to my rescue. I should have said that sooner. Like, immediately.”

I respond with a modest shrug. “I won’t hold a grudge.”

The woman laughs, and in the process comes alive in a way that banishes all traces of the person I’d found floating in the water. Color has returned to her face—a peachy blush that highlights her high cheekbones, full lips, pencil- line brows. Her gray-green eyes are wide and expressive, and her nose is slightly crooked, a flaw that comes off as charming amid all that perfection. She’s gorgeous, even huddled under a blanket and dripping lake water.

She catches me staring and says, “I’m Katherine, by the way.”

It’s only then that I realize I know this woman. Not personally. We’ve never met, as far as I can remember. But I recognize her just the same.

Katherine Royce. Former supermodel.

Current philanthropist.

And, with her husband, owner of the house directly across the lake. It had been vacant the last time I was here, on the market for north of five million dollars. It made headlines when it sold over the winter, not just because of who bought the house but because of where it was located.

Lake Greene.

The Vermont hideaway of beloved musical theater icon Lolly Fletcher.

And the place where troubled actress Casey Fletcher’s husband tragically drowned.

Not the first time those adjectives have been used to describe my mother and me. They’ve been employed so often they might as well be our first names. Beloved Lolly Fletcher and Troubled Casey Fletcher. A mother-daughter duo for the ages.

“I’m Casey,” I say.

“Oh, I know,” Katherine says. “Tom—that’s my husband

—and I meant to stop by and say hello when we arrived last night. We’re both big fans.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“Your lights were on,” Katherine says, pointing to the lake house that’s been in my family for generations.

The house isn’t the biggest on Lake Greene—that honor goes to Katherine’s new home—but it’s the oldest. Built by my great-great-grandfather in 1878 and renovated and expanded every fifty years or so. From the water, the lake house looks lovely. Perched close to shore, tall and solid behind a retaining wall of mountain stone, it’s almost a parody of New England quaintness. Two pristinely white stories of gables, latticework, and gingerbread trim. Half the house runs parallel to the water’s edge, so close that the wraparound porch practically overhangs the lake itself.

That’s where I was sitting this afternoon when I first spotted Katherine flailing in the water.

And where I was sitting last night when I was too drunk to notice the arrival of the famous couple that now owns the house directly across the lake.

The other half of my family’s lake house is set back about ten yards, forming a small courtyard. High above it,

on the house’s top floor, a row of tall windows provides a killer view from the master bedroom. Right now, in mid- afternoon, the windows are hidden in the shadow of towering pines. But at night, I suspect the glow from the master bedroom is as bright as a lighthouse.

“The place was dark all summer,” Katherine says. “When Tom and I noticed the lights last night, we assumed it was you.”

She tactfully avoids mentioning why she and her husband assumed it was me and not, say, my mother.

I know they know my story. Everyone does.

The only allusion Katherine makes to my recent troubles is a kind, concerned “How are you, by the way? It’s rough, what you’re going through. Having to handle all that.”

She leans forward and touches my knee—a surprisingly intimate gesture for someone I’ve just met, even taking into account the fact that I likely did save her life.

“I’m doing fantastic,” I say, because to admit the truth would open myself to having to talk about all that, to use Katherine’s phrasing.

I’m not ready for that yet, even though it’s been more than a year. Part of me thinks I’ll never be ready.

“That’s great,” Katherine says, her smile as bright as a sunbeam. “I feel bad about almost ruining that by, you know, drowning.”

“If it’s any consolation, it made for one hell of a first impression.”

She laughs. Thank God. My sense of humor has been described as dry by some, cruel by others. I prefer to think of it as an acquired taste, similar to the olive at the bottom of a martini. You either like it or you don’t.

Katherine seems to like it. Still smiling, she says, “The thing is, I don’t even know how it happened. I’m an excellent swimmer. I know it doesn’t look that way right now, but it’s true, I swear. I guess the water was colder than I thought, and I cramped up.”

“It’s the middle of October. The lake is freezing this time of year.”

“Oh, I love swimming in the cold. Every New Year’s Day, I do the Polar Plunge.”

I nod. Of course she does.

“It’s for charity,” Katherine adds. I nod again. Of course it is.

I must make a face, because Katherine says, “I’m sorry.

That all sounded like a brag, didn’t it?” “A little,” I admit.

“Ugh. I don’t mean to do it. It just happens. It’s like the opposite of a humblebrag. There should be a word for when you accidentally make yourself sound better than you truly are.”

“A bumblebrag?” I suggest.

“Ooh, I like that,” Katherine coos. “That’s what I am, Casey. An irredeemable bumblebragger.”

My gut instinct is to dislike Katherine Royce. She’s the kind of woman who seems to exist solely to make the rest of us feel inferior. Yet I’m charmed by her. Maybe it’s the strange situation we’re in—the rescued and the rescuer, sitting in a boat on a beautiful autumn afternoon. It’s got a surreal Little Mermaid vibe to it. Like I’m a prince transfixed by a siren I’ve just plucked from the sea.

There doesn’t seem to be anything fake about Katherine. She’s beautiful, yes, but in a down-to-earth way. More girl-next-door than intimidating bombshell. Betty and Veronica sporting a self-deprecating smile. It served her

well during her modeling days. In a world where resting bitch face is the norm, Katherine stood out.

I first became aware of her seven years ago, when I was doing a Broadway play in a theater on 46th Street. Just down the block, in the heart of Times Square, was a giant billboard of Katherine in a wedding dress. Despite the gown, the flowers, the sun-kissed skin, she was no blushing bride. Instead, she was on the run—kicking off her heels and sprinting through emerald green grass as her jilted fiancé and stunned wedding party watched helplessly in the background.

I didn’t know if the ad was for perfume or wedding dresses or vodka. I really didn’t care. What I focused on every time I spotted the billboard was the look on the woman’s face. With her eyes crinkling and her smile wide, she seemed elated, relieved, surprised. A woman overjoyed to be dismantling her entire existence in one fell swoop.

I related to that look. I still do.

Only after the play closed and I continued seeing the woman’s picture everywhere did I match a name with the face.

Katherine Daniels.

The magazines called her Katie. The designers who made her their muse called her Kat. She walked runways for Yves Saint Laurent and frolicked on the beach for Calvin Klein and rolled around on silk sheets for Victoria’s Secret.

Then she got married to Thomas Royce, the founder and CEO of a social media company, and the modeling stopped. I remember seeing their wedding photo in People magazine and being surprised by it. I expected Katherine to look the way she did on that billboard. Freedom personified.

Instead, sewn into a Vera Wang gown and clutching her husband’s arm, she sported a smile so clenched I almost didn’t recognize her.

Now she’s here, in my boat, grinning freely, and I feel a weird sense of relief that the woman from that billboard hadn’t vanished entirely.

“Can I ask you a very personal, very nosy question?” I say.

“You just saved my life,” Katherine says. “I’d be a real bitch if I said no right now, don’t you think?”

“It’s about your modeling days.”

Katherine stops me with a raised hand. “You want to know why I quit.”

“Kind of,” I say, adding a guilty shrug. I feel bad about being obvious, not to mention basic. I could have asked her a thousand other things but instead posed the question she clearly gets the most.

“The long version is that it’s a lot less glamorous than it looks. The hours were endless and the diet was torture. Imagine not being allowed to eat a single piece of bread for an entire year.”

“I honestly can’t,” I say.

“That alone was reason enough to quit,” Katherine says. “And sometimes I just tell people that. I look them in the eye and say, ‘I quit because I wanted to eat pizza.’ But the worst part, honestly, was having all the focus be on my looks. All that nonstop primping and objectification. No one cared about what I said. Or thought. Or felt. It got real old, real quick. Don’t get me wrong, the money was great. Like, insanely great. And the clothes were amazing. So beautiful. Works of art, all of them. But it felt wrong. People are suffering. Children are starving. Women are being victimized. And there I was walking the runway in dresses

that cost more than what most families make in a year. It was ghoulish.”

“Sounds a lot like acting.” I pause. “Or being a show pony.”

Katherine laugh-snorts, and I decide right then and there that I do indeed like her. We’re the same in a lot of ways. Famous for reasons we’re not entirely comfortable with. Ridiculously privileged, but self-aware enough to realize it. Yearning to be seen as more than what people project onto us.

“Anyway, that’s the long story,” she says. “Told only to people who save me from drowning.”

“What’s the short version?”

Katherine looks away, to the other side of the lake, where her house dominates the shoreline. “Tom wanted me to stop.”

A dark look crosses her face. It’s brief—like the shadow of a cloud on the water. I expect her to say something more about her husband and why he’d make such a demand. Instead, Katherine’s mouth drops open and she begins to cough.

Hard.

Much harder than earlier.

These are deep, rough hacks loud enough to echo off the water. The blanket falls away, and Katherine hugs herself until she rides out the coughing fit. She looks frightened when it’s over. Another cloud shadow passes over her face, and for a second she looks like she has no idea what just happened. But then the cloud vanishes and she flashes a reassuring smile.

“Well, that was unladylike,” she says. “Are you okay?”

“I think so.” Katherine’s hands tremble as she pulls the blanket back over her goose-pimpled shoulders. “But it’s probably time to go home now.”

“Of course,” I say. “You must be freezing.”

I certainly am. Now that the adrenaline of my earlier attempted heroics has worn off, a fierce chill takes hold. My body shivers as I haul the anchor up from the bottom of the lake. The entire rope—all fifty feet of it—is wet from being stretched underwater. By the time I’m finished with the anchor, my arms are so spent it takes me several tugs to start the motor.

I start to steer the boat toward Katherine’s place. Her house is an anomaly on the lake in that it’s the only one built after the seventies. What had previously been there was a perfectly acceptable bungalow from the thirties surrounded by tall pines.

Twenty years ago, the bungalow was removed. So were the pines.

Now in their place is an angular monstrosity that juts from the earth like a chunk of rock. The side facing the lake is almost entirely covered in glass, from the wide, rambling ground floor to the tip of the peaked roof. During the day, it’s impressive, if a little boring. The real estate equivalent of a store window with nothing on display.

But at night, when all the rooms are lit up, it takes on the appearance of a dollhouse. Each room is visible. Gleaming kitchen. Sparkling dining room. Wide living room that runs the length of the stone patio behind the house that leads to the edge of the lake.

I’ve been inside only once, when Len and I were invited to dinner by the previous owners. It felt weird to be sitting behind all that glass. Like a specimen in a petri dish.

Not that there are many people around watching. Lake Greene is small, as lakes go. A mile long and only a quarter mile wide in spots, it sits alone in a thick patch of forest in eastern Vermont. It was formed at the tail end of the Ice Age, when a glacier plowing its way across the land decided to leave a chunk of itself behind. That ice melted, digging a trough in the earth into which its water eventually settled. Which basically makes it a puddle. Very big and very deep and quite lovely to look at, but a puddle all the same.

It’s also private, which is the main draw. The water is only accessible by one of the residential docks, of which there are few. Only five houses sit on the lake, thanks to large lot sizes and a shortage of additional land suitable for construction. The northern end of the lake is lined with protected forest. The southern end is a steep, rocky bluff. In the middle are the houses, two on one side, three on the other.

It’s the latter side where Katherine lives. Her house sits tall and imposing between two older, more modest structures. To the left, about a hundred yards down the shore, is the Fitzgerald place. He’s in banking. She dabbles in antiques. They arrive at their charming cottage on Memorial Day weekend and depart on Labor Day, leaving the place empty the rest of the year.

Sitting to the right of the Royces’ is the ramshackle abode of Eli Williams, a novelist who was big in the eighties and not so big now. His house resembles a Swiss chalet— three stories of rough-hewn wood with tiny balconies on the upper floors and red shutters at the windows. Like my family, Eli and his wife summered at Lake Greene. When she died, Eli sold their house in New Jersey and moved here full-time. As the lake’s only permanent resident, he

now keeps an eye on the other houses when everyone else is away.

There are no lights on in Katherine’s house, making its glass wall reflect the lake like a mirror. I catch a distorted glimpse of the two of us in the boat, our reflections wobbling, as if we’re made of water ourselves.

When I bring the boat to the property’s dock, Katherine leans forward and takes my cold hands in hers. “Thank you again. You truly did save my life.”

“It was nothing,” I say. “Besides, I’d be a terrible person if I ignored a supermodel in need.”

“Former supermodel.”

She coughs again. A single, harsh bark.

“Are you going to be okay?” I say. “Do you need to go to a doctor or something?”

“I’ll be fine. Tom will be back soon. Until then, I think I’ll take a hot shower and a long nap.”

She steps onto the dock and realizes my blanket is still over her shoulders. “God, I forgot all about this.”

“Keep it for now,” I say. “You need it more than I do.”

Katherine nods her thanks and starts to make her way toward the house. Although I don’t think it’s intentional, she walks the dock as if navigating a runway. Her stride is lengthy, smooth, elegant. Katherine might have grown tired of the modeling world, with good reason, but the way she moves is a gift. She has the effortless grace of a ghost.

Once she reaches the house, she turns back to me and waves with her left hand.

Only then do I notice something strange.

Katherine mentioned her husband several times, but— for now at least—she’s not wearing a wedding ring.

My phone is ringing when I return to the lake house, its angry-bird chirp audible as I climb the porch steps. Because I’m wet, tired, and chilled

to the bone, my first instinct is to ignore it. But then I see who’s calling.

Marnie.

Wonderful, caustic, patient-beyond-her-years Marnie.

The only person not yet completely fed up with my bullshit, which is probably because she’s my cousin. And my best friend. And my manager, although today she’s firmly in friend mode.

“This isn’t a business call,” she announces when I answer.

“I assumed that,” I say, knowing there’s no business to call about. Not now. Maybe not ever again.

“I just wanted to know how the old swamp is doing.” “Are you referring to me or the lake?”

“Both.”

Marnie pretends to have a love-hate relationship with Lake Greene, even though I know it’s really only love. When we were kids, we spent every summer here together, swimming and canoeing and staying up half the night while Marnie told ghost stories.

“You know the lake is haunted, right?” she always began, scrunched at the foot of the bed in the room we shared, her tanned legs stretched, her bare feet flat against the slanted ceiling.

