Chapter no 4 – ‌‌‌‌BEFORE‌

The House Across the Lake PDF

I wake again just after nine, my head still pounding but the spinning and nausea blessedly gone. Still, I feel like death. Smell like it, too. And I’m certain I look like

it.

My mother would be appalled. I am appalled.

As I sit up in a tangle of blankets, the first thing I notice

is the muted rush of running water coming from downstairs.

The sink in the powder room. I never turned it off.

I leap out of bed, hobble down the steps, find the tap still running at full blast. Two-thirds of the basin is filled with water, and I suspect excellent plumbing is the only thing that prevented it from overflowing. I cut the water as memories of last night come back in stark flashes.

The whiskey.

The binoculars.

The fight and the phone call and Katherine’s wave at the window.

And the scream.

The last thing I remember but the most important. And the most suspect. Did I really hear a scream at the break of dawn? Or was it just part of a drunken dream I had while passed out on the porch?

While I hope it was the latter, I suspect it was the former. I assume that in a dream, I would have heard a

scream more clearly. A vivid cry filling my skull. But what I heard this morning was something else.

The aftermath of a scream.

A sound both vague and elusive.

But if the scream did happen—which is the theory working its way through my hungover brain—it sounded like Katherine. Well, it sounded like a woman. And as far as I know, she’s the only other woman staying at the lake right now.

I spend the next few minutes hunting my phone, eventually finding it still on the porch, sitting on the table next to the binoculars. After an entire night spent outside, there’s only a wisp of battery life left. Before taking it inside to charge, I check to see if I got any calls or texts from Katherine.

I didn’t.

I decide to text her, carefully wording my message while a strong mug of coffee zaps me to life and the charger does the same to my phone.

I just made coffee. Come over if you want some. I think we should talk about last night.

I hit send before I can even consider deleting it.

While waiting for a response, I sip my coffee and think about the scream.

If that’s what it really was.

I’ve spent half my life on this lake. I know it could have been something else. Many animals arrive at night to prowl the lakeshore or even the water itself. Screeching owls and loud waterfowl. Once, when Marnie and I were kids, a fox somewhere along the shore, defending its turf from another animal, screamed for the better part of the night. Literally screamed. Hearing its cries echo over the water was bone-

chilling, even after Eli explained to us in detail what was happening.

But I’m used to those noises, and am able to sleep right through them. Especially after a night spent drinking. This was something different enough to startle me awake, even with most of a bottle of whiskey under my belt.

Right now, I’m seventy-five percent sure that what I heard was a woman screaming. While that’s far from certain, it’s enough to keep concern humming through me as I check my phone again.

Still nothing from Katherine.

Rather than continue to wait for a return text, I decide to call her. The phone rings three times before going to voicemail.

“Hi, you’ve reached Katherine. I’m not available to take your call right now. Or maybe I’m just ignoring you. If you leave your name and number, you’ll find out which one it is if I call you back.”

I wait for the beep and leave a message.

“Hey, it’s Casey.” I pause, thinking of how to phrase this. “I just wanted to see if you’re all right. I know you said you were last night, but early this morning, I thought I heard—”

I pause again, hesitant to come right out and say what it is I think I heard. I don’t want to sound overly dramatic or, worse, downright delusional.

“Anyway, call me back. Or feel free to just come over.

It’ll be nice to chat.”

I end the call, shove my phone back into my pocket, and go about my day.

Vodka. Neat.

Another vodka. Also neat.

Shower, minus the crying but with a new, unwelcome anxiety.

A grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.

When the grandfather clock in the living room strikes one and Katherine still hasn’t replied, I call again, once more getting her voicemail.

“Hi, you’ve reached Katherine.”

I hang up without leaving a message, pour a bourbon, and carry it to the porch. The whiskey bottle from last night is still there, a mouthful of liquid still sloshing inside. I kick it out of the way, sink into a rocking chair, and check my phone ten times in three minutes.

Still nothing.

I pick up the binoculars and peer at the Royce house, hoping for a sign of Katherine but seeing nothing in return. It’s that hour when the sun starts glinting off the glass walls and the reflection of the sky hides what’s behind them like a pair of closed eyelids.

While watching the house, I think about the unusual nature of what I saw last night. Something big went down inside that house. Something that’s none of my business yet, oddly, still my concern. Even though I haven’t known her very long at all, I consider Katherine a friend. Or, at the very least, someone who could become a friend. And new friends aren’t easy to come by once you hit your thirties.

Out on the lake, a familiar boat floats in the distance. I swing the binoculars toward it and see Eli sitting at the bow, fishing rod in hand. If anyone else on the lake heard the same sound I did, it would be him. I know he likes to rise with the sun, so there’s a chance he was awake then. And if he did hear it, he might be able to clarify what it was and put my simmering worry to rest.

I call his cell, assuming he has it on him.

While the phone rings, I continue to watch him through the binoculars. An annoyed look crosses his face as he pats a front pocket of his fishing vest—a sign he’s definitely carrying his phone. After propping his fishing rod against the side of the boat, he looks at his phone, then at the lake house. Seeing me on the porch, my phone in hand, he gives me a wave and answers.

“If you’re calling to see if I’ve caught anything, the answer is no.”

“I have a different question,” I say, adding a warning. “An unusual one. Did you happen to hear a strange noise outside this morning?”

“What time?” “Dawn.”

“I wasn’t awake then,” Eli says. “Decided to sleep in a little. I’m assuming you heard something?”

“I think so. I’m not sure. I was hoping you could back me up on that.”

Eli doesn’t ask me why I was awake at dawn. I suspect he already knows.

“What kind of noise are you talking about?” “A scream.”

Saying it out loud, I realize how unlikely it sounds. The odds of someone, let alone Katherine Royce, screaming at the break of dawn are slim, although not impossible.

Bad things can happen on this lake. I know that from experience.

“A scream?” Eli says. “You sure it wasn’t a fox or something?”

Am I sure? Not really. Even during this conversation, my certainty level has lowered from seventy-five percent to about fifty.

“It sounded like a person to me,” I say.