“It feels weird to be back,” I say as I drop into a rocking chair. “Sad.”

“Naturally.” “And lonely.”

This place is too big for just one person. It started off small—a mere cottage on a lonely lake. As the years passed and additions were added, it turned into something intended for a brood. It feels so empty now that it’s just me. Last night, when I found myself wide awake at two a.m., I roamed from room to room, unnerved by all that unoccupied space.

Third floor. The sleeping quarters. Five bedrooms in all, ranging in size from the large master suite, with its own bathroom, to the small two-bedder with the slanted ceiling where Marnie and I slept as children.

Second floor. The main living area, a maze of cozy rooms leading into each other. The living room, with its great stone fireplace and pillow-filled reading nook under the stairs. The den, cursed with a moose head on the wall that unnerved me as a child and still does in adulthood. It’s home to the lake house’s sole television, which is why I don’t watch much TV when I’m here. It always feels like the moose is studying my every move.

Next to the den is the library, a lovely spot usually neglected because its windows face only trees and not the lake itself. After that is a long line of necessities sitting in a row—laundry room, powder room, kitchen, dining room.

Wrapped around it all, like ribbon on a present, is the porch. Wicker chairs in the front, wooden rockers in the back.

First floor. The walkout basement. The only place I refuse to go.

More than any other part of the house, it makes me think of Len.

“It’s natural to feel lonely,” Marnie says. “You’ll get used to it. Is anyone else at the lake besides Eli?”

“As a matter of fact, there is. Katherine Royce.” “The model?”

“Former model,” I say, remembering what Katherine told me as she was getting out of the boat. “She and her husband bought the house across the lake.”

“Vacation with the stars at Lake Greene, Vermont!” Marnie says in her best TV-pitchwoman voice. “Was she bitchy? Models always strike me as being bitchy.”

“She was super sweet, actually. Although that might have been because I saved her from drowning.”

“Seriously?” “Seriously.”

“If the paparazzi had been around for that,” Marnie says, “your career prospects would look very different right now.”

“I thought this wasn’t a business call.”

“It’s not,” she insists. “It’s a please-take-care-of-yourself call. We’ll deal with the business stuff when you’re allowed to leave.”

I sigh. “And that’s up to my mother. Which means I’m never leaving. I’ve been sentenced to life in prison.”

“I’ll talk to Aunt Lolly about getting you parole. In the meantime, you have your new model friend to keep you company. You meet her husband?”

“Haven’t had the pleasure yet.”

“I heard he’s weird,” Marnie says. “Weird how?”

She pauses, choosing her words carefully. “Intense.”

“Are we talking Tom Cruise jumping-on-a-couch intense?

Or Tom Cruise dangling-from-an-airplane intense?”

“Couch,” Marnie says. “No, airplane. Is there a difference?”

“Not really.”

“Tom Royce is more like the guy who holds meetings during CrossFit sessions and never stops working. You don’t use his app, do you?”

“No.”

I avoid all forms of social media, which are basically hazardous waste sites with varying levels of toxicity. I have enough issues to deal with. I don’t need the added stress of seeing complete strangers on Twitter tell me how much they hate me. Also, I can’t trust myself to behave. I can’t begin to imagine the nonsense I’d post with six drinks in me. It’s best to stay away.

Tom Royce’s endeavor is basically a combination of LinkedIn and Facebook. Mixer, it’s called. Allowing business professionals to connect by sharing their favorite bars, restaurants, golf courses, and vacation spots. Its slogan is “Work and play definitely mix.”

Not in my line of work. God knows I’ve tried.

“Good,” Marnie says. “That wouldn’t be a good look for you.”

“Really? I think it’s very on brand.”

Marnie’s voice drops an octave. Her concerned voice, which I’ve heard often in the past year. “Please don’t joke, Casey. Not about this. I’m worried about you. And not as your manager. As your friend and as family. I can’t begin to understand what you’re going through, but you don’t need to do it alone.”

“I’m trying,” I say as I eye the glass of bourbon I abandoned in order to rescue Katherine. I’m gripped by the

urge to take a sip, but I know Marnie will hear it if I do. “I just need time.”

“So take it,” Marnie says. “You’re fine financially. And this madness will all die down eventually. Just spend the next few weeks focusing on you.”

“I will.”

“Good. And call me if you need anything. Anything at all.”

“I will,” I say again.

Like the first time, I don’t mean it. There’s nothing Marnie can do to change the situation. The only person who can get me out of the mess I’ve created is me.

Something I’m not inclined to do at the moment.

I get another call two minutes after hanging up with Marnie.

My mother making her daily four p.m. check-in.

Instead of my cell, she always calls the ancient rotary phone in the lake house’s den, knowing its annoying ring makes it more likely I’ll answer. She’s right. In the three days since my return, I’ve tried to ignore that insistent trilling but have always given in before five rings.

Today, I make it to seven before going inside and picking up. If I don’t answer now, I know she’ll keep calling until I do.

“I just want to know how you’re settling in,” my mother says, which is exactly what she told me yesterday.

And the day before that.

“Everything’s fine,” I say, which is exactly what I told

her yesterday.

And the day before that. “And the house?”

“Also fine. That’s why I used the word everything.”

She ignores my snark. If there’s one person on this earth unfazed by my sarcasm, it’s Lolly Fletcher. She’s had thirty-six years of practice.

“And have you been drinking?” she asks—the real purpose of her daily phone call.

“Of course not.”

I glance at the moose head, which gives me a glassy- eyed stare from its perch on the wall. Even though it’s been dead for almost a century, I can’t shake the feeling the moose is judging me for lying.

“I sincerely hope that’s true,” my mother says. “If it is, please keep it that way. If it’s not, well, I’ll have no other choice but to send you somewhere more effective.”

Rehab.

That’s what she means. Shipping me off to some Malibu facility with the word Promise or Serenity or Hope in its name. I’ve been to places like that before and hated them. Which is why my mother always hints at the idea when she wants me to behave. It’s the veiled threat she’s never willing to fully reveal.

“You know I don’t want that,” she adds. “It would just cause another round of bad publicity. And I can’t bear the thought of you being abused by those nasty gossip people more than you already are.”

That’s one of the few things my mother and I agree on. The gossip people are indeed nasty. And while calling what they do abuse is taking it a bit too far, they certainly are annoying. The reason I’m sequestered at Lake Greene and not my Upper West Side apartment is to escape the prying gaze of the paparazzi. They’ve been relentless. Waiting outside my building. Following me into Central Park. Covering my every move and trying to catch me with a drink in my hand.

I finally got so sick of the surveillance that I marched to the nearest bar, sat outside with a double old-fashioned, and gulped it down while a dozen cameras clicked away. The next morning, a picture of that moment appeared on the cover of the New York Post.

“Casey’s Booze Binge” was the headline.

That afternoon, my mother showed up at my door with her driver, Ricardo, in tow.

“I think you should go to the lake for a month, don’t you?”

Despite her phrasing it as a question, I had no say in the matter. Her tone made it clear I was going whether I wanted to or not, that Ricardo would drive me, and that I shouldn’t even think about stopping at a liquor store along the way.

So here I am, in solitary confinement. My mother swears it’s for my own good, but I know the score. I’m being punished. Because although half of what happened wasn’t my fault, the other half was entirely my doing.

A few weeks ago, an acquaintance who edits celebrity memoirs approached me about writing my own. “Most stars find it very cathartic,” she said.

I told her yes, but only if it I could call it How to Become Tabloid Fodder in Seven Easy Steps. She thought I was joking, and maybe I was, but I still stand by the title. I think people would understand me better if I laid out my life like Ikea instructions.

Step One, of course, is to be the only child of Beloved Lolly Fletcher, Broadway icon, and Gareth Greene, a rather milquetoast producer.

My mother made her Broadway debut at nineteen. She’s been working nonstop ever since. Mostly onstage, but also in movies and television. YouTube is chock-full of her

appearances on The Lawrence Welk Show, The Mike Douglas Show, Match Game, several dozen awards shows. She’s petite, barely five feet in heels. Instead of smiling, she twinkles. A full-body sparkle that begins at her Cupid’s bow lips, spreads upward to her hazel eyes, and then radiates outward, into the audience, enveloping them in a hypnotic glow of talent.

And my mother is talented. Make no mistake about that.

She was—and still is—an old-school Star. In her prime, Lolly Fletcher could dance, act, and land a joke better than the best of them. And she had a powerhouse singing voice that was somewhat spooky coming from a woman so small.

But here’s a little secret about my mother: Behind the twinkle, inside that tiny frame of hers, is a spine of steel. Growing up poor in a Pennsylvania coal town, Lolly Fletcher decided at an early age that she was going to be famous, and that it was her voice that would make it happen. She worked hard, cleaning studios in exchange for dance lessons, holding three after-school jobs to pay for a voice coach, training for hours. In interviews, my mother claims to never have smoked or drunk alcohol in her life, and I believe it. Nothing was going to get in the way of her success.

And when she did make it big, she worked her ass off to stay there. No missed performances for Lolly Fletcher. The unofficial motto in our household was “Why bother if you’re not going to give it your all?”

My mother still gives it her all every damn day.

Her first two shows were mounted by the Greene Brothers, one of the prime producing duos of the day. Stuart Greene was the in-your-face, larger-than-life publicity man. Gareth Greene was the pale, unflappable bean counter. Both were instantly smitten with young Lolly,

and most people thought she would choose the PR guy. Instead, she picked the accountant twenty years her senior. Many years later, Stuart married a chorus girl and had

Marnie.

Three years after that, my parents had me.

I was a late-in-life baby. My mother was forty-one, which always made me suspect my birth was a distraction. Something to keep her busy during a career lull in which she was too old to be playing Eliza Doolittle or Maria von Trapp but still a few years away from Mrs. Lovett and Mama Rose.

But motherhood was less interesting to her than performing. Within six months, she was back to work in a revival of The King and I while I, quite literally, became a Broadway baby. My crib was in her dressing room, and I took my first steps on the stage, practically basking in the glow of the ghost light.

Because of this, my mother assumed I’d follow in her footsteps. In fact, she demanded it. I made my stage debut playing young Cosette when she did Les Misérables for six months in London. I got the part not because I could sing or dance or was even remotely talented but because Lolly Fletcher’s contract stipulated it. I was replaced after two weeks because I kept insisting I was too sick to go on. My mother was furious.

That leads us to Step Two: rebellion.

After the Les Mis fiasco, my level-headed father shielded me from my mother’s star-making schemes. Then he died when I was fourteen and I rebelled, which to a rich kid living in Manhattan meant drugs. And going to the clubs where you took them. And the after parties, where you took more.

I smoked.

I snorted.

I placed candy-colored pills on my tongue and let them dissolve until I could no longer feel the inside of my mouth.

And it worked. For a few blissful hours, I didn’t mind that my father was dead and that my mother cared more about her career than me and that all the people around me were only there because I paid for the drugs and that I had no real friends other than Marnie. But then I’d be jerked back to reality by waking up in a stranger’s apartment I never remembered entering. Or in the back of a cab, dawn peeking through the buildings along the East River. Or in a subway car with a homeless man asleep in the seat across from me and vomit on my too-short skirt.

My mother tried her best to deal with me. I’ll grant her that. It’s just that her best consisted of simply throwing money at the problem. She did all the things rich parents try with troubled girls. Boarding school and rehab and therapy sessions in which I gnawed at my cuticles instead of talking about my feelings.

Then a miracle happened. I got better.

Well, I got bored, which led to betterment. By the time I hit nineteen, I’d been making a mess of things for so long that it grew tiresome. I wanted to try something new. I wanted to try not being a trainwreck. I quit the drugs, the clubs, the “friends” I’d made along the way. I even went to NYU for a semester.

While there, Step Three—another miracle—occurred. I got into acting.

It was never my intention to follow in my mother’s footsteps. After growing up around showbiz, I wanted nothing to do with it. But here’s the thing: It was the only world I knew. So when a college friend introduced me to

her movie-director father, who then asked me if I wanted to play a small part in his next feature, I said, “Why not?”

The movie was good. It made a lot of money, and I made a name for myself. Not Casey Greene, which is my real name. I insisted on being billed as Casey Fletcher because, honestly, if you’ve got the kind of heritage I do, you’d be foolish not to flaunt it.

I got another part in another movie. Then more after that. Much to my mother’s delight and my surprise, I became my worst fear: a working actress.

But here’s another thing: I’m pretty good at it.

Certainly not legendary, like my mother, who truly is great at her craft. But I take direction well, have decent presence, and can put a fresh spin on the most tired of dialogue. Because I’m not classically beautiful enough for leading lady status, I often play the supportive best friend, the no-nonsense sister, the sympathetic coworker. I’m never going to become the star my mother is, which isn’t my goal. But I am a name. People know me. Directors like me. Casting agents put me in big parts in small movies and small parts in big movies and as the lead in a sitcom that lasted only thirteen episodes.

It’s not the size of the role I care about. It’s the character itself. I want complicated, interesting parts into which I can disappear.

When I’m acting, I want to become someone else entirely.

That’s why my main love is theater. Ironic, I know. I guess growing up in the wings really did rub off on me. The parts are better, that’s for damn sure. The last movie offer I got was playing the mother of an actor six years younger than me in a Transformers reboot. The character had

fourteen lines. The last theater offer was the lead role in a Broadway thriller, with dialogue on every page.

I said no to the movie, yes to the play. I prefer the palpable spark between performer and audience that exists only in theater. I feel it every time I step onstage. We share the same space, breathe the same air, share the same emotional journey. And then it’s gone. The whole experience as transitory as smoke.

Kind of like my career, which is all but over, no matter what Marnie says.

Speaking of things that don’t last, welcome to Step Four: Marry a screenwriter who is also a name but not one big enough to eclipse yours.

In my case, Len. Known professionally as Leonard Bradley, who helped pen a few movies you’ve definitely seen and quite a lot that you haven’t. We met at a party first, then on the set of a movie on which he did some uncredited script polishing. Both times, I thought he was cute and funny and maybe secretly s*xy under his gray hoodie and Knicks cap. I didn’t think of him as boyfriend material until our third meeting, when we found ourselves boarding the same flight back to New York.

“We need to stop meeting like this,” he said.