“Why would someone be screaming at that hour?”

“Why does anyone scream, Eli? Because she was in danger.”

“She? You think it was Katherine Royce you heard?”

“I can’t think of anyone else it could have been,” I say. “Have you seen any sign of her today?”

“No,” Eli says. “Then again, I haven’t exactly been looking. You worried something happened to her?”

I tell him no, when the opposite is true. Katherine’s lack of a response to my text and calls has me feeling unnerved, even though in all likelihood there’s a perfectly good reason for it. She could still be sleeping, her phone silenced or in another room.

“I’m sure everything’s fine,” I say, more to convince myself than Eli.

“Do you want me to stop over there and check?”

Because he’s the lake’s one-man neighborhood watch, I know Eli would be happy to do it. But this is my worry, not his. It’s time to pay the Royces a visit, and hopefully all my concerns will be put to rest.

“I’ll go,” I say. “It’ll be good to get out of the house.”

Tom Royce is on the dock by the time I reach it. Clearly, he saw me coming because he stands like a man expecting company. He’s even dressed for

casual visitors. Black jeans. White sneakers. Cashmere sweater the same color as the pricey wine he brought over two nights ago. He offers an exaggeratedly friendly wave as I moor the boat and join him on the dock.

“Howdy, neighbor. What brings you by this afternoon?” “I came by to see if Katherine wanted to come over for

some girl talk and an afternoon cocktail on the porch.”

I prepared the excuse on the trip from my dock to his, hoping it would make it look like I’m not overreacting. Which I suspect I totally am. Katherine’s fine and I’m just worried because of something I saw and something I heard and something that happened to my husband more than a year ago. All of which are completely unrelated.

“I’m afraid she’s not here,” Tom says. “When will she be back?”

“Probably not until next summer.”

The answer’s as unexpected as a door slammed in my face.

“She’s gone?”

“She went back to our apartment in the city,” Tom says. “Left early this morning.”

I take a few more steps closer to him, noticing a red patch on his left cheek where Katherine had punched him. Considering that, maybe her departure shouldn’t be a

surprise after all. I can even picture the events leading up to her decision.

First the fight, ending with a haymaker to Tom’s face.

Then my phone call, likely made after she’d already decided to leave. Thinking about her brief appearance at the bedroom window, I now see that strange wave in a different light. It’s entirely possible it was a wave goodbye.

After that there could have been some frantic packing in the darkness of their bedroom. Finally, just as she was about to leave, the fight flared up again. Both of them trying to get in their last licks. During that final showdown, Katherine screamed. It might have been from frustration. Or from rage. Or simply just a release of all the emotions she’d had pent up inside her.

Or, I think with a shudder, maybe Tom did something that made her scream.

“What time this morning?” I say as I eye him with suspicion.

“Early. She called me a little while ago to say she arrived safely.”

So far, that tracks with my theory about when Katherine left. What doesn’t track is Tom’s Bentley, which sits beneath the portico that juts from the side of the house. It’s slate gray, as sleek and shiny as a wet seal.

“How’d she get there?” “Car service, of course.”

That doesn’t explain why Katherine hasn’t called or texted me back. After last night—and after making casual plans to meet again for coffee this morning—it seems unusual she hasn’t told me herself that she went back to New York.

“I’ve tried reaching her several times today,” I say. “She’s not answering her phone.”

“She doesn’t check her phone when traveling. She keeps it in her purse, silenced.”

Tom’s response, like all of them so far, makes perfect sense and, if you think about it too much, no sense at all. Six days ago, as Ricardo drove me to the lake house, sheer boredom kept me fixated on my phone. Then again, most of that time was spent Googling to see if any liquor stores in the area delivered.

“But you just said she called you from the apartment.” “I think she wants to be left alone,” Tom says.

I take that to mean he wants to be left alone. I’m not ready to do that just yet. The more he talks, the more suspicious I get. I zero in on the red mark on Tom’s cheek, picturing the exact moment he got it.

Him jerking Katherine away from the window. Her lashing out, punching back.

Was that the first time something like that happened? Or had it occurred multiple times before? If so, maybe it’s possible that Tom took it one step further just as dawn was breaking over the lake.

“Why did Katherine leave?” I say, being purposefully nosy in the hope he’ll reveal more than he’s told me so far.

Tom squints, scratches the back of his neck, and then folds his arms tight across his chest. “She said she didn’t want to be here when Hurricane Trish passed through. She was worried. Big house. Strong winds. All this glass.”

That’s the opposite of what Katherine told me yesterday. According to her, it was Tom who was concerned about the storm. Still, it’s certainly possible me talking about being without power for days made her change her mind. Just like it’s also possible she’s not into roughing it as much as she claimed.

But then why is she gone while Tom remains?

“Why didn’t you go with her?” I ask.

“Because I’m not worried about the storm,” Tom says. “Besides, I thought it best to stick around in case something happens to the place.”

A rational answer. One that almost sounds like the truth.

I’d be inclined to believe it if not for two things.

Number one: Tom and Katherine fought last night. That almost certainly has something to do with why she left so suddenly.

Number two: It doesn’t explain what I heard this morning. And since Tom isn’t going to mention it, it’s up to me.

“I thought I heard a noise this morning,” I say. “Coming from this side of the lake.”

“A noise?”

“Yes. A scream.”

I pause, waiting to see how Tom reacts. He doesn’t. His face remains still as a mask until he says, “What time?”

“Just before dawn.”

“I was asleep long past dawn,” Tom says.

“But I thought that’s when Katherine left?”

He stands frozen for a second, and at first I think I’ve caught him in a lie. But he recovers quickly, saying, “I said she left early. Not at dawn. And I don’t appreciate you insinuating that I’m lying.”

“And I wouldn’t need to insinuate that if you just told me a time.”

“Eight.”

Even though Tom throws out the number like he’s just thought of it, the timeline fits. It takes a little under five hours to get from here to Manhattan, making it more than conceivable that Katherine would be there by now, even with a lengthy pit stop.