“You’re right,” I replied. “You know how this town talks.”

We finagled our way into adjacent seats and spent the entire flight deep in conversation. By the time the plane touched down, we’d made plans to meet for dinner. Standing in JFK’s baggage claim area, both of us flushed from flirtation and reluctant to part, I said, “My car is waiting outside. I should go.”

“Of course.” Len paused, suddenly shy. “Can I get a kiss first?”

I obliged, my head spinning like one of the luggage carousels piled high with Samsonite suitcases.

Six months later, we got married at city hall, with Marnie and my mother as witnesses. Len didn’t have any family of his own. At least none that he wanted to invite to his impromptu wedding. His mother was thirty years younger than his father, pregnant and eighteen when they wed and twenty-three when she abandoned them. His father took it out on Len. Not long into our relationship, Len told me how his father broke his arm when he was six. He spent the next twelve years in foster care. The last time Len spoke to his father, now long dead, was right before he left for UCLA on a full scholarship.

Because of his past, Len was determined not to make the same mistakes as his parents. He never got angry and was rarely sad. When he laughed, it was with his whole body, as if there was too much happiness within him to be contained. He was a great cook, an even better listener, and loved long, hot baths, preferably with me in the tub with him. Our marriage was a combination of gestures both big—like when he rented an entire movie theater on my birthday so the two of us could have a private screening of Rear Window—and small. He always held the door for me. And ordered pizza with extra cheese without asking because he knew that’s how I liked it. And appreciated the contented silence when the two of us were in the same room but doing different things.

As a result, our marriage was a five-year period in which I was almost deliriously happy.

The happiness part is important.

Without it, you’d have nothing to miss when everything inevitably turns to shit.

Which brings us to Step Five: Spend a summer at Lake Greene.

The lake house has always been a special place for my family. Conceived by my great-great-grandfather as an escape from New York’s steaming, stinking summers, it was once the only residence on this unassuming slash of water. That’s how the lake got its name. Originally called Lake Otshee by the indigenous tribe that once lived in the area, it was renamed Lake Greene in honor of the first white man intrepid enough to build here because, well, America.

My father spent every summer at the lake that bore his family name. As did his father before him. As did I. Growing up, I loved life on the lake. It was a much-needed reprieve from my mother’s theatrics. Some of my fondest memories are of endless days spent catching fireflies, roasting marshmallows, swimming in the sun until I was as tanned as leather.

Going to the lake for a summer was Len’s idea, proposed after a frigid, slushy winter during which we barely saw each other. I was busy with the Broadway thriller I’d chosen over the Transformers movie, and Len kept having to return to LA to bang out another draft of a superhero screenplay he’d taken on because he mistakenly thought it would be easy money.

“We need a break,” he said during Easter brunch. “Let’s take the summer off and spend it at Lake Greene.”

“The whole summer?”

“Yeah. I think it’ll be good for us.” Len smiled at me over the Bloody Mary he’d been drinking. “I know I sure as hell need a break.”

I did, too. So we took it. I left the play for four months, Len finally finished the screenplay, and we set off for

Vermont for the summer. It was wonderful. During the day, we whiled away the hours reading, napping, making love. In the evenings, we cooked long dinners and sat on the porch sipping strong cocktails and listening to the ghostly call of loons echoing across the lake.

One afternoon in late July, Len and I filled a picnic basket with wine, cheese, and fresh fruit bought that morning at a nearby farmers’ market. We hiked to the southern end of the lake, where the forest gives way to a craggy bluff. After stumbling our way to the top, we spread the food out on a checkered blanket and spent the afternoon snacking, drinking wine, and staring at the water far below.

At one point, Len turned to me and said, “Let’s stay here forever, Cee.”

Cee.

That was his nickname for me, created after he had deemed Case too hard-boiled for a term of endearment.

“It makes me think of a private detective,” he said. “Or, worse, a lawyer.”

“Or maybe I don’t need a nickname,” I said. “It’s not like my name’s that unwieldy.”

“I can’t be the only one of us with a nickname. That would make me incredibly selfish, don’t you think?”

We’d been officially dating two weeks by then, both of us sensing things were getting very serious very quickly but neither of us ready to admit it. It’s why Len was trying too hard that night. He wanted to dazzle me with wit. And even though the wit might have been strained, I was indeed dazzled.

I remained that way most of our marriage.

“Define forever,” I said that July afternoon, hypnotized by the sunlight sparking off the lake and the summer

breeze in my hair.

“Never leaving. Just like Old Stubborn there.”

Len pointed to a petrified tree stump that jutted from the water about fifty yards from the shore below. It was legendary on Lake Greene, mostly because no one knew how this sun-bleached piece of wood came to be poking twenty feet out of the water or how much more of it stretched from the surface to the lake’s bottom. We all called it Old Stubborn because Eli, who researched such things, claimed it had been there for hundreds of years and would remain long after the rest of us were gone.

“Is that even possible?” I said.

“Sure, we’d still have to go to the city and LA a lot for work, but there’s no law saying we must live in Manhattan. We could live here full-time. Make this place our home base.”

Home.

I liked the sound of that.

It didn’t matter that the lake house technically belonged to my aunt and mother. Or that eastern Vermont was quite a hike from Manhattan, not to mention a world away from LA, where Len had been spending so much time. The idea was still appealing. Like Len, I longed for a life removed from our bicoastal grind.

“Let me think about it,” I said.

I never got the chance. A week later, Len was dead. That’s Step Six, by the way.

Have your husband die while on vacation.

The morning it happened, I was tugged out of bed by the sound of Eli knocking on the front door. Before opening it, I checked the clock in the foyer. Seven a.m. Way too early for him to be paying a neighborly visit.

Something was wrong.

“Your boat got loose,” Eli announced. “Woke up and saw it drifting on the lake. Guess you didn’t tie it up right.”

“Is it still out there?” I said.

“Nah. I towed it back to my dock. I can take you over to get it.” Eli looked me over, noticing my nightgown, hastily- thrown-on robe, out-of-control bedhead. “Or I can take Len.”

Len.

He wasn’t in bed when I woke up. Nor was he anywhere in the house. Eli and I searched the place from top to bottom, calling out his name. There was no sign of him. He was gone.

“Do you think he could be out for a morning run or something?”

“Len’s not a runner,” I said. “He swims.”

Both of us looked to the lake, shimmering beyond the tall windows in the living room. The water was calm. And empty. I couldn’t help but picture our boat out there, unmoored, drifting aimlessly. Also empty.

Eli pictured it, too, because the next thing he said was, “Do you know if Len had any reason to take the boat out this morning?”

“Some—” I paused to swallow the lump of worry that had suddenly caught in my throat. “Some mornings he goes fishing.”

Eli knew this. He’d seen Len out on the water, wearing that silly fisherman’s hat and smoking his disgusting cigars, which he claimed kept the mosquitoes away. Sometimes the two of them even went fishing together.

“Did you see him go out this morning?” Eli took another look at my bedclothes and puffy eyes, rightfully concluding that he was the reason I got out of bed. “Or hear him?”

I answered with a short, scared head shake.

“And he didn’t tell you last night that he was thinking about going fishing?”

“No,” I said. “But he doesn’t always tell me. Especially if he thinks I won’t be up for a few hours. Sometimes he just goes.”

Eli’s gaze drifted back to the empty lake. When he spoke again, his voice was halting, cautious. “When I fetched your boat, I saw a rod and tackle box inside. Len doesn’t always keep them there, does he?”

“No,” I said. “He keeps them—”

In the basement. That’s what I intended to say. Instead, I went there, down the rickety steps to what’s technically the first level of the lake house but is treated like a cellar because it’s built into the steep hillside that slopes to the water. Eli followed me. Past the room with the furnace and hot-water heater. Past the Ping-Pong table that had last been used in the nineties. Past the skis on the wall and the ice skates in the corner. Stopping only when I stopped.

The mudroom.

The place where Len and I entered and exited after swimming and boating, using the old blue door that had been part of the house since the very beginning. There’s an old sink there, and a long wooden rack on which hung jackets and hoodies and hats.

Except one.

Len’s fishing hat—floppy and foul smelling, colored army green—was missing.

Also, the shelf that should have held his tackle box and fishing rod was empty, and the creaky blue door that led outside was open just a crack.

I let out a choked sob, prompting Eli to spin me away from the door, as if it were a mutilated corpse. He gripped

my shoulders, looked me in the eyes, and said, “I think we might want to call the police.”

Eli did the calling. He did everything, to be honest. Rounding up the Fitzgeralds on his side of the lake and the Mitchells, who lived on mine, to form a search party.

And he’s the one who eventually found Len, just after ten that morning.

Eli discovered his hat first, floating like a lily pad a few yards from shore. He waded out to fetch it, and when he turned to head back to dry land he spotted Len a hundred yards away, washed ashore like the victim of a shipwreck.

I don’t know any other details. Neither Eli nor the police told me exactly where my husband had been found, and I didn’t ask. I was better off not knowing. Besides, it didn’t really matter. Len was still dead.

After asking me a few questions, the police pieced everything together pretty quickly. Len, always an early riser when at the lake, woke up, made coffee, and decided to go fishing.

At some point, he fell overboard, although authorities couldn’t tell me how or why or when. An autopsy found alcohol in his system—we had been drinking the night before—and a large amount of the antihistamine Len took for his allergies, suggesting he had double-dosed before going out that morning. All the medical examiner knew was that he had dropped into the water and drowned, leaving behind a boat, a tackle box and fishing rod, and a thermos of still-warm coffee.

I was also left behind.

At age thirty-five, I had become a widow. After that happens, there’s just one final step. Unlucky Number Seven.

Fall apart.

My unraveling happened rather slowly, thanks to the many people who cared for me. Eli stayed by my side until Ricardo was able to drive up from Manhattan with my mother and Marnie in tow. We spent a sleepless night packing up my things and left early the next morning.

For the next six months, I did as well as one can under such circumstances. I mourned, both publicly and in private. I dutifully attended two memorial services, one in New York and the other in Los Angeles, before returning to Lake Greene for an afternoon when, watched by a small gathering of friends and family, I poured Len’s ashes into the water.

It wasn’t until the second six months that it all went downhill. Before then, I’d been surrounded by people. My mother visited daily or sent Ricardo when she was working. Marnie and other friends and colleagues made sure to call, to stop by, to reach out and see how I was coping. But an outpouring of kindness like that can only last for so long. People move on. They must.

Eventually it was just me, left with a thousand emotions and no way of softening them without some form of assistance. When I was fourteen and mourning my father, I turned to drugs. Rather than repeat myself, I decided booze was the answer on this go-round.

Bourbon, mostly. But also gin. And vodka. And wine of any color. And once, when I’d forgotten to stock up before a snowstorm, pear brandy chugged straight from the bottle. It didn’t make the pain completely go away, but it sure as hell eased it. Drinking made the circumstances of my widowhood feel distant, like it was a vaguely remembered nightmare I’d woken from long ago.

And I was determined to keep drinking until no memory of this particular nightmare remained.

In May, I was asked if I wanted to return to the Broadway play I’d left before going to Vermont. Shred of Doubt, it was called. About a woman who suspects her husband is trying to kill her. Spoiler alert: He is.

Marnie recommended I say no, suggesting the producers merely wanted to boost ticket sales by capitalizing on my tragedy. My mother told me to say yes, advising that work was the best thing for me.

I said yes.

Mother knows best, right?

The irony is that my performance had improved greatly. “Trauma has unlocked something in you,” the director told me, as if my husband’s death was a creative choice I’d made. I thanked him for the compliment and walked straight to the bar across the street.

By that point, I knew I was drinking too much. But I managed. I’d have two drinks in my dressing room before a performance, just to keep me loose, followed by however many I wanted after the evening show.

Within a few months, my two drinks before curtain had become three and my postshow drinking sometimes lasted all night. But I was discreet about it. I didn’t let it affect my work.

Until I showed up to the theater already drunk. For a Wednesday matinee.

The stage manager confronted me in my dressing room, where I was applying my makeup with wildly unsteady hands.

“I can’t let you go on like this,” she said.

“Like what?” I said, pretending to be insulted. It was the best acting I’d do all day.

“Drunk off your ass.”

“I’ve played this role literally a hundred times,” I said. “I can fucking do it.”

I couldn’t fucking do it.

That was clear the moment I stepped onstage. Well, stepped isn’t the right word. I lurched onto the stage, swaying as if hit by hurricane winds. Then I blanked on my entrance line. Then stumbled into the nearest chair. Then slid off the chair and collapsed onto the floor in a drunken heap, which is how I stayed until two costars dragged me into the wings.

The show was halted, my understudy was brought in, and I was fired from Shred of Doubt as soon as the producers thought me sober enough to comprehend what they were telling me.

Hence the tabloids and the paparazzi and the being whisked away to a remote lake where I won’t publicly embarrass myself and where my mother can check in daily.

“You’re really not drinking, right?” my mother says.

“I’m really not drinking.” I turn to the moose on the wall, a finger to my lips, as if we’re sharing a secret. “But would you blame me if I were?”

Silence from my mother. She knows me well enough to understand that’s as much of a yes as she’s going to get.

“Where did you get it?” she finally says. “From Ricardo?

I specifically told him not to—”

“It wasn’t Ricardo,” I say, leaving out how on the drive from Manhattan I had indeed begged him to stop at a liquor store. For cigarettes, I told him, even though I don’t smoke. He didn’t fall for it. “It was already here. Len and I stocked up last summer.”

It’s the truth. Sort of. We did bring a lot of booze along with us, although most of those bottles had long been

emptied by the time Len died. But I’m certainly not going to tell my mother how I really got my hands on the alcohol.

She sighs. All her hopes and dreams for me dying in one long, languid exhalation.

“I don’t understand,” she says, “why you continue to do this to yourself. I know you miss Len. We all do. We loved him, too, you know.”

I do know. Len was endlessly charming, and had Lolly Fletcher cooing in the palm of his hand five minutes after they met. Marnie was the same way. They were crazy about him, and although I know his death devastated them as well, their grief is nothing compared with mine.

“It’s not the same,” I say. “You’re not being punished for grieving.”

“You were so out of control that I had to do something.” “So you sent me here,” I say. “Here. Where it all

happened. Did you ever stop to consider that maybe it would fuck me up even more?”

“I thought it would help you,” my mother says. “How?”

“By making you finally confront what happened.

Because until you do, you won’t be able to move on.” “Here’s the thing, Mom,” I say. “I don’t want to move

on.”

I slam the phone onto the receiver and yank the cord out of the jack in the wall. No more landline for her. After shoving the phone into the drawer of an unused sideboard, I catch a glimpse of myself in the gilt-edged mirror hanging above it.

My clothes are damp, my hair hangs in strings, and beads of water still stick to my face like warts. Seeing myself like this—a mess in every conceivable way—sends me back to the porch and the glass of bourbon waiting

there. The ice has melted, leaving two inches of amber liquid swirling at the bottom of the glass.

I tip it back and swallow every drop.

By five thirty, I’m showered, dressed in dry clothes, and back on the porch watching the sun dip behind the distant mountains on the other side of the lake.

Next to me is a fresh bourbon.

My fourth for the day. Or fifth.

I take a sip and look out at the lake. Directly across from me, the Royce house is lit like a stage set, every room aglow. Inside, two figures move about, although I’m not able to see them clearly. The lake is about a quarter mile wide here. Close enough to get a gist of what’s going on inside, but too far away to glean any details.

Watching their blurry, distant activity, I wonder if Tom and Katherine feel as exposed as I did when I was inside that house. Maybe it doesn’t bother them. Being a former model, Katherine is probably used to being watched. One could argue that someone who buys a house that’s half glass knows being seen is part of the deal. It might even be the reason they bought it.

That’s bullshit, and I know it. The view afforded to residents of Lake Greene is one of the reasons the houses here are so expensive. The other is privacy. That’s likely the real reason Tom and Katherine Royce bought the house across the lake.

But when I see the binoculars sitting a few feet away, right where I’d dropped them earlier, I can’t help but pick them up. I tell myself it’s to clean them off. But I know it’ll

only be a matter of time before I lift them to my eyes and peer at the opposite shore, too curious to resist a glimpse of the inner lives of a former supermodel and her tech titan husband.

The binoculars belonged to Len, who bought them during a short-lived bird-watching phase, spending a small fortune in the process. In his post-purchase speech justifying the expense, he talked about their insane magnification, wide field of vision, image stabilization, and top-of-the-line clarity.

“These binoculars rock,” he said. “They’re so good that if you look up at a full moon, you can see craters.”

“But this is for birds,” I replied. “Who wants to see birds that up close?”

When I inevitably do lift them to my eyes, I’m not impressed. The focus is off, and for a few jarring seconds, everything is skewed. Nothing but woozy views of the water and the tops of trees. I keep adjusting the binoculars until the image sharpens. The trees snap into focus. The lake’s surface smooths into clarity.

Now I understand why Len was so excited. These binoculars do indeed rock.

The image isn’t super close. Definitely not an extreme close-up. But the detail at such a distance is startling. It feels like I’m standing on the other side of a street rather than the opposite shore of the lake. What was fuzzy to the naked eye is now crystal clear.

Including the inside of Tom and Katherine Royce’s glass house.

I take in the first floor, where details of the living room are visible through the massive windows. Off-white walls. Mid-century modern furniture in neutral tones. Splashes of color provided by massive abstract paintings. It’s an

interior designer’s dream, and a far cry from my family’s rustic lake house. Here, the hardwood floor is scratched and the furniture threadbare. Adorning the walls are landscape paintings, crisscrossed snowshoes, and old advertisements for maple syrup. And the moose in the den, of course.

In the much more refined Royce living room, I spy Katherine reclining on a white sofa, flipping through a magazine. Now dry and fully dressed, she looks far more familiar than she did in the boat. Every inch the model she used to be. Her hair shines. Her skin glows. Even her clothes—a yellow silk blouse and dark capri pants—have a sheen to them.

I check her left hand. Her wedding band is back on, along with an engagement ring adorned with a diamond that looks ridiculously huge even through the binoculars. It makes my own ring finger do an involuntary flex. Both of my rings from Len are in a jewelry box in Manhattan. I stopped wearing them three days after his death. Keeping them on was too painful.

I tilt the binoculars to the second floor and the master bedroom. It’s dimmer than the rest of the house—lit only by a bedside lamp. But I can still make out a cavernous space with vaulted ceilings and décor that looks plucked from a high-end hotel suite. It puts my master bedroom, with its creaking bed frame and antique dresser of drawers that stick more often than not, to shame.

To the left of the bedroom is what appears to be an exercise room. I see a flat-screen TV on the wall, the handlebars of a Peloton bike in front of it, and the top of a rack holding free weights. After that is a room with bookshelves, a desk and lamp, and a printer. Likely a home office, inside of which is Tom Royce. He’s seated at the

desk, frowning at the screen of a laptop open in front of him.

He closes the laptop and stands, finally giving me a full look at him. My first impression of Tom is that he looks like someone who’d marry a supermodel. It makes sense why Katherine was drawn to him. He’s handsome, of course. But it’s a lived-in handsomeness, reminding me of Harrison Ford just a year past his prime. About ten years older than Katherine, Tom exudes confidence, even when alone. He stands ramrod straight, dressed like he’s just stepped off the pages of a catalogue. Dark jeans and a gray T-shirt under a cream-colored cardigan, all of it impeccably fitted. His hair is dark brown and on the longish side. I can only imagine how much product it takes to get it to swoop back from his head like that.

Tom leaves the office and appears a few seconds later in the bedroom. A few seconds after that, he disappears through another door in the room. The master bath, from the looks of it. I get a glimpse of white wall, the edge of a mirror, the angelic glow of perfect bathroom lighting.

The door closes.

Directly below, Katherine continues to read.

Because I’m unwilling to admit to myself that I picked up the binoculars just to spy on the Royces, I swing them toward Eli’s house, the cluster of rocks and evergreens between the two homes passing in a blur.

I catch Eli in the act of coming home from running errands—an all-day affair in this part of Vermont. Lake Greene sits fifteen minutes from the nearest town, reached by a highway that cuts southwest through the forest. The highway itself is a mile away and accessed via a ragged gravel road that circles the lake. That’s where Eli is when I

spot him, turning his trusty red pickup off the road and into his driveway.

I watch him get out of the truck and carry groceries up the side porch and through the door that leads to the kitchen. Inside the house, a light flicks on in one of the back windows. Through the glass, I can see into the dining room, with its brass light fixture and giant old hutch. I can even make out the rarely used collection of patterned china that sits on the hutch’s top shelf.

Outside, Eli returns to the pickup, this time removing a cardboard box from the back. Provisions for me that I assume he’ll be bringing over sooner rather than later.

I direct the binoculars back to the Royces’. Katherine’s at the living room window now. A surprise. Her unexpected presence by the glass hits me with a guilty jolt, and for a moment, I wonder if she can see me.

The answer is no.

Not when she’s inside like that, with the lights on. Maybe, if she squinted, she could make out the red plaid of my flannel shirt as I sit tucked back in the shadow of the porch. But there’s no way she can tell I’m watching her.

She stands inches from the glass, staring out at the lake, her face a gorgeous blank page. After a few more seconds at the window, Katherine moves deeper into the living room, heading toward a sideboard bar next to the fireplace. She drops some ice into a glass and fills it halfway with something poured from a crystal decanter.

I raise my own glass in a silent toast and time my sip to hers.

Above her, Tom Royce is out of the bathroom. He sits on the edge of the bed, examining his fingernails.

Boring.

I return to Katherine, who’s back at the window, her drink in one hand, her phone in the other. Before dialing, she tilts her head toward the ceiling, as if listening to hear if her husband is coming.

He’s not. A quick uptilt of the binoculars shows him still preoccupied with his nails, using one to dig a smidge of dirt out from under another.

Below, Katherine correctly assumes the coast is clear, taps her phone, and holds it to her ear.

I let my gaze drift back to the bedroom, where Tom is now standing in the middle of the room, listening for his wife downstairs.

Only Katherine isn’t talking. Holding her phone and tapping one foot, she’s waiting for whoever she just called to answer.

Upstairs, Tom tiptoes across the bedroom and peeks out the open door, of which I can see only a sliver. He disappears through it, leaving the bedroom empty and me moving the binoculars to try to catch his reappearance elsewhere on the second floor. I swing them past the exercise room to the office.

Tom isn’t in either of them.

I return my gaze to the living room, where Katherine is now speaking into the phone. It’s not a conversation, though. She doesn’t pause to let the other person talk, making me think she’s leaving a message. An urgent one, from the looks of it. Katherine’s hunched slightly, a hand cupped to her mouth as she talks, her eyes darting back and forth.

On the other side of the house, movement catches my attention.

Tom.

Now on the first floor.

Moving out of the kitchen and into the dining room. Slowly.

With caution.

His long, quiet strides make me think it’s an effort not to be heard. With his lips flattened together and his chin jutting forward, his expression is unreadable. He could be curious. He could be concerned.

Tom makes his way to the other side of the dining room and he and Katherine finally appear together in the binoculars’ lenses. She’s still talking, apparently oblivious to her husband watching from the next room. It’s not until Tom takes another step that Katherine becomes aware of his presence. She taps the phone, hides it behind her back, whirls around to face him.

Unlike her husband’s, Katherine’s expression is easily read.

She’s startled.

Especially as Tom comes toward her. Not angry, exactly. It’s different from that. He looks, to use Marnie’s description, intense.

He says something to Katherine. She says something back. She slips the phone into her back pocket before raising her hands—a gesture of innocence.

“Enjoying the view?”

The sound of another person’s voice—at this hour, in this place—startles me so much I almost drop the binoculars for a second time that day. I manage to keep hold of them as I yank them away from my face and, still rattled, look for the source of the voice.

It’s a man unfamiliar to me. A very good-looking man.

In his mid-thirties, he stands to the right of the porch in a patch of weedy grass that serves as a buffer between the

house and rambling forest situated next to it. Appropriate, seeing how he’s dressed like a lumberjack. The pinup- calendar version. Tight jeans, work boots, flannel shirt wrapped around his narrow waist, broad chest pushing against a white T-shirt. The light of magic hour reflecting off the lake gives his skin a golden glow. It’s s*xy and preposterous in equal measure.

Making the situation even weirder is that I’m dressed almost exactly the same way. Adidas sneakers instead of boots, and my jeans don’t look painted on. But it’s enough for me to realize how frumpily I always dress when I’m at the lake.

“Sorry?” I say.

“The view,” he says, gesturing to the binoculars still gripped in my hands. “See anything good?”

Suddenly—and rightfully—feeling guilty, I set the binoculars on the wobbly table beside the rocking chair. “Just trees.”

The man nods. “The foliage is beautiful this time of year.”

I stand, make my way to the end of the porch, and look down at him. He’s come closer to the house and now gazes up at me with a glint in his eyes, as if he knows exactly what I’ve been doing.

“I don’t mean to sound rude,” I say, “but who are you and where did you come from?”

The man takes a half step back. “Are you sure you didn’t mean to sound rude?”

“Maybe I did,” I say. “And you still haven’t answered my question.”

“I’m Boone. Boone Conrad.”

I barely stop myself from rolling my eyes. That cannot be his real name.

“And I came from over there.”

He jerks his head in the direction of the woods and the house slightly visible two hundred yards behind the thinning trees. The Mitchell place. An A-frame cabin built in the seventies, it sits tucked within a small bend of the lakeshore. In the summer, the only part of it visible from my family’s house is the long dock that juts into the lake.

“You’re a guest of the Mitchells?” I say.

“More like their temporary handyman,” Boone says. “Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell said I could stay for a couple of months if I did some work on the place while I’m here. Since we’re neighbors, I thought I’d stop by and introduce myself. I would have done it earlier, but I was too busy stuck inside refinishing their dining room floor.”

“Nice to meet you, Boone. Thanks for stopping by.”

He pauses a beat. “You’re not going to introduce yourself, Casey Fletcher?”

I’m not surprised he knows who I am. More people than not recognize me, even though sometimes they’re not sure how. “You just did it for me.”

“Sorry,” Boone says. “The Mitchells told me your family owned the house next door. I just didn’t think you’d be here.”

“Neither did I.”

“How long are you staying?” “That’s up to my mother,” I say.

A sly grin plays across Boone’s lips. “Do you do everything your mother tells you to?”

“Everything except not doing this.” I lift my glass. “How long will you be staying?”

“Another few weeks, I suspect. I’ve been here since August.”

“I didn’t know the Mitchells needed so much work done on their house.”

“Honestly, they don’t,” Boone says. “They’re just doing me a favor after I found myself in a bit of a lurch.”

An intriguing response. It makes me wonder what his deal is. I don’t see a wedding ring—apparently a new obsession of mine—so he’s not married. Not now, at least. I peg him as recently divorced. The wife got the house. He needed a place to live. In step David and Hope Mitchell, a friendly but dull pair of retirees who made their money in pharmaceuticals.

“How do you like life on the lake?”

“It’s quiet,” Boone says after thinking it over for a few seconds. “Don’t get me wrong. I like the quiet. But nothing much seems to happen here.”

Spoken like a man whose spouse wasn’t found dead on the lakeshore fourteen months ago.

“It takes some getting used to,” I say. “Are you also here by yourself?”

“I am.”

“Don’t you get lonely?” “Sometimes.”

“Well, if you ever get bored or need some company, you know where to find me.”

I note his tone, pitched somewhere between friendly and flirtatious. Hearing it is surprising, but not unwelcome to someone like me who’s watched way too many Hallmark Channel Christmas movies. This is how they always begin. Jaded big-city professional woman meets rugged local man. Sparks fly. Hearts melt. Both live happily ever after.

The only differences here are that Boone isn’t a local, my heart’s too shattered to melt, and there’s no such thing

as happily ever after. There’s only happy for a short period of time before everything falls apart.

Also, Boone is more attractive than the blandly handsome men of the Hallmark Channel. He’s unpolished in the best of ways. The stubble on his chin is a tad unruly and the muscles evident under his clothes are a bit too big. When he follows up his offer of company with a sleepy, s*xy grin, I realize that Boone could be trouble.