Tom lifts a hand to his cheek, rubbing the spot where it connected with his wife’s fist. “I don’t understand why you’re so curious about Katherine. I didn’t know the two of you were friends.”

“We were friendly,” I say.

“I’m friendly with lots of people. That doesn’t make it okay to interrogate their spouses if they went somewhere without telling me.”

Ah, the old minimize-a-woman’s-concern-by-making-her- think-she’s-obsessed-and-slightly-hysterical bit. I expected something more original from Tom.

“I’m simply concerned,” I say.

Realizing he’s still rubbing his cheek, Tom drops his hand and says, “You shouldn’t be. Because Katherine’s not concerned about you. That’s the thing you need to understand about my wife. She gets bored very easily. One minute, she wants to leave the city and drive up here to the lake for two weeks. A couple of days after that, she decides she wants to go back to the city. It’s the same with people. They’re like clothes to her. Something she can try on and wear for a while before moving on to the newest look.”

Katherine never gave off that vibe. She—and the brief connection we had—seemed genuine, which makes me think even more that Tom is lying.

Not just about this. About everything.

And I decide to call his bluff.

“I talked to Katherine last night,” I say. “It was after one in the morning. She told me you two had a fight.”

A lie of my own. A little one. But Tom doesn’t need to know that. At first, I think he’s going to tell another lie in response. There’s something at work behind his eyes. Wheels turning, seeking an excuse. Finding none, he finally

says, “Yes, we fought. It got heated. Both of us did and said things we shouldn’t have. When I woke up this morning, Katherine was gone. That’s why I was being vague about everything. Happy now? Or are there even more personal questions about our marriage you’d like to ask?”

At last, Tom seems to be telling the truth. Of course that’s likely what happened. They had a fight, Katherine left, and she’s now in New York, probably calling the most expensive divorce lawyer money can buy.

It’s also none of my business, a fact I never seriously considered until this moment. Now that I have, I find myself caught between vindication and shame. Tom was wrong to imply I was being obsessive and hysterical. I was worse: a nosy neighbor. A part I’ve never played before, either on-stage or onscreen. In real life, it’s not a good fit. In fact, it’s downright hypocritical. I, of all people, know what it feels like to have private problems dragged out for public scrutiny. Just because it had been done to me doesn’t mean it’s okay for me to do it to Tom Royce.

“No,” I say. “I’m really sorry to have bothered you.”

I slink back down the dock and step into the boat, already making a to-do list for when I get back to the lake house.

First, toss Len’s binoculars into the trash.

Second, find a way to occupy myself that doesn’t involve spying on the neighbors.

Third, leave Tom alone and forget about Katherine Royce.

That turns out to be easier planned than done. Because as I push the boat away from the dock, I catch a glimpse of Tom watching me leave. He stands in a slash of sunlight that makes the mark on his face stand out even more. He touches it again, his fingers moving in a circle over the

angry red reminder that Katherine had once been here but is now gone.

Seeing it prompts a memory of something Katherine said about him yesterday.

Tom needs me too much to agree to a divorce. He’d kill me before letting me leave.

I text Katherine again as soon as I get back to the lake house.

Heard you’re back in the Big Apple. Had I known you were plotting an escape, I would have hitched a ride.

I then plant myself on the porch and stare at my phone, as if doing it long enough will conjure up a response. So far, it’s not working. The only call I receive is my mother’s daily check-in, which I let go straight to voicemail before heading inside to pour a glass of bourbon.

My second of the day. Maybe third.

I take a hearty sip, return to the porch, and check the previous texts I sent Katherine. None of them have been read.

Worrisome.

If Katherine called Tom after arriving home in New York, then she certainly would have seen that I had called and texted.

Unless Tom was indeed lying about that.

Yes, he told the truth about their fight, but only after I prodded. And on another matter—the scream I’m still fifty percent sure I heard—he remained frustratingly vague. Tom only said he was asleep past dawn. He never actually denied hearing a scream.

Then there are those two sentences—easy to dismiss at the time, increasingly ominous in hindsight—Katherine spoke while sitting in the very same rocking chair I occupy

now. They refuse to leave my head, repeating in the back of my skull like lines I’ve spent too much time rehearsing.

Tom needs me too much to agree to a divorce. He’d kill me before letting me leave.

Ordinarily, I’d assume it was a joke. That’s my go-to defense mechanism, after all. Using humor as a shield, pretending my pain doesn’t hurt at all. Which is why I suspect there was a ring of truth to what she said. Especially after what she told me yesterday about all of Tom’s money being tied up in Mixer and how she pays for everything.

Then there’s the fight itself, which could have been over money but I suspect was about more than that. Seared into my memory is the way Tom pleaded with Katherine, repeating that word I couldn’t quite read on his lips. How? Who? All of it climaxing with him wrenching her away from the window and her striking back.

Just before that, though, was the surreal moment when Katherine and I locked eyes. I know from the phone call afterwards that she somehow knew I was watching. Now I wonder if, in that brief instant when her gaze met mine, Katherine was trying to tell me something.

Maybe she was begging for help.

Despite my vow to drop the binoculars in the trash, here they are, sitting right next to my glass of bourbon. I pick them up and look across the lake to the Royce house. Although Tom’s no longer outside, the presence of the Bentley lets me know he’s still there.

Everything he told me mostly adds up, signaling I should believe him. Those few loose threads prevent me from doing so. I won’t be able to fully trust Tom until Katherine gets back to me—or I get proof from another source.

It occurs to me that Tom mentioned exactly where they live in the city. A fancy building not too far from mine, although theirs borders Central Park. I know it well. Upper West Side. A few blocks north of where the Bartholomew once stood.

Since I can’t go there myself, I enlist the next best person for the job.

“You want me to do what?” Marnie says when I call to make my request.

“Go to their building and ask to see Katherine Royce.” “Katherine? I thought she was at Lake Greene.”

“Not anymore.”

I give her a recap of the past few days. Katherine unhappy. Tom acting strange. Me watching it all through the binoculars. The fight and the scream and Katherine’s sudden departure.

To Marnie’s credit, she waits until I’m finished before asking, “Why have you been spying on them?”