Or maybe I’m simply looking for trouble. The no-strings kind. Hell, I think I’ve earned it. I’ve been intimate with only one man since Len’s death, a bearded stagehand named Morris who worked on Shred of Doubt. We were postshow drinking buddies for a time, until suddenly we were more. It wasn’t romance. Neither of us was interested in each other that way. He was, quite simply, yet another means to chase away the darkness. I was the same thing for him. I haven’t heard from Morris since I got fired. I doubt I ever will.

Now here’s Boone Conrad—quite an upgrade from Morris and his dad bod.

I gesture to the pair of rocking chairs behind me. “You’re welcome to join me for a drink right now.”

“I’d love to,” Boone says. “Unfortunately, I don’t think my sponsor would be too happy about that.”

“Oh.” My heart sinks past my spleen. “You’re—” Boone interrupts me with a solemn nod. “Yeah.” “How long have you been sober?”

“A year.”

“Good for you,” I manage. I feel like a horrible person for asking an alcoholic if he’d like a drink, even though there’s no way I could have known he had a problem. But Boone definitely knows about mine. I can tell from the way he looks at me with squinty-eyed concern.

“It’s hard,” he says. “Every day is a challenge. But I’m living proof it’s possible to go through life without a drink in your hand.”

I tighten my grip around the bourbon glass. “Not my life.”

After that, there’s not a whole lot else to say. Boone gives me his little twelve-step pitch, which I suspect is the real reason he stopped by. I express my distinct lack of interest. Now there’s nothing left to do but go our separate ways.

“I guess I should get going then.” Boone offers a little wave and turns back to the woods. Before stepping into them, he gives me an over-the-shoulder glance and adds, “My offer still stands, by the way. If you’re ever feeling lonely, stop on by. There might not be any liquor in the house, but I can make a mean hot chocolate and the place is well stocked with board games. I need to warn you, though, I show no mercy at Monopoly.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say, meaning thanks but no thanks. Despite Boone’s looks, that doesn’t sound like a good time. I suck at Monopoly, and I prefer my drinks stronger than Swiss Miss.

Boone waves again and trudges through the trees on his way back to the Mitchell place. Watching him go, I don’t feel a bit of remorse. Sure, I might be missing out on a few nights in the sack with a guy way out of my league. If that was even his intention. But I’m not willing to accept what goes along with it—chiefly being reminded that I drink too much.

I do.

But with good reason.

I once read a biography of Joan Crawford in which she was quoted as saying, “Alcoholism is an occupational

hazard of being an actor, of being a widow, and of being alone. And I’m all three.”

Ditto, Joan.

But I’m not an alcoholic. I can quit at any time. I just don’t want to.

To prove it to myself, I set the bourbon down, keeping my hand close to the glass but not touching it. Then I wait, seeing how long I last before taking a sip.

The seconds tick by, me counting each one in my head the same way I did when I was a girl and Marnie wanted me to time how long she could stay underwater before coming up for air.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.

I make it to exactly forty-six Mississippis before sighing, grabbing the glass, and taking a gulp. As I swallow, I’m struck by a thought. One of those insights I usually drink to avoid.

Maybe I’m not looking for trouble. Maybe I am the trouble.

The sun has slipped beneath the horizon by the time Eli makes his way over. Through the binoculars, which I picked up again soon after Boone departed,

I watch him return to his truck carrying a bag of groceries before going back to his house for the cardboard box. When he climbs into the truck, I follow the glow of headlights as he drives the road circling the lake.

I put the binoculars down when the headlights enter the section of the road not visible from the back porch and walk to the front of the house. I get there just in time to see Eli pull into the driveway and emerge from the truck.

Back when he was on the bestseller lists, Eli cut a dashing figure in tweed jackets and dark jeans. For the past three decades, though, he’s been in Hemingway mode. Cable-knit sweaters, corduroy, and a bushy white beard. Grabbing the cardboard box from the back of the truck, he resembles a rustic Santa Claus bearing gifts.

“As requested,” he says, placing the box in my arms.

Inside, clanging together like tangled wind chimes, are a dozen bottles of various colors. The deep crimson of pinot noir. The honey brown of bourbon. The pristine clarity of dry gin.

“Pace yourself,” Eli says. “I won’t be making another trip until next week. And if you breathe a word of this to your mother, I’m cutting you off. The last thing I need is an angry phone call from Lolly Fletcher telling me I’m a bad influence.”

“But you are a bad influence.”

Eli smiles in spite of himself. “It takes one to know one.” Know me he does. During my childhood, Eli was an unofficial summer uncle, always in my life between Memorial Day and Labor Day, mostly forgotten the rest of the year. That didn’t change much in adulthood, when I visited Lake Greene less frequently. Sometimes years would pass between visits, but whenever I returned, Eli would still be here, quick with a warm smile, a tight hug, and whatever favor I needed. Back then, it was showing me how to build a campfire and properly roast a marshmallow.

Now it’s illicit trips to the liquor store.

We retreat into the house, me burdened with the box of bottles and Eli carrying the grocery bag. In the kitchen, we unpack everything and prepare to make dinner. It’s part of the deal we made my first night back here: I cook dinner anytime he brings me booze.

I like the arrangement, and not just because of the alcohol. Eli is good company, and it’s nice to have someone else to cook for. When it’s just me, I make whatever’s fast and easy. Tonight’s dinner, on the other hand, is salmon, roasted acorn squash, and wild rice. Once everything’s unpacked and two glasses of wine have been poured, I preheat the oven and get to cooking.

“I met the next-door neighbor,” I say as I grab the largest, sharpest blade from the wooden knife block on the countertop and start cutting the acorn squash. “Why didn’t you tell me there was someone staying at the Mitchell place?”

“I didn’t think you’d care.”

“Of course I care. There are only two houses on this side of the lake. If someone else is in one of them— especially a stranger—I’d like to be aware of it. Is there

someone staying at the Fitzgerald house I need to know about?”

“The Fitzgerald place is empty, as far as I know,” Eli says. “As for Boone, I thought it would be best if the two of you didn’t meet.”

“Why?”

I think I already know the answer. Eli met Boone, learned he was a recovering alcoholic, and decided it was wise to keep me away from him.

“Because his wife died,” Eli says instead.

Surprise stills the knife, stuck deep within the squash. “When?”

“A year and a half ago.”

Because Boone told me he’s been sober a year, I assume the six months after his wife’s death were a self-destructive blur. Not quite the same situation as mine, but close enough to make me feel like shit for the way I behaved earlier.

“How?” I say.

“I didn’t ask and he didn’t volunteer the information,” Eli says. “But I guess I thought it would be best if you two didn’t cross paths. I was afraid it would dredge up bad memories. For both of you.”

“Bad memories are already here,” I say. “They’re everywhere I look.”

“Then maybe—” Eli pauses. It’s brief. Like the tentative halt a firewalker makes just before stepping onto pulsing- hot coals. “Maybe I thought you wouldn’t be the best influence on him.”

There it is. The ugly truth at last. Even though I suspected it, it doesn’t mean I like hearing it.

“Says the man who just brought me a case of booze,” I say.

“Because you asked me to,” Eli says, bristling. “I’m not judging you, Casey. You’re a grown woman. The choices you make are none of my business. But Boone Conrad has been sober a year. You—”

“Haven’t been,” I say, mostly so Eli doesn’t have to.

He nods, both in agreement and in thanks. “Exactly. So maybe it’s best if you keep away from each other. For both of your sakes.”

Despite being rankled by what he said, I’m inclined to agree with Eli. I have my reasons for drinking, and Boone has his for not. Whatever they are, I’m sure they’re not compatible with mine.

“Deal,” I say. “Now give me a hand. Dinner isn’t going to cook itself.”

The rest of the evening passes in a blur of small talk and hurt feelings left unexpressed.

We finish cooking.

“How was the summer?” I ask while plating the fish.

“Quiet,” Eli says. “Nothing to report. Here or elsewhere in the area. Although they still haven’t found that girl who drowned in Lake Morey last summer. No sign of the one who went missing two years ago, either.”

I empty my glass of wine and pour another.

“That storm’s probably heading this way,” Eli says as we eat.

“What storm?”

“That hurricane that hit North Carolina. Don’t you watch the news?”

I don’t. Not lately.

“A hurricane? Here?”

The last time something like that happened here was Hurricane Sandy’s long, slow march through the Northeast. Lake Greene was without power for two weeks.

“Trish,” Eli says. “That’s what they’re calling it.” “That’s a perky name for a hurricane.”

“It’s just a tropical storm now, but still plenty strong.

Looks like it’ll reach us by the end of the week.” Eli has another glass of wine.

I have two.

After dinner, we retreat to the porch and plop into rocking chairs while sipping from steaming mugs of coffee. Night has fully fallen over the lake, turning the water into a blue-black surface shimmering with starlight.

“God, that’s lovely,” I say, my voice dreamy because I’m slightly drunk. Just one step past tipsy. The sweet spot between numbness and being able to function.

Getting there is easy. Remaining that way requires planning and determination.

It begins around noon, with my first real drink of the day. Mornings are reserved for coffee, which sweeps away the cobwebs of the previous night, and water. Hydration is important.

For the day’s inaugural drink, I like two large shots of vodka, downed quickly. A strong double punch to dull the senses.

The rest of the afternoon is devoted to bourbon, sipped over ice in a steady dose. Dinnertime brings wine. A glass or two or three. It leaves me feeling mellow and fuzzy—on the precipice of full-tilt intoxication. That’s when coffee reenters the picture. A strong cup of joe pulls me back from the brink without completely dulling my buzz. Finally, before bed, it’s another hard hit of whatever strikes my fancy.

Two, if I can’t fall asleep immediately. Three, if I can’t sleep at all.

Even as Eli sits next to me, I think about what I’ll drink once he leaves.

Across the lake, a light flicks on at the back door of the Royce house, flooding the patio in a warm white glow. I lean forward and squint, seeing two people emerge from the house and make their way to the property’s dock. Soon after, there’s another light, this time in the form of a spotlight at the front of their boat. The low rumble of an outboard motor echoes off the trees.

“I think you’re about to have more guests,” Eli says.

He might be right. The spotlight grows larger as the boat cuts straight across the water toward our side of the lake.

I put down my coffee. “The more the merrier,” I say.

The Royces arrive in a vintage mahogany-paneled powerboat that’s both sporty and elegant. The kind of boat I’m certain George Clooney rides around in when staying at his palazzo in Lake Como. Watching it approach my family’s scuffed and faded motorboat feels like sitting at a stoplight and having a Bentley Continental pull up next to your Ford Pinto.

Which the Royces also have. A Bentley, not a Pinto. Eli told me all about it at dinner.

I greet them at the dock, tipsier than I initially thought. To keep myself from swaying, I plant both feet on the dock and straighten my spine. When I wave, it’s a little too emphatic.

“What a nice surprise!” I call out once Tom cuts the boat’s motor and glides it toward the dock.

“I brought your blanket!” Katherine calls back.

Her husband holds up two bottles of wine. “And I brought Pauillac Bordeaux from 2005!”

That means nothing to me except that it sounds expensive and that I will definitely not be waiting until Eli leaves to drink more.

Katherine hops out of the boat as her husband ties it to the dock. She presents the blanket like it’s a satin pillow with a tiara on top. “Washed and dried,” she says as she presses it into my hands. “Thanks for letting me keep it earlier.”

I tuck the blanket under one arm and try to shake Katherine’s hand with the other. She surprises me with a hug, capping it with a kiss on both cheeks, like we’re old friends and not two people who met in the middle of the lake a few hours ago. The warm greeting brings with it a twinge of guilt for spying on them.

As Tom comes toward me, I can’t help but think about how he looked when eavesdropping on his wife.

And that is what he was doing.

Eavesdropping. Listening in. Spying on her as blatantly as I was spying on him. All with that unreadable expression on his face.

“Sorry for dropping by unannounced,” he says, not sounding sorry at all.

Unlike his wife, he settles for a handshake. His grip is too firm, too eager. When he pumps my hand, it almost knocks me off-balance. Now I know what Marnie meant by intense. Instead of friendly, the handshake comes off like an unnecessary show of strength. He stares at me as he does it, his eyes so dark they’re almost black.

I wonder how I look to him in my slightly drunken state. Glassy-eyed, probably. Face flushed. Sweat forming along my hairline.

“Thank you for coming to Katherine’s rescue today.” Tom’s voice is deep, which might be why his words sound

insincere. A baritone like that doesn’t leave much room for nuance. “I hate to think what would have happened if you hadn’t been there to save her.”

I glance up at the porch, where Eli stands at the railing. He arches his brows, silently chastising me for failing to mention that over dinner.

“It was nothing,” I say. “Katherine pretty much saved herself. I just provided the boat that took her home.”

“Liar.” Katherine wraps an arm around my waist and walks me up the dock, as though I’m the sudden guest in this situation. Over her shoulder, she tells her husband, “Casey’s being modest. She did all the rescuing.”

“I told her not to swim in the lake,” Tom says. “It’s too dangerous. People have drowned in there.”

Katherine gives me a look of utter mortification. “I’m so sorry,” she tells me before turning to her husband. “God, Tom, must you always say the wrong thing?”

It takes him another second to understand what she’s talking about. The realization, when it dawns, drains the color from his face.

“Shit,” he says. “I’m an idiot, Casey. Truly. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s fine,” I say, forcing a smile. “You didn’t say anything that’s not true.”

“Thank you for being so understanding,” Katherine says. “Tom would be devastated if you were mad at him. He’s such a fan.”

“I really am,” he says. “We saw you in Shred of Doubt.

You were amazing. Just fantastic.”

We reach the porch steps, Katherine and me climbing them in tandem, Tom at our backs. He’s so close his breath hits the nape of my neck. Again, I think of him creeping across the first floor of their house. I sneak a glance at

Katherine, recalling the way she looked when she spotted her husband lurking at the edge of the dining room.

Startled, then scared.

She doesn’t seem scared now, which makes me start to doubt she was then. It’s more likely she was merely surprised and that I’d misread the situation entirely. It wouldn’t be the first time.

On the porch, Eli greets the Royces with the familiarity of neighbors who’ve spent an entire summer next to each other.

“Didn’t think I’d see you again until next summer,” he says.