I don’t have a suitable answer. I was curious, bored, nosy, all of the above.

“I think it’s because you’re sad and lonely,” Marnie offers. “Which is understandable, considering everything you’ve been through. And you want a break from feeling all of that.”

“Can you blame me?”

“No. But this isn’t the way to take your mind off things. Now you’ve become obsessed with the supermodel living on the other side of the lake.”

“I’m not obsessed.”

“Then what are you?”

“Worried,” I say. “Naturally worried about someone whose life I just saved. You know that saying. Save a person’s life and you’re responsible for them forever.”

“One, I’ve never heard that saying. Two, that is, like, the definition of being obsessed.”

“Maybe so,” I say. “That’s not what’s important right now.”

“I beg to differ. This isn’t healthy behavior, Casey. It’s not moral behavior.”

I let out an annoyed huff so loud it sounds like rustling wind hitting my phone. “If I wanted a lecture, I would have called my mother.”

“Call her,” Marnie says. “Please. She’s been bothering me instead, saying that you’re ignoring her.”

“Which I am. If you go check to see if Katherine is there, I’ll call my mother and get her off your back.”

Marnie pretends to think it over, even though I already know it’s a done deal.

“Fine,” she says. “But before I go, one last question.

Have you checked social media?” “I’m not on social media.”

“And thank God for that,” Marnie says. “But I assume Katherine is. Find some of her accounts. Twitter. Instagram. The one her husband literally invented and owns. Surely she’s on that. Maybe it’ll give you an idea of where she is and what she’s up to.”

It’s such a good idea I’m pissed I didn’t think of it on my own. After all, following someone on social media is just a more acceptable form of spying.

“I’ll do that. While you go check to see if Katherine’s home. Right now.”

After a few muttered curse words and a promise that she’s leaving this second, Marnie ends the call. While waiting to hear back, I do what she says and check Katherine’s social media.

First up is Instagram, where Katherine has more than four million followers.

Of course she does.

The pictures she’s posted are an eye-pleasing mix of sun-flooded interiors, throwbacks to her modeling days, and candid selfies of her slathered in face cream or eating candy bars. Interspersed are gentle, earnest urgings to support the charities she works with.

Even though it’s all carefully curated, Katherine still comes off as a sharp-witted woman who wants to be known as more than just a pretty face. An accurate representation of the Katherine I’ve come to know. There’s even a recent photo taken at Lake Greene, showing her reclining on the edge of their dock in that teal bathing suit, the water behind her and, beyond that, the very porch I’m now sitting on.

I look at the date and see it was posted two days ago. Right before she almost drowned in the lake.

Her most recent photo is a view of a pristine, all-white kitchen with a stainless steel teakettle on the stove, a Piet Mondrian calendar on the wall, and lilies in a vase by the window. Outside, Central Park spreads out below in all its pastoral splendor. The caption is short and sweet: There’s no place like home.

I check when it was posted. An hour ago.

So Tom wasn’t lying after all. Katherine did indeed return to their apartment, a fact that seems to have surprised her famous friends who’ve left comments.

Ur back in the city?! YAY!! one of them wrote. Another replied, That was quick!

Tom himself even weighed in: Keep the home fires burning, babe!

I exhale, breathing out all the tension I didn’t know I was holding in.

Katherine is fine. Good.

Yet my relief is tempered by a slight stab of rejection. Maybe that was another of Tom’s truths—that Katherine gets bored quickly. Now that I know with certainty that she’s been on her phone, it’s clear Katherine didn’t miss my calls or texts. She’s avoiding me, just like I’m avoiding my mother. I realize I’m the kind of person Katherine gently chided in her voicemail message. The ones who are being ignored.

After last night, I can’t really blame her. She knows I’ve been watching her house. Marnie was right when she said that’s not healthy behavior. In fact, it’s downright unnerving. Who spends so much time spying on their neighbors? Losers, that’s who. Lonely losers who drink too much and have nothing better to do.

Okay, maybe Marnie’s correct and I am a little obsessed with Katherine. Yes, some of that obsession is valid. Since I saved Katherine’s life, it’s only natural to be concerned with her well-being. But the truth is harsher than that. I became fixated on Katherine to avoid facing my own problems, of which there are many.

Annoyed—at Katherine, at Marnie, at myself—I grab the binoculars, carry them inside, and drop them into the trash. Something I should have done days ago.

I return to the porch and my go-to security blanket of bourbon, which I sip until Marnie calls back a half hour later, the familiar sounds of Manhattan traffic honking in the background.

“I already know what you’re going to say,” I tell her. “Katherine’s there. You were right and I was stupid.”

“That’s not what their doorman just told me,” Marnie says.

“You talked to him?”

“I told him I was an old friend of Katherine’s who just happened to be in the neighborhood and wondered if she wanted to grab lunch. I don’t think he believed me, but it doesn’t matter because he still told me that the Royces are currently at their vacation home in Vermont.”

“And those were his exact words?” I say. “The Royces.

Not just Mr. Royce.”

“Plural. I even did the whole oh-I-thought-I-saw- Katherine-across-the-street-yesterday routine. He told me I was mistaken and that Mrs. Royce hasn’t been at the apartment for several days.”

A fierce chill grips me. It feels like I’ve just been thrown into the lake and am now lost in the water’s frigid darkness.

I was right.

Tom was lying.

“Now I’m really worried,” I say. “Why would Tom lie to me like that?”

“Because whatever’s going on is none of your business,” Marnie says. “You said yourself that Katherine seemed unhappy. Maybe she is. And so she left him. For all you know, there’s a Dear John letter sitting on the kitchen counter right now.”

“It still doesn’t add up. I did what you suggested and looked at her Instagram. She just posted a picture from inside her apartment.”

Marnie chews on that a minute. “How do you know it’s her apartment?”

“I don’t,” I say. I only assumed it was because Katherine said so in the caption and because it had a view of Central

Park and looked to be roughly where the Royces’ apartment is located.

“See?” Marnie says. “Maybe Katherine told Tom she was going to the apartment but really went to stay with a friend or a family member. He might not have any clue where she is and was too embarrassed to admit that.”

It would be a sound theory if I hadn’t seen Tom’s comment on the picture.

Keep the home fires burning, babe!

“That means it really is their apartment,” I tell Marnie after explaining what I saw.

“Fine,” Marnie says. “Let’s say it is their apartment. That either means Katherine’s there and the doorman lied, or it means she posted a photo that was saved on her phone to hide the fact from her husband that she’s not really at their apartment. Either way, none of this points to Katherine being in danger.”

“But I heard Katherine scream early this morning,” I say.

“Are you certain that’s what you heard?” “It wasn’t an animal.”

“I’m not suggesting it was,” Marnie says. “I’m merely saying that maybe you didn’t hear it at all.”

“You think I imagined it?”

The delicate pause I get in return warns me that Marnie’s about to drop a truth bomb.

A big one.

Atomic.

“How much did you have to drink last night?” she says.

My gaze is drawn to the mostly empty whiskey bottle still overturned on the porch floor. “A lot.”

“How much is a lot?”

I think it through, counting the drinks on my fingers.

The ones I can remember, at least. “Seven. Maybe eight.”

Marnie lets out a small cough to hide her surprise. “And you don’t think that’s too much?”

I bristle at her too-earnest tone. She sounds like my mother.

“This isn’t about my drinking. You have to believe me.

Something about this situation isn’t right.”

“That might be true.” Marnie’s voice remains annoyingly calm. Like someone talking to a kindergartener throwing a tantrum. “It still doesn’t mean Tom Royce murdered his wife.”

“I didn’t say he did.”

“But that’s what you think, isn’t it?”

Not quite, but close enough. While it’s absolutely crossed my mind that Tom did something to hurt Katherine, I’m not yet ready to make the mental leap to murder.

“Be honest,” Marnie says. “What do you think happened to her?”

“I’m not sure anything happened,” I say. “But something’s not right about the situation. Katherine was here, and suddenly she’s not. And I’m not sure her husband is telling the truth.”

“Or he told you what he believes to be the truth.”

“I don’t buy that. When I talked to him, he gave me a very simple explanation to something that, at least from what I saw, looked like a complex situation.”

“What you saw?” Marnie repeats, my words sounding undeniably stalker-y. “Is this how you spend all your time? Watching them?”

“Only because I sensed trouble the minute I started watching.”

“I wish you could hear yourself right now,” Marnie says, her calm tone replaced by something even worse. Sadness. “Admitting that you’re spying on your neighbors and talking about Tom Royce hiding something—”

“You’d think it, too, if you saw the things I have.” “That’s the point. You shouldn’t be seeing it. None of

what’s going on in that house is any of your business.”

I can’t argue with Marnie on that point. It’s true that I had no right watching them the way I have been. Yet, in doing so, if I stumbled upon a potentially dangerous situation, isn’t it my responsibility to try to do something about it?

“I just want to help Katherine,” I say.

“I know you do. But if Katherine Royce wanted your help, she would have asked for it,” Marnie says.

“I think she did. Late last night, when I saw them fighting.”

Marnie lets slip a sad little sigh. I ignore it.

“Our eyes met. Just for a second. She was looking at me and I was looking at her. And I think, in that moment, she was trying to tell me something.”

Marnie sighs again, this one louder and sadder. “I know you’re going through a hard time right now. I know you’re struggling. But please don’t drag other people into it.”

“Like you?” I shoot back.

“Yes, like me. And Tom and Katherine Royce. And anyone else at the lake right now.”

Although Marnie sounds nothing but sympathetic, I know the deal. She, too, has officially grown tired of my bullshit. The only surprise, really, is that it took her this long. Unless I want to lose her completely—which I don’t—I can’t push any further.

“You’re right,” I say, trying to sound appropriately contrite. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t need you to be sorry,” she says. “I need you to get better.”

Marnie ends the call before I can say anything else—an unspoken warning that, while all is forgiven, it’s certainly not forgotten. And when it comes to Katherine and Tom Royce, I’ll need to leave her out of it.

Which is fine. Maybe she’s right and nothing’s really going on except the unraveling of the Royces’ marriage. I sincerely hope that’s the worst of it. Unfortunately, my gut tells me it’s not that simple.

I return to Katherine’s Instagram and examine that picture of her apartment, thinking about Marnie’s theory that she posted an old photo to deceive her husband. The idea makes sense, especially when I take another look at the view of Central Park outside the apartment window. The leaves there are still green—a far cry from the blazing reds and oranges of the trees surrounding Lake Greene.

I zoom in until the picture fills my phone’s screen. Scanning the grainy blur, I focus on the Mondrian calendar on the wall. There, printed right below an image of the artist’s most famous work—Composition with Red Blue and Yellow—is the month it represents.

September.

Marnie was right. Katherine really did post an old photo. Faced with proof that she’s being deceitful, most likely to fool her husband, I realize I can stop worrying— and, yes, obsessing—over where Katherine is or what happened to her.

It’s none of my business. It’s time to accept that.

I swipe my phone, shrinking the photo down to its original size.

That’s when I see it.

The teakettle on the stove, polished to a mirrorlike shine. It glistens so much that the photographer can be seen reflected in its surface.

Curious, I zoom in again, making the kettle as big as possible without entirely blowing out the image. Although the photographer’s reflection is blurred by the amplification and distorted by the kettle’s curve, I can still make out who it is.

Tom Royce.

There’s no mistaking it. Dark hair, longish in the back, too much product in the front.

Katherine never took this photo.

Which means it was saved not on her phone but on her husband’s.

The only explanation I can think of is that Marnie was right about the deception, wrong about who is doing it and why.

Tom posted this photo on his wife’s Instagram account. And the person being deceived is me.

The hardest part about doing Shred of Doubt eight times a week was the first act, in which my character had to walk a fine line between being too

worried and not suspicious enough. I spent weeks of rehearsal trying to find the perfect balance between the two, and I never did get it completely right.

Until now.

Now I’m perched precisely between those two modes, wondering which one I should lean into. It’s easy now that I’m living it. No acting required.