“This was an impromptu trip,” Tom tells him. “Katie missed the lake and I wanted to see the foliage.”

“How long do you plan on staying?”

“The plan was to wing it. A week. Maybe two. But that was before Trish decided to come our way.”

“I still think we should stay,” Katherine says. “How bad could it really get?”

Eli runs a hand through his snowy beard. “Worse than you think. The lake looks peaceful now, but looks can be deceiving. Especially in a storm.”

Their small talk makes me feel like an outsider, even though my family has been coming to Lake Greene the longest. I think about what might have been if Len hadn’t died and we’d ended up living here full-time.

Maybe there’d be many impromptu gatherings like this.

Maybe I wouldn’t be eyeing the wine bottles in Tom’s hand with such thirst.

“I’ll grab glasses and a corkscrew,” I say.

I move into the house, finding the corkscrew still sitting on the dining room table. I then go to the liquor cabinet and grab four fresh wineglasses.

Out on the porch, the small talk continues, with Eli asking them, “How’s the house been treating you?”

“We adore it,” Tom says. “It’s perfect. We spent the past few summers in the area. A different rental on a different lake every year. When we finally decided to buy, we couldn’t believe our luck when our Realtor told us there was a property for sale on Lake Greene.”

I return to the porch, corkscrew and wineglasses in hand. I give a glass to everyone but Eli, who declines with a shake of his head and a pointed look that suggests I shouldn’t have any, either.

I pretend I don’t see it.

“You also have a place in the city, though, right?” I ask Katherine.

“An apartment on the Upper West Side.”

“Corner of Central Park West and 83rd Street,” Tom adds, which elicits an eyeroll from his wife.

“Tom’s a stickler about status,” she says as the binoculars sitting next to a chair catch her eye. “Oh, wow. I used to have a pair just like those.”

“You did?” Tom says as twin furrows form across his otherwise smooth forehead. “When?”

“A while ago.” Katherine turns back to me. “Are you a birder?”

“Are you?” Tom asks his wife.

“I used to be. Before we met. A lifetime ago.” “You never told me you like birds,” Tom says.

Katherine turns to face the water. “I’ve always liked them. You just never noticed.”

From the other side of the porch, Eli gives me another look. He’s noticed the tension between them, too. It’s impossible to miss. Tom and Katherine seem so at odds that it sucks all energy from the area, making the porch seem

stuffy and crowded. Or maybe it’s just me, overheated by inebriation. Either way, I feel the need to be out in the open.

“I’ve got an idea,” I say. “Let’s have our wine by a fire.”

Eli rubs his hands together and says, “An excellent suggestion.”

We leave the porch, descending the steps to ground level and the small courtyard nestled between the lakeshore and the inward corner of the house. In the center is a firepit surrounded by Adirondack chairs where I’d spent many a childhood summer night. Eli, no stranger to this area, collects a few logs from the woodpile stacked against the house and starts building the fire.

Armed with the corkscrew, I reach for the wine bottles that are still in Tom’s grip.

“Allow me, please,” he says.

“I think Casey knows how to open a bottle of wine,” Katherine says.

“Not a five-thousand-dollar bottle.”

Katherine shakes her head, gives me another apologetic look, and says, “See? Status.”

“I don’t mind,” I say, no longer wanting the bottles now that I know how crazy expensive they are. “Or we could open one of mine. You should keep those for a special occasion.”

“You saved my wife’s life,” Tom says. “To me, that makes this a very special occasion.”

He moves to the porch steps, using them as a makeshift bar. With his back toward us, he says, “You have to pour it just so. Allow it to breathe.”

Behind us, Eli has gotten a fire going. Small flames crawl across the logs before leaping into bigger ones. Soon the wood is emitting that satisfying campfire crackle as

sparks swirl into the night sky. It all brings a rush of memory. Me and Len the night before he died. Drinking wine by the fire and talking about the future, not realizing there was no future.

Not for us.

Definitely not for Len. “Casey?”

It’s Tom, handing me a glass of five-thousand-dollar wine. Under normal circumstances, I’d be nervous about taking a single sip. But gripped by a sorrowful memory, I gulp down half the glass.

“You have to sniff it first,” Tom says, sounding both annoyed and insulted. “Swirl it around in the glass, get your nose in close, then sniff. Smelling it prepares your brain for what you’re about to taste.”

I do as I’m told, holding the glass to my nose and inhaling deeply.

It smells like every other glass of wine I’ve had. Nothing special.

Tom hands a glass to Katherine and instructs us both to take a small sip and savor it. I give it a try, assuming the wine’s taste will live up to its price tag. It’s good, but not five-thousand-dollars good.

Rather than sniff and savor, Katherine brings the glass to her lips and empties it in a single swallow.

“Oops,” she says. “I guess I need to start over.”

Tom considers saying something in response, thinks better of it, takes her glass. Through clenched teeth, he says, “Of course, darling.”

He returns to the steps, his back toward us, one elbow flexing as he tilts the bottle, his other hand digging into his pocket. He brings Katherine a generous pour, swirling the wine in the glass so she doesn’t have to.

“Savor, remember,” he tells her. “In other words, pace yourself.”

“I’m fine.”

“Your tilt says otherwise.”

I look at Katherine, who is indeed listing slightly to the left.

“Tell me more about what happened today in the lake,” Eli says.

Katherine sighs and lowers herself into an Adirondack chair, her legs curled beneath her. “I’m still not sure. I know the water is cold this time of year, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. And I know I can swim across the lake and back because I did it all summer. But today, halfway across, everything just froze. It was like my entire body stopped working.”

“Was it a cramp?”

“Maybe? All I know is that I would have drowned out there if Casey hadn’t spotted me. Like that girl that vanished in Lake Morey last summer. What was her name again?”

“Sue Ellen,” Eli says solemnly. “Sue Ellen Stryker.”

“Tom and I were renting a place there that summer,” Katherine says. “It was all so awful. Did they ever find her?”

Eli shakes his head. “No.”

I take a sip of wine and close my eyes as it flows down my throat, listening as Katherine once again says, “So awful.”

“Only swim at night,” Eli intones. “That’s what my mother told me.”

And it’s what Eli told me and Marnie every summer when we were kids. Advice we ignored as we splashed and swam for hours under the full weight of the sun. It was only

after the sun set that the lake frightened us, its black depths made even darker by the shroud of night.

“She heard it from her own mother,” Eli continues. “My grandmother was a very superstitious woman. She grew up in Eastern Europe. Believed in ghosts and curses. The dead terrified her.”

I slide into the chair next to him, feeling light-headed from both the wine and the topic of conversation. “Eli, please. After what happened to Katherine today, I’m not sure anyone wants to hear about that right now.”

“I don’t mind,” Katherine says. “I actually like telling ghost stories around the fire. It reminds me of summer camp. I was a Camp Nightingale girl.”

“And I’m curious why swimming at night is better than daytime,” Tom says.

Eli jerks his head toward the lake. “At night, you can’t see your reflection on the water. Centuries ago, before people knew any better, it was a common belief that reflective surfaces could trap the souls of the dead.”

I stare into my glass and see that Eli’s wrong. Even though it’s night, my reflection is clearly visible, wobbling on the wine’s surface. To make it go away, I empty the glass. Savoring be damned.

Tom doesn’t notice, too intrigued by what Eli just said. “I read about that. In the Victorian era, people used to cover all the mirrors after someone died.”

“They did,” Eli says. “But it wasn’t just mirrors they were worried about. Any reflective surface was capable of capturing a soul.”

“Like a lake?” Katherine says, a smile in her voice. Eli touches the tip of his nose. “Exactly.”

I think about Len and get a full-body shudder. Suddenly restless, I stand, go to the wine bottle on the porch steps,

and pour myself another glass.

I empty it in three gulps.

“And it wasn’t just the Victorians and their superstitious relatives in Eastern Europe who thought this way,” Eli says.

I reach for the bottle again. It’s empty, the last few dregs of wine falling into my glass like drops of blood.

Behind me, Eli keeps talking. “The tribes that lived in this area long before any European settlers arrived—”

I grab the second bottle of wine, still uncorked, which annoys me almost as much as what Eli’s saying.

“—believed that those trapped souls could overtake the souls of the living—”

Instead of asking Tom to do it, I pick up the corkscrew, prepared to jam it into a five-thousand-dollar bottle of wine I have no business touching.

“—and that if you saw your own reflection in this very lake after someone had recently died in it—”

The corkscrew falls from my grip, slipping between steps into a patch of weeds behind the staircase.

“—it meant you were allowing yourself to be possessed.”

I slam the bottle down and the porch steps rattle. “Will you shut the fuck up about the lake?”

I don’t mean to sound so angry. In fact, I don’t mean to speak at all. The words simply roar out of me, fueled by a fiery blend of alcohol and unease. In their wake, everyone else is silent. All I can hear are the steady crackle of the fire and an owl hooting in the trees somewhere along the lakeshore.

“I’m sorry,” Eli says gently, aware of his rare lack of tact. “You were right. No one is interested in this nonsense.”

“It’s not that. It’s just—”

I stop talking, unsure of what it is I’m trying to say.

It dawns on me that I’m drunk. Drunk drunk. Tipsy is now just a memory. I’ve started to tilt like Katherine, the lake going sideways. I try to stop it with a too-tight grip on the porch steps.

“I don’t feel too good.”

At first, I think I’m the one who says it. Another unprompted outburst, even though I’m not conscious of my mouth opening, my lips moving, my tongue curling.

But then more words arrive—“Not good at all”—and I realize they’re coming not from me but from Katherine.

“What’s wrong?” Tom says. “I’m dizzy.”

Katherine stands, swaying like a wind-bent pine. “So dizzy.”

She stumbles away from the firepit, toward the lake.

The wineglass falls from her hand and hits the ground, shattering.

“Oh,” she says absently.

Then, suddenly and without warning, she collapses into the grass.

Midnight.

I’m alone on the porch, wrapped in the same blanket Katherine had returned earlier. I’m

mostly sober, which is why there’s a beer in my hand. I need something to ease me into sleep; otherwise it’ll never happen. Even with a few drinks, I rarely sleep a full night.

Not here.

Not since Len died.

Boone was right when he said the lake was too quiet. It is. Especially at this hour, when the only things breaking the steady nighttime silence are the occasional loon call or a nocturnal animal scurrying through the underbrush along the shore.

Caught in that quiet, I stare at the lake. I take a sip of beer.

I try not to think about my dead husband, although that’s difficult after what happened earlier.

It’s been hours since everyone left, the party breaking up immediately after Katherine passed out in the grass. The Royces were the first to go, Tom mumbling apologies as he led a woozy Katherine down the dock. Even though she regained consciousness after only a few seconds, I was still concerned. I suggested letting her rest and giving her some coffee, but Tom insisted on taking Katherine home immediately.

“This time you’ve really embarrassed yourself,” he hissed at her before starting the powerboat and zipping

away.

Hearing that side comment made me feel sorry for Katherine, who’d clearly been more drunk than I thought. I then felt guilty for feeling sorry, because it meant I was pitying her, which is a by-product of judging someone. And I had no right to judge Katherine Royce for drinking a little too much.

On the bright side, Tom left in such a rush that he forgot his other five-thousand-dollar bottle of wine. I found it on the porch steps and put it in the liquor cabinet. Finders keepers, I guess.

Eli lingered a little longer, dousing the fire and plucking shards of broken wineglass out of the grass.

“Just leave it,” I told him. “I’ll get the rest tomorrow when the sun’s out.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Eli asked as I walked him around the house to his truck.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’m doing a lot better than Katherine right now.”

“I meant about the other stuff.” He paused, looking at the gravel driveway under his feet. “I’m sorry for talking about the lake like that. I was just trying to entertain them. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

I gave Eli a hug. “You did, but it was only temporary.”

I believed it then. Not so much now, as thoughts of Len glide through my head as smoothly as the loons out on the lake. When my mother banished me here, I didn’t protest. She was right. I do need to lie low for a few weeks. Besides, I thought I’d be able to handle it. I’d spent more than a year living in the apartment I’d shared with Len. I didn’t think the lake house could be any worse.

But it is.

Because this is the place where Len died.

It’s where I became a widow, and everything about it— the house, the lake, the damn moose head in the den— reminds me of that fact. And it will continue to do so for as long as I’m alive.

Or sober.

I take another sip of beer and scan the shoreline on the other side of the lake. From the Fitzgerald place to the Royces’ to Eli’s house, all is dark. A thick mist rises from the lake itself, rolling languidly toward land in billowy waves. Each one skims onto shore and surrounds the support beams below the porch in a swirl of fog like seafoam crashing against the pylons of a pier.

I’m watching the mist, hypnotized, when a sound breaks the night’s silence.

A door creaking open, followed by footsteps on wood.

They’re coming from my right, which means the Mitchell place.

After a few more seconds, Boone Conrad appears—a slim silhouette making its way toward the end of the Mitchells’ dock.

The binoculars still sit on the table next to my chair. I lift them to my eyes and get a closer view of Boone. He’s reached the edge of the dock and stands there in nothing but a towel, confirming my first impression of him.

Boone Conrad is fit as hell.

Even though Eli suggested I keep clear of Boone, which I completely understand, he said nothing about not being allowed to look at him. Which I do, feeling only a twinge of guilt as I keep watching him through the binoculars.

That twinge becomes a pang—and something more— when Boone loosens the towel and lets it fall to the dock, revealing that he’s not wearing anything underneath.

I lower the binoculars.

I raise them again.

I consider the morality of watching someone without his knowledge or consent. Especially someone naked.

This is wrong, I think as I continue to stare. So very wrong.

Boone remains on the dock, basking in the moonlight, which makes his pale body look like it’s glowing. He then glances over his shoulder, almost as if he’s checking to see if I’m watching. I still am, but he can’t know that. He’s too far away and all the lights are off here, leaving me hidden in darkness. Yet a smirk crosses Boone’s lips anyway, one that’s arousing and shame inducing in equal measure.