I want to call Marnie for guidance, but I know what she’d say. That Katherine is fine. That I should leave it alone. That it’s none of my business.

All of that might be true. And all of it could be dead wrong. I can’t be sure until I have a better grasp on the situation. So it’s back to social media I go, leaving Instagram behind and diving into Tom Royce’s brainchild, Mixer.

First, I have to download the app to my phone and create a profile. It’s a brazenly invasive process requiring my full name, date of birth, cell phone number, and location, which is determined through geotracking. I make several attempts to do an end run around it, entering Manhattan as my location instead. The app changes it to Lake Greene every time.

And I thought I was being nosy.

Only after my profile is created am I allowed to enter Mixer. I have to give Tom and his development team credit. It’s a well-designed app. Clean, good-looking, easy to use. Within seconds, I learn there are several ways to find contacts, including by company, by location, and by entering your favorite bars and restaurants and seeing who else has listed them.

I choose a location search, which lets me see every user within a one-mile radius. Right now, four other users are currently at Lake Greene, each one marked with a red triangle on a satellite view of the area.

The first is Tom Royce. No surprise there.

Eli and Boone Conrad also have profiles, which would be a surprise if I didn’t suspect both joined as a courtesy to their neighbor. Like me, neither has filled out his profile beyond the required information. Eli hasn’t listed any favorites or recently visited locations, and the only place on Boone’s profile is a juice bar two towns away.

The real surprise is the fourth person listed as currently being at Lake Greene.

Katherine Royce.

I stare at the triangle pinpointing her location. Just on the other side of the lake.

Directly across from my own red triangle.

Seeing it sends my heart skittering. While I have no idea about the app’s accuracy, I assume it’s pretty good. Since I wasn’t able to change my location despite multiple attempts, it’s likely Katherine can’t, either.

If that’s the case, it means she either left Lake Greene without taking her phone—or that she never left at all.

I stand, shove my phone in my pocket, and go inside, heading straight for the kitchen. There, I dig the binoculars

out of the trash, blow stray crumbs from my lunch off the lenses, and carry them out to the porch. Standing at the railing, I peer at the Royces’ glass house, wondering if Katherine is there after all. It’s impossible to tell. Although the sun is close to slipping behind the mountains on that side of the lake, the shimmering reflection of the water masks whatever might be going on inside.

Still, I scan the areas where I know each room to be located, hoping a light on inside will improve my view. There’s nothing. Everything beyond the dim windows is invisible.

Next, I examine the house’s surroundings, starting with the side facing Eli’s place before leading my gaze across the back patio, down to the dock, and then to the side facing the Fitzgeralds’ house. Nothing to see there, either. Not even Tom’s sleek Bentley.

Once again, I realize I’m currently watching the Royce house with a pair of binoculars powerful enough to view craters on the moon. It’s extreme.

And obsessive.

And just plain weird.

I lower the binoculars, flushed with shame that maybe I’m being ridiculous about all of this. Marnie would tell me there’s no maybe about it. I’d feel the same way if it weren’t for the one thing that put me on edge in the first place.

The scream.

Without it, I wouldn’t be this worried.

Even if it was just my imagination, I can’t stop thinking about it.

I slump in the rocking chair, imitating the ache-inducing condition I woke up in. Eyes closed tight, I try to recall the exact sound I heard, hoping it will spark some revelation of

memory. Although I bristled when she mentioned it, Marnie was right to say I drank too much last night. I did, with good reason, just like every night. But in my drunken stupor, it’s entirely possible I imagined that scream. After all, if Eli didn’t hear it and Tom didn’t hear it, then it stands to reason I didn’t really hear it, either.

Then again, just because no one else claims to have heard it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. When a tree falls in a forest, to use that hoary cliché, it still makes a sound. And as Mixer reminds me when I check my phone for the umpteenth time, there’s another person on this lake who I haven’t yet asked. I can see his little red triangle on my screen right now, located a few hundred yards from my own.

Yes, I know I promised Eli that I would stay away from him. But sometimes, such as now, a promise needs to be broken.

Especially when Boone Conrad might have the answer to what’s currently my most pressing question.

I stand, put away my phone, and hop down the porch steps. Rather than go to the front of the house and make the trek from driveway to driveway, I choose the same path Boone used the other day and cut through the woods between us. It’s a pretty route, especially with the setting sun casting its golden shine on this side of the lake. It’s so bright I have to squint as I walk. A welcome feeling that reminds me of being onstage, caught in the spotlight, warmed by its glow.

I loved that sensation. I miss it.

If Marnie were here, she’d tell me it’s only a matter of time before I’m back treading the boards. I sincerely doubt it.

Up ahead, visible through the thinning trees, sits the hulking A-frame of the Mitchell house. Like the Royces’, it has large windows overlooking the lake, which now reflects the flaming hues of the sunset. That, coupled with the house’s shape, reminds me of a child’s drawing of a campfire. An orange triangle sitting atop a stack of wood.

As I push through the tree line into the Mitchells’ small, leaf-studded yard, I spot Boone on the back deck. Dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, he stands facing the lake, a hand shielding his eyes from the setting sun. Immediately, I understand that he, too, is watching the Royce house.

Boone seems to know why I’m here, because when he sees me crossing the lawn, a strange look passes over his face. One part confusion, two parts concern, with just a dash of relief for good measure.

“You heard it, too, didn’t you?” he says before I can get a word out.

“Heard what?”

“The scream.” He turns his head until he’s once again facing the Royce house. “From over there.”

Have you seen anything else?” Boone says. “Only what I already told you.”

The two of us are on the back porch of my family’s lake house, me watching Boone watch the Royce house through the binoculars. He’s at the porch railing, leaning so far forward I worry he’ll break right through it and tumble to the ground below. He’s certainly big enough, which I realized only when we were standing face-to-face. Because I was above him during our first meeting, I couldn’t quite tell how tall he is. Now I know. So tall he towers over me as I stand next to him.

“You told me you’ve been here since August,” I say. “Did you ever meet Tom and Katherine?”

“Once or twice. I don’t know them very well.” “Did you notice anything strange about them?”

“No,” Boone says. “Then again, I wasn’t watching them through these.”

He pulls the binoculars away from his eyes long enough to give me a grin, telling me he’s joking. But I detect a hint of judgment in the remark, suggesting he’s not totally okay with what I’ve been doing.

I’m not, either, now that I’m a foot away from the man I spied on while he was naked. At no point has Boone voiced suspicion that I had watched him skinny-dip the other night. In turn, I give no hints that I was indeed watching. It makes for an awkward silence in which I wonder if he’s thinking that I’m thinking about it.

On the other side of the lake, the Royce house remains dark, even though the cottony grayness of dusk has descended. Tom still hasn’t returned, as evidenced by the empty space under the portico where his Bentley should be.

“Do you think he’s going to come back?” I say. “Or did he get the hell out of Dodge?”

Boone returns to the binoculars. “I think he’ll be back. There’s still furniture on the patio. If he was leaving for the winter, he would have taken all of it inside.”

“Unless he had to leave in a hurry.”

Boone hands me the binoculars and lowers himself into a rocking chair, which creaks under his weight. “I’m not ready to think the worst.”

I felt the same way an hour ago, when I wasn’t sure the scream was real and there were logical reasons as to why Katherine wasn’t where Tom says she was. Now that Boone has confirmed what I heard and Katherine’s Mixer location marker remains parked at her house while her husband’s has long disappeared, I’m ready to let my suspicions run free.

“Where were you when you heard the scream?” I ask Boone.

“In the kitchen, making coffee.”

“Are you always such an early riser?”

“More like a very light sleeper.” Boone shrugs, and in that sad little lift of his broad shoulders, I sense a weary acceptance common among people haunted by something. It sucks, it seems to say, but what can you do? “The door to the deck was open. I like to hear the birds on the lake.”

“Because it’s too quiet otherwise.”

“Exactly,” Boone says, pleased I remember something from our first conversation. “I was just about to pour the

coffee when I heard it. It sounded to me like it came from the other side of the lake.”

“How could you tell?”

“Because it would have sounded different on this side. Louder. I knew as soon as I heard it that it came from over there.” Boone points to the opposite shore, his finger landing between Eli’s house and the Royces’. “There was just enough distance for me to catch the echo.”

“Did you see anything?” I say.

Boone shakes his head. “I went out to look, but there was nothing to see. The lake was calm. The far shore appeared to be empty. It was like any typical morning out here.”

“Only with a scream,” I say. “You agree with me that it sounded like a woman, right?”

“Even more, I agree that it sounded like Katherine Royce.”

I leave the railing and drop into the rocking chair next to Boone. “Do you think we should call the police?”

“And tell them what?”

“That our neighbor is missing and we’re worried about her.”

On the table between us sit two glasses of ginger ale. Not my first choice of drink, but I would have felt bad nursing a bourbon in front of Boone. The ginger ale, which has been sitting in the fridge since the last time I stayed here, is flat as a map. Boone doesn’t seem to mind as he takes a sip and says, “We don’t want to do that just yet. First of all, we don’t know that Katherine is definitely missing. If we go to the police, the first thing they’re going to do is talk to Tom—”

“Who might be the reason Katherine is missing.”

“Maybe,” Boone says. “Maybe not. But when the police talk to him, he’ll likely tell them the same thing he told you and point to that Instagram post you showed me to prove it. That will make the cops back off. Not forever. Especially not if more people who know Katherine come forward to say they haven’t heard from her. But long enough to give Tom ample time to run.”

I glance to the far side of the lake and the empty spot where Tom’s car used to be parked. “If he hasn’t already started running.”

Boone lets out a grunt of agreement. “And that’s the big unknown right now. I think we should wait and see if he returns.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“I know someone we can call. She’s a detective with the state police, which is who’ll be investigating it anyway. If there even is something to investigate. We’ll tell her what the deal is and get her opinion. Right now, it’s best to be as discreet as possible. Trust me, Casey, we don’t want to make an accusation, get police and rescue involved, and then find out we were wrong the whole time. Cops frown upon that kind of thing.”

“How do you know so much about cops?” “I used to be one.”

I’m caught by surprise, even though I shouldn’t be. Boone possesses a familiar kind-but-weary cop flintiness. And muscles. Lots of muscles. I don’t ask why he stopped being a cop and he doesn’t elaborate. Knowing that he’s now in AA, I can connect the dots myself.

“Then we’ll wait,” I say.

Which we do, sitting in relative silence as nightfall covers the valley.

“Don’t you wish I’d brought my Monopoly board?” Boone says when the clock strikes seven.

“Is it rude to say no?”

Boone lets out a rueful chuckle. “Very. But your honesty is refreshing.”

At seven thirty, after hearing Boone’s stomach rumble one time too many, I head inside and make us sandwiches. My hands tremble as I spread mayonnaise on the bread. Withdrawal shakes. My body wants to be drinking wine right now and not fizzless ginger ale. I glance at the liquor cabinet in the adjoining dining room, and my body seizes up with longing. A tightness forms in my chest—an internal itch that’s driving me crazy because it can’t be scratched. I take a deep breath, finish the sandwiches, and carry them outside.

On the porch, Boone has the binoculars in hand again, even though no lights can be seen inside Tom and Katherine’s place. The house wouldn’t be visible at all if not for the moonlight shimmering over the lake.

“Did he come back?” I say.

“Not yet.” Boone sets the binoculars down and accepts the paper plate filled with turkey on white bread and a side of potato chips. Not my finest culinary moment. “I was just admiring how good these things are.”

“My husband bought them. For birding.”

Boone’s voice grows hushed. “I’m sorry about what happened to him, by the way. I should have told you that the other day.”

“And I heard about your wife.” “I guess Eli told you.”

“He did. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“Likewise.” He pauses before adding, “I’m here, if you ever want to talk about it.”

“I don’t.”

Boone nods. “I get that. I didn’t, either. Not for a long time. But one of the things I’ve learned in the past year is that it helps to talk about things. Makes it easier to deal with.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“She fell down the stairs.” Boone pauses, letting the information settle in. “That’s how my wife died. In case you were wondering.”

I was, but I didn’t have the courage to ask outright. Despite my current habit of spying on my neighbors, I mostly still have respect for others’ privacy. But Boone seems to be in the mood to divulge information, so I nod and let him continue.

“No one quite knows how it happened. I was at work. Got home from my shift, walked in the door, and found her crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. I did all the things you’re supposed to do. Call nine one one. Try CPR. But I knew as soon as I saw her that she was gone. The ME said she had been dead for most of the day. It must have happened right after I left for work. She either tripped or lost her balance. A freak accident.” Boone pauses to look at the food on his plate, still untouched. “Sometimes I think it’s the suddenness of it that makes it hard to deal with. She was there one minute, gone the next. And I never got to say goodbye. She simply vanished. Like in that TV show.” “The Leftovers,” I say, not bothering to mention I had

been offered a part on the show but turned it down because I found the subject matter too depressing.

“Right. That’s the one. When it’s so sudden like that, it makes you regret all those times you took for granted. I can’t remember the last thing I said to her, and that kills me. Sometimes, even now, I stay awake at night trying to

think of what it was and hoping it was something nice.” Boone looks up at me. “Do you remember the last thing you said to your husband?”

“No,” I say.

I put my plate down, excuse myself, and go inside. Seconds later, I’m in the dining room, kneeling at the liquor cabinet, a bottle of bourbon gripped in my fist. As my final words to Len storm through my head—unforgettable no matter how much I try—I tip the bottle back and swallow several blessed gulps.

There.

That’s much better.

Back outside, I see that Boone’s taken a few bites from his sandwich. That makes one of us who feels like eating.

“I’m not really hungry,” I say, wondering if he can smell the bourbon on my breath. “If you want, you can have the rest of mine.”

Boone starts to reply but stops when something on the other side of the lake catches his attention. I look where he’s looking and see a pair of headlights pulling into the driveway of the Royce house.

Tom has returned.

I reach for the binoculars and watch him bring the Bentley to a stop beneath the portico on the side of the house before cutting the headlights. He gets out of the car, carrying a large plastic bag from the only hardware store in a fifteen-mile radius.

Boone taps my shoulder. “Let me look.”

I hand him the binoculars, and he peers through them as Tom enters the house. On the first floor, the kitchen lights flick on. They’re soon followed by the dining room lights as Tom makes his way deeper into the house.

“What’s he doing?” I ask Boone.

“Opening the bag.” “What’s in it?”

Boone sighs, getting annoyed. “I don’t know yet.”

That ignorance lasts only a second longer before Boone lets out a low whistle. Handing the binoculars back to me, he says, “You need to see this.”

I lift the binoculars to my eyes and see Tom Royce standing at the dining room table. Spread out before him is everything he bought from the hardware store.

A plastic tarp folded into a tidy rectangle. A coil of rope.

And a hacksaw with teeth so sharp they glint in the light of the dining room.

“I think,” Boone says, “it might be time to call my detective friend.”

Detective Wilma Anson isn’t even close to what I expected. In my mind, I pictured someone similar to the detective I played in a three-episode arc of

Law & Order: SVU. Tough. No-nonsense. Dressed in the same type of function-over-style pantsuit my character wore. The woman at my door, however, wears purple yoga pants, a bulky sweatshirt, and a pink headband taming her black curls. A yellow scrunchie circles her right wrist. Wilma catches me looking at it as I shake her hand and says, “It’s my daughter’s. She’s at karate class right now. I have exactly twenty minutes until I need to go pick her up.” At least the no-nonsense part meets my expectations.

Wilma’s demeanor is softer to Boone, but only by a degree. She manages a quick hug before spotting the liquor cabinet two rooms away.

“You okay with that around?” she asks him. “I’m fine, Wilma.”

“You sure?” “Certain.”

“I believe you,” Wilma says. “But you better call me if you so much as think of touching one of those bottles.”

In that moment, I get a glimpse of their relationship. Former colleagues, most likely, who know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. He’s an alcoholic. She’s support. And I’m just the bad influence thrown into the mix because of something suspicious taking place on the other side of the lake.

“Show me the house,” Wilma says.

Boone and I lead her to the porch, where she stands at the railing and takes in the dark sky and even darker lake with curious appraisal. Directly across from us, the Royce house has lights on in the kitchen and master bedroom, but from this distance and without the binoculars, it’s impossible to pinpoint Tom’s location inside.

Wilma gestures to the house and says, “That’s where your friend lives?”

“Yes,” I say. “Tom and Katherine Royce.”

“I know who the Royces are,” Wilma says. “Just like I know who you are.”

From her tone, I gather Wilma’s seen the terrible-but- true tabloid headlines about me. It’s also clear she disapproves.

“Tell me why you think Mrs. Royce is in danger.”

I pause, unsure just where to begin, even though I should have known the question was coming. Of course a police detective is going to ask me why I think my neighbor did something to his missing wife. I become aware of Wilma Anson’s stare. Annoyance clouds her features, and I worry she’ll just up and leave if I don’t say something in the next two seconds.

“We heard a scream this morning,” Boone says, coming to my rescue. “A woman’s scream. It came from their side of the lake.”

“And I saw things,” I add. “Worrisome things.” “At their house?”

“Yes.”

“How often are you there?”

“I haven’t been inside since they bought the place.”

Wilma turns back to the lake. Squinting, she says, “You noticed worrisome things all the way from over here?”

I nod to the binoculars sitting on the table between the rocking chairs, like they have been for days. Wilma, looking back and forth between me and the table, says, “I see. May I borrow these?”

“Knock yourself out.”

The detective lifts the binoculars to her eyes, fiddles with the focus, scans the lake’s opposite shore. When she lowers the binoculars, it’s to give me a stern look.

“There are laws against spying on people, you know.” “I wasn’t spying,” I say. “I was observing. Casually.”

“Right,” Wilma says, not even bothering to pretend she thinks