Then, satisfied that whoever might be watching got a good show, he dives into the water. Although freezing, the lake probably feels like bathwater compared with the cold night air. Even if it doesn’t, Boone pays it no mind. His head pops out of the water about ten feet from the dock. He shakes it, flinging water from his shaggy hair, and begins to swim. Not with purpose, like I imagine Katherine was doing when she ran out of steam in the middle of the lake. Boone swims the way I used to do when I was a kid. Playful. Moving willy-nilly through the water. He ducks under again and emerges floating on his back, eyes on the starlit sky.

He looks, if not happy, then at least at peace.

Lucky him, I think as I lift the beer bottle to my lips and take a big swallow.

In the water, something catches Boone’s attention. His head snaps to the opposite shore, where a light has flicked on in the Royce house.

First floor.

The kitchen.

I swing the binoculars away from Boone in time to see Katherine dressed in satin pajamas and staggering into the kitchen like she has no idea where she is.

I know the feeling well.

Hands running along walls, floors spinning, reaching for chairs that are only two feet away but feel like twenty.

Watching Katherine throw open kitchen cupboards, searching for something, I’m overwhelmed by a sense of familiarity. This is me on many, many nights. Different person. Different kitchen. Same drunken reeling.

Katherine finds what she’s looking for—a glass tumbler

—and drifts to the sink. I nod, pleased to see she also knows the importance of hydration after a night of drinking.

She fills the glass, barely taking a sip before her attention drifts to the window at the sink. Katherine stares straight ahead, and for a sliver of a second, I think she’s looking right at me, even though that’s impossible. Like Boone, she can’t see me. Not from the other side of the lake.

Yet Katherine keeps her gaze fixed in my direction. It’s not until she touches her face, sliding her fingers from cheek to chin, that I understand.

She’s not looking at me.

She’s examining her reflection in the window.

Katherine stays that way a moment, drunkenly fascinated by what she sees, before returning to the glass of water. Tipping it back, she empties the glass and refills it. After a few more thirsty gulps, she sets the glass down and leaves the kitchen, her gait noticeably more assured.

The kitchen light goes out.

I turn once more to the Mitchells’ dock, hoping for another glimpse of Boone. To my disappointment, he’s no

longer there. While I was busy watching Katherine, he got out of the water, grabbed his towel, and went back inside.

Bummer.

Now it’s just me and the darkness and the bad thoughts rolling like the mist off the lake.

I tighten the blanket around my shoulders, finish my beer, and get up to fetch another one.

The worst part about drinking too much—other than, you know, drinking too much—is the morning after, when everything you gulped down the night before

comes back to haunt you.

The steady drumbeat of a headache. The churning stomach.

The bladder close to bursting.

I wake with all three, plus a sensitivity to sunlight that borders on the vampiric. It doesn’t matter that the long row of bedroom windows faces west, ignored by the sun until early afternoon. The brightness pouring through them is still enough to make me wince the second I open my eyes.

Rolling over, I squint at the alarm clock on the nightstand.

Nine a.m.

Late for lake life. Early for me.

I want to go back to sleep, but the headache and roiling stomach and gargantuan urge to pee pull me out of bed, into the bathroom, then downstairs to the kitchen. While coffee brews, I wash down an Advil with a glass of tap water and check my phone. There’s a joke text from Marnie

—that atrocious poster of a kitten dangling from a tree branch that reads, Hang in there!

I reply with a vomit emoji.

There’s also another text, this one from an unknown number. I open it, surprised to see it’s from Katherine Royce.

Sorry about last night.—K.

So she remembers what happened by the fire. I wonder if she also recalls stumbling into the kitchen at midnight. Probably not.

No worries, I text back. Who among us hasn’t passed out in a stranger’s yard?

Her reply arrives instantly. It was my first time. Welcome to the club.

On my phone, three dots appear, vanish, reappear. The telltale sign of someone debating what to text next. Katherine’s reply, when it finally arrives, is succinct: I feel like shit. To drive home that point, she includes a poop emoji.

Need some coffee? I text back.

The suggestion earns a heart-eyed emoji and an all-caps

YES!!!!!

Come on over.

Katherine arrives in the wood-paneled powerboat, looking like a fifties movie star at the Venice Film Festival as she pulls up to the dock. Cornflower blue sundress. Red sunglasses. Yellow silk scarf tied under her chin. I get a pang of envy as I help her out of the boat and onto the dock. Katherine Royce feeling like shit still looks better than I do on my very best day.

Before I can get too jealous, though, she takes off the sunglasses, and I have to stop myself from flinching. She looks rough. Her eyes are bloodshot. Beneath them, dark purple circles hang like garlands.

“I know,” she says. “It was a bad night.”

“Been there, done that, had the pictures printed in a tabloid.”

She takes my arm, and we stroll up the dock, past the firepit, and up the steps to the back porch. Katherine eases

into a rocking chair while I step inside to fetch us two mugs of coffee.

“How do you take it?” I ask through the open French doors.

“Normally with cream and sugar,” Katherine calls back. “But today I think I’ll take it black. The stronger, the better.”

I bring out the coffee and sit in the rocking chair next to hers.

“Bless you,” Katherine says before taking a sip, wincing at its bitterness.

“Too strong?”

“Just right.” She takes another sip, smacks her lips. “Anyway, I’m sorry again about last night.”

“Which part?”

“All of it? I mean, Tom is Tom. He’s constantly putting his foot in his mouth. The thing is, he never means to. He’s just missing that filter the rest of us have. He says what’s on his mind, even if it makes things awkward. As for me—” Katherine jerks her head toward the ground below, where she’d dropped like a sack of flour twelve hours before. “I don’t know what happened.”

“I think it’s called drinking too much, too fast,” I say. “I’m an expert at it.”

“It wasn’t the drinking, no matter what Tom thinks. If anything, he’s the one who drinks too much.” She pauses and looks across the lake to her own house, its glass walls made opaque by the reflection of the morning sky. “I’m just not myself lately. I haven’t felt right for days. I feel weird. Weak. That exhaustion I felt while swimming yesterday? That wasn’t the first time it’s happened. It always feels like what happened last night. My heart starts beating fast.

Like, illegal-diet-drug fast. It just overwhelms me. And before I know it, I’m passed out in the grass.”

“Do you remember getting home?”

“Vaguely. I remember feeling sick in the boat and Tom putting me to bed and then waking up on the living room couch.”

No mention of fumbling around in the kitchen. Guess I was right about her having no memory of it.

“You didn’t embarrass yourself, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I say. “And I’m not upset at Tom, either. I meant what I said last night. My husband died in the lake. It’s something that happened, and I see no point in pretending it didn’t.”

I leave out the part about me spending most of my days doing exactly that. Trying to forget has become my full-time job.

Katherine says nothing after that, and I don’t need her to. I’m content to simply be in her company, the two of us sipping coffee as we rock back and forth, the chairs creaking dryly beneath us. It helps that it’s a glorious autumn morning, full of sunshine and leaves blazing with color. There’s a chill to the air, which isn’t unwelcome. It balances everything out. A refreshing bite against the golden light.

Len had a name for days like this: Vermont perfect. When the land and water and sky conspire to take your breath away.

“It’s got to be hard always seeing this lake,” Katherine eventually says. “Are you okay staying here by yourself?”

I’m taken aback by the question, mostly because no one else has thought to ask it. My mother never even considered it when she banished me to the lake house. That

it occurred to Katherine, who barely knows me, says a lot about both women.

“I am,” I say. “Mostly.”

“But doesn’t being here bother you?” “Not as much as I thought it would.”

It’s as honest an answer as I can give. The first thing I did after Ricardo drove away, leaving me all but stranded here, was come out to this porch and look at the lake. I thought I’d experience a pileup of emotions. Grief and fear and rage. Instead, all I felt was grim resignation.

Something bad happened in that water.

I can’t change it, no matter how much I want to. All I can do is try to forget it.

Hence all my time spent staring across the water. My theory is that if I look long enough, the bad memories associated with Lake Greene will eventually grow dull and fade away.

“Maybe because it’s so pretty,” Katherine suggests. “It was Tom’s idea to buy here. I was content to rent a different place every summer. Tom was adamant about owning. If you couldn’t already tell, my husband loves possessing things. But in this case, he’s right. The lake is gorgeous. So is the house. It’s funny, when I’m not here, I don’t miss the place very much. But when I am here, I don’t ever want to leave. I suppose all vacation homes are like that.”

I think of Len and our late-July picnic. Let’s stay here forever, Cee.

“Should I expect you here for more than just a week or two, then?”

Katherine shrugs. “Maybe. We’ll see. Tom’s getting worried about the weather, but I think it might be fun to be here during a storm. Romantic, even.”

“Wait until your sixth day without power. Romance will be the furthest thing from your mind.”

“I don’t mind roughing it.” Noticing my look of surprise, Katherine adds, “I don’t! I’m tougher than I look. Once, three model friends and I spent a week rafting in the Grand Canyon. No electricity. Definitely no cell service. We ran the rapids during the day, and at night we slept in tents, cooked over an open fire, and peed in the weeds. It was heavenly.”

“I didn’t know models were that close.”

“The idea of bitchiness and backstage catfights is mostly just a myth. When there are twelve girls sharing a dressing room, you’re kind of forced to get along.”

“Are you still friends with any of them?”

Katherine gives a slow, sad shake of her head. “They’re all still in the game, and I’m not. Makes it hard to keep in touch. Most of my friends I only talk to through Instagram. That’s the weird thing about being famous. Everyone knows who you are—”

“But sometimes you feel completely alone.” “Yeah,” Katherine says. “That.”

She looks away, as if embarrassed to be understood so clearly. Her gaze lands on the binoculars, which rest on the small table between our rocking chairs. Drumming her fingers over them, she says, “Ever see anything interesting with these?”

“Not really,” I lie, holding back a guilty blush as I think about watching Boone last night, how good he looked naked in the moonlight, how a bolder, more confident me might have joined him in the lake.

“So you haven’t watched my house?” “Never.”

Another lie. Because it’s Katherine I’m lying to—right to her face, no less—the guilt that comes with it cuts deeper.

“Oh, I’d totally watch my house. Those huge windows? How could anyone resist?” Katherine picks up the binoculars and peers through them at her house on the opposite shore. “God, it’s so ostentatious. Like, who needs a house that big? As a vacation home, no less.”

“If you can afford it, there’s no reason not to enjoy it.” “That’s the thing,” Katherine says as she lowers the

binoculars. “We can’t afford it. Well, Tom can’t. I pay for everything. The house. The apartment. The five-thousand- dollar wine and the Bentley, which is pretty sweet. We should take it out sometime, just you and me.”

“Tom has no money of his own?”

“All of Tom’s money is tied up in Mixer, which still hasn’t turned a profit and probably never will. The joys of being married to a so-called tech titan. He looks the part and acts it exceptionally well, but in reality—” Katherine stops her rant with a gulp of coffee, followed by an apologetic “You must think I’m insufferable. Here I am, complaining about my husband, when you—”

“It’s fine,” I say, cutting off the rest of her sentence before she can utter it. “Most marriages have their difficulties.”

“Most? Was your marriage always perfect?”

“It wasn’t,” I say, looking at the lake, at how the morning light seems to dance across the water’s surface. “But it felt that way. Right up until the end.”

A pause.

“Then again, we weren’t married long enough for Len to get sick of me and initiate our inevitable divorce.”

Katherine turns my way, those large eyes of hers searching my face to see if I’m being serious. “Do you

always do that?” she asks. “Do what?”

“Make a joke to avoid talking about your true feelings?” “Only ninety percent of the time,” I say.

“You just did it again.”

I shift uneasily in my chair. Katherine’s right, of course. She’s pinpointed one of my worst traits. The only person besides Marnie and my mother to do so. Not even Len, who bore the brunt of it, ever called me out on it.

“I make jokes,” I say, “because it’s easier to pretend I’m not feeling what I’m feeling than to actually feel it.”

Katherine nods, turns away, looks again to her glass house at the water’s edge. The side that faces the lake is still reflecting sky, although the sun has entered the picture now. A glowing circle right where her bedroom is located. So bright it could blind you if you stared at it long enough.

“Maybe I should try that,” she says. “Does it really help?”

“Yes. Especially if you drink enough.”

Katherine responds with a dry chuckle. “Now that I

have tried.”

I stare deeply into my coffee mug, regretting that I didn’t add a splash of bourbon. I think about getting up to add some. I think about asking Katherine if she also wants some. I’m about to do just that when I spot a gray-clad figure stepping onto the patio outside Katherine’s house.

She sees it, too, and says, “That’s Tom wondering where I am.”

“You didn’t tell him you were coming over?”

“I like to keep him guessing.” She rises, does a little stretch, then comes in for her second surprise hug in two days. “Thanks for the coffee. We should do it again tomorrow.”

“My place or yours?” I say, aiming for a Mae West impersonation but ending up sounding more like Bea Arthur.

“Here, definitely. There’s only decaf at our place. Tom says caffeine blunts the body’s natural energy. That right there is grounds for divorce.” She pauses, no doubt taking in the look of surprise on my face. “It was a joke, Casey. To cover up how I truly feel.”

“Is it working for you?”

Katherine thinks it over. “Maybe. I still prefer honesty. And in this case, the truth is that Tom needs me too much to agree to a divorce. He’d kill me before letting me leave.”

She gives me a wiggle-fingered wave and skips down the steps. I stay at the porch railing, watching her cross the dock, hop into the boat, and start the short crossing to the other side of the lake.

When she’s about halfway there, something on the ground below catches my eye. A spot of brightness in a swath of tall grass near the stone wall running along the shoreline.

Glass.

Reflecting the sun as brightly as Katherine’s house.

I descend the steps and pick it up, discovering it’s a shard of the wineglass she’d broken last night. When I hold it to the light, I can see drops of wine dried on its surface, along with a light film that resembles dried salt.

I scan the ground for similar chunks of glass. Seeing none, I go back inside and drop the shard into the kitchen trash. By the time it’s clinked to the bottom of the bin, a thought occurs to me.

Not about the broken wineglass. About Katherine.

She texted me this morning, but I have no idea how she got my number.

The rest of the day passes on its regularly scheduled course.

Vodka. Neat.

Another vodka. Also neat. Cry in the shower.

Grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. Bourbon.

Bourbon.

My mother calls at her regularly scheduled time, using my cell and not the landline still stuffed into a drawer in the den. I let it go to voicemail and delete her message without listening to it.

Then I have another bourbon.

Dinner is steak with a side salad so I can pretend my body isn’t a complete nutritional wasteland.

And wine.

Coffee to sober up a tad. Ice cream, just because.

It’s now a few minutes after midnight and I’m sipping cheap whiskey poured from an unopened bottle I found stuffed in the back of the liquor cabinet. It’s probably been there for decades. But it does the trick, smoothing the peaks and valleys of intoxication I’ve experienced over the course of the day. Now I’m enveloped in a dreamy calmness that makes all of it worthwhile.

I’m on the porch, snug in a heavy sweater, the blanket from the boat once again wrapped over my shoulders. It’s not as foggy as last night. Lake Greene and its environs sit encased in a silvery crispness that provides a clear view across the water. I take in each house there.

The Fitzgeralds’. Dark and empty.

The Royces’. Not empty, but dark all the same. Eli’s. A single light aglow on the third floor.

I turn to my side of the lake. The Mitchell house, also dark, can barely be glimpsed through the trees. I assume that means no midnight swim for Boone.

Pity.

I’m contemplating going to bed myself when a light appears at the Royces’. Seeing it makes me immediately reach for the binoculars, but I stop myself before my fingers can snag them.

I shouldn’t be doing this. I don’t need to do this.

What I should do is drink some water, go to bed, and ignore what my neighbors are up to. Not a difficult task. Yet that rectangle of brightness on the other side of the lake tugs at me like a rope around my waist.

I try to resist, hovering my hand over the binoculars while counting Mississippis just like I did yesterday with my bourbon. This time, I fall well short of forty-six before grabbing them. In fact, I barely make it to eleven.

Because resistance also has its drawbacks. It makes me want something—watching the Royces, knocking back a drink—even more. I know how denial works. You withhold and withhold and withhold until that mental dam breaks and all those bad urges come spilling out, often causing harm in the process.

Not that this behavior is hurting anyone. No one will ever know but me.

Binoculars in hand, I zero in on the window glowing in the otherwise dark night. It’s on the second floor, coming from the home office where I saw Tom yesterday. Now, though, it’s Katherine who sits at the desk by the window, staring at the laptop.

Wrapped in a white robe, she looks worse than she did this morning. A pale imitation of her usual self. Not helping is the glow from the laptop, which gives her face a sickly blue tinge.

I watch as Katherine types something, then squints at the laptop’s screen. The squint grows more pronounced as she leans forward, engrossed in whatever she’s looking at.

Then something surprises her. It’s clear even from this distance.

Her lower jaw drops and a hand flies to her bottom lip. Her eyes, released from their squint, grow wide. Katherine blinks. Rapidly. A full two seconds of fluttering eyelids.

She pauses. She exhales.

She turns her head slowly toward the office door, which is completely open.

She listens, head cocked, on alert.

Then, seemingly satisfied she won’t be interrupted, Katherine turns back to the laptop in a flurry of activity. Keys are tapped. The cursor is moved. All while she keeps sneaking occasional glances back to the open door.

I do the same, jerking the binoculars to the right, where the master bedroom is located.

It’s completely dark.

I return my gaze to the office, where Katherine spends the next minute typing, then reading, then typing some

more. The surprise on her face has dulled slightly, morphing into something that to my eye looks like determination.

She’s searching for something. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. It’s not the expression of someone casually scrolling through emails in the middle of the night. It’s the look of someone on a mission.

On the other side of the house, another light appears. The bedroom.

Sheer white curtains cover the tall windows. Through them, I see the diffuse glow of a bedside lamp and the silhouette of Tom Royce sitting up in bed. He slides out from under the covers and, wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms, takes a few stiff-jointed steps across the room.

At the slice of door that’s visible, Tom pauses, just like he did in the dining room when I watched them yesterday.

He’s listening again, wondering what his wife is up to. Two rooms away, Katherine continues to type, read,

type. I move back and forth between the two of them, like someone watching a tennis match.

Tom still listening at the bedroom door. Katherine’s face lit by the laptop’s glow. Tom slipping out of the room.

Katherine leaning forward slightly, getting a better look at the computer screen.

Tom reappearing in the doorway behind her.

He says something, alerting Katherine to his presence.

She jolts at the sound of his voice, slams the laptop shut, whirls around to face him. Although I can only see the back of her head, it’s clear she’s speaking. Her gestures are big, demonstrative. A pantomime of innocence.

Tom says something back, chuckles, scratches the back of his neck. He doesn’t appear angry or even suspicious,

which means Katherine must have said the right thing.

She stands and kisses Tom the same way a sitcom wife would. Perched on tiptoes for a quick peck, one leg bent back in a flirty kick. Tom hits the light switch by the door, and the office becomes a rectangle of blackness.

Two seconds later, they’re back in the bedroom. Tom climbs into bed and rolls onto his side, his back to the window. Katherine disappears into the bathroom. There’s another flash of perfect lighting, followed by the door closing.

In the bed, Tom rolls over. The last thing I see is him reaching for the bedside lamp. He turns it off and the house is plunged into darkness.

I lower the binoculars, unnerved by what I just saw, although I can’t articulate why. I want to think it stems from getting another unfiltered glimpse of someone else’s life. Or maybe it’s simply guilt over convincing myself it was okay to yet again watch something I was never supposed to see. As a result, I’m turning what I saw into something bigger than it really is. The proverbial mountain out of a molehill.

Yet I can’t shake the way Katherine reacted the moment she realized Tom had entered the room.

Lifted out of her chair. Panic writ large on her face.

The more I think about it, the more certain I am that she’d been caught looking at something she didn’t want Tom to see. The way she slammed the laptop shut made that abundantly clear, followed up with the too-cutesy kiss.

It all leads me to one conclusion. Tom Royce has a secret.

And I think Katherine just discovered what it is.

One a.m.

Porch, rocking chair, booze, etc.

I’m half asleep in the chair, doing that dozing- until-your-head-droops-and-wakes-you-up thing my father used to do when I was a kid. I’d watch it happen as the two of us sat in front of the TV, waiting for my mother to get home from a performance. First the eyes would slide shut. Then came stillness and maybe some growl-like snoring. Finally his head would tilt forward, startling him awake. I’d chuckle, he’d mumble something, and the whole process would begin again.

Now it’s me doing it, the traits of the father passed on to his daughter. After another bob-and-wake, I tell myself it’s time to go to bed.

But then a light blinks on at the Royce house on the other side of the lake.

The kitchen.

Suddenly wide-awake, I fumble for the binoculars, not even thinking about resisting this time. I simply grab them, lift them to my eyes, and see Katherine march into the kitchen. The robe she’d been wearing earlier is gone, replaced by jeans and a bulky white sweater.

Tom’s right behind her, still in pajama bottoms, talking. No.

Shouting.

His mouth is wide open, an angry oval that expands and contracts as he keeps yelling at his wife in the middle of

the kitchen. She whirls around, shouts something back.

I lean forward, ridiculously, as if I’ll hear what they’re saying if I get just a little bit closer. But the Royce house is like a silent movie playing just for me. No voices. No music. No sound at all save for the ambient noise of the wind in the leaves and the lapping of water along the shore.

Katherine enters the darkened dining room, nothing but a faint shadow passing the floor-to-ceiling windows. Tom trails a few paces behind her, following her as she disappears into the living room.

For a moment, there’s nothing. Just the steady glow of the kitchen light, illuminating an empty room. Then a living room lamp is turned on. Tom’s doing. I see him on the white sofa, one hand retracting from the freshly lit lamp. Katherine stands at the window, back turned to her husband, looking directly across the lake to my house.

Like she knows I’m watching. Like she’s certain of it.

I slide deeper into the rocking chair. Again, ridiculous. She can’t see me.

Of course she can’t.

If anything, I suspect she’s watching her husband’s reflection in the glass. On the edge of the couch, he slumps forward, head in his hands. He looks up, seemingly pleading with her. His gestures are desperate, almost frantic. By focusing on his lips, I can almost make out what he’s saying.

How? Or maybe Who?

Katherine doesn’t reply. At least not that I can see. Away from the couch and backlit by the lamp, the front of her is cast in shadow. She’s not moving, though. That much I can tell. She stands mannequin-like in front of the window, arms at her sides.

Behind her, Tom rises from the couch. The pleading morphs into shouting again as he takes a halting step toward her. When Katherine refuses to respond, he grabs her arm and jerks her away from the glass.

For a second, her gaze stays fixed on the window, even as the rest of her is being pulled away from it.

That’s when our eyes lock. Somehow.

Even though she can’t see me and my eyes are hidden behind binoculars and we’re a quarter mile apart, our gazes find each other.

Just for a moment.

But in that tiny slice of time, I can see the fear and confusion in her eyes.

Less than a second later, Katherine’s head turns with the rest of her body. She whirls around to face her husband, who continues to drag her toward the couch. Her free arm rises, fingers curling into a fist that, once formed, connects with Tom’s jaw.

The blow is hard.

So hard I think I hear it from the other side of the lake, although more likely the sound is me letting out a half gasp of shock.

Tom, looking more surprised than hurt, releases Katherine’s arm and stumbles backwards onto the couch. She seems to say something. Finally. No yelling from her. No pleading, either. Just a sentence uttered with what looks like commanding calmness.

She leaves the room. Tom remains.

I nudge the binoculars upward to the second floor, which remains dark. If that’s where Katherine went, I can’t see her.

I return my gaze to the living room, where Tom has pulled himself back onto the sofa. Watching him hunched forward, head in his hands, makes me think I should call the police and report a domestic dispute.

While I can’t begin to know the context of what I saw, there’s no mistake that some form of spousal abuse occurred. Although Katherine was the one to strike, it was only after Tom had grabbed her. And when our eyes briefly locked, it wasn’t malice or vengeance I saw.

It was fear.

Obvious, all-consuming fear.

In my mind, Tom had it coming.

It makes me wonder how many times something like this has happened before.

It makes me worry it’ll happen again.

The only thing I’m certain of is that I regret ever picking up these binoculars and watching the Royces. I knew it was wrong. Just like I knew that if I kept watching, I was eventually going to see something I didn’t want to see.

Because I wasn’t spying on just one person.

I was watching a married couple, which is far more complex and unwieldy.

What is marriage but a series of mutual deceptions?

That’s a line from Shred of Doubt. Before I was fired, I spoke it eight times a week, always getting an uneasy laugh from audience members who recognized the truth behind it. No marriage is completely honest. Each one is built on some type of deception, even if it’s something small and harmless. The husband pretending to like the sofa his wife picked out. The wife who watches her husband’s favorite show even though she quietly despises it.

And sometimes it’s bigger. Cheating. Addiction. Secrets.

Those can’t stay hidden forever. At some point, the truth comes out and all those carefully arranged deceptions topple like dominoes. Is that what I just saw in the Royce house? A marriage under pressure finally imploding?

In the living room, Tom stands and crosses to the sideboard bar. He grabs a bottle of honey-colored liquid and splashes some into a glass.

Above him, a light goes on in the master bedroom, revealing Katherine moving behind the gauzy curtains. I grab my phone when I see her, not thinking about what I’ll say. I simply call.

Katherine answers with a hushed, husky “Hello?” “It’s Casey,” I say. “Is everything okay over there?”

There’s nothing on Katherine’s end. Not a breath. Not a rustle. Just a blip of silence before she says, “Why wouldn’t things be okay?”

“I thought I—”

I barely manage to stop the word about to careen off my tongue.

Saw.

“I thought I heard something at your house,” I say. “And I just wanted to know if you’re okay.”

“I’m fine. See.”

My body goes numb.

Katherine knows I’ve been watching.

I guess I shouldn’t be this surprised. She’s been in this very same rocking chair, looking at her house through the same pair of binoculars now sitting next to me.

I’d totally watch my house, she said, subtly indicating she knew I was watching, too.

But there’s nothing subtle about this. Now she’s outright telling me to look.

The sheer curtains in the master bedroom part, and I scramble for the binoculars. At the window, Katherine waves. Because she’s mostly cloaked in shadow, I can’t see her face.

Or if she’s smiling.

Or if the fear I noticed earlier is still in her eyes.

All I can see is her still-waving silhouette until that, too, stops. Katherine’s hand drops to her side, and after standing at the window for another second, she backs away and leaves the room, hitting the light switch on her way out.

Directly below that, Tom has finished his drink. He stands there a moment, staring into the empty glass, looking like he’s considering having another.

Then his arm rears back and he flings the glass. It hits the wall and shatters.

Tom storms back to the sofa, reaches for the lamp, and, with a flick of his fingers, an uneasy darkness returns to the house across the lake.

I’m startled awake by a sound streaking across the lake. With my eyes still closed, I catch only the last breath of it. An echo of an echo fading fast as it

whooshes deeper into the woods behind my house.

I remain frozen in place for half a minute, waiting for the sound to return. But it’s gone now, whatever it was. The lake sits in silence as thick as a wool blanket and just as suffocating.

I fully open my eyes to a gray-pink sky and a lake just beginning to sparkle with daylight.

I spent the whole night on the porch. Jesus.

My head pounds with pain and my body crackles with it. When I sit up, my joints creak louder than the rocking chair beneath me. As soon as I’m upright, the dizziness hits. A diabolical spinning that makes the world feel like it’s tilting off its axis and forces me to grip the arms of the chair for balance.

I look down, hoping it will steady me. At my feet, rocking slightly on the porch floor, is the whiskey bottle, now mostly empty.

Jesus.

Seeing it brings a rush of nausea so strong it eclipses my pain and confusion and dizziness. I stand—somehow— and rush inside, heading for the small powder room just off the foyer.

I make it to the powder room, but not the toilet. All the poison churning in my stomach comes out in a rush over the sink. I turn the tap on full blast to wash it down and stumble out of the room, toward the staircase on the other side of the living room. I can only reach the top floor by crawling up the steps. Once there, I continue down the hall on my hands and knees until I’m in the master bedroom, where I manage to pull myself into bed.

I flop onto my back, my eyes closing of their own accord. I have no say in the matter. The last thought I have before spiraling into unconsciousness is a memory of the sound that woke me up. With it comes recognition.

I now know what I heard. It was a scream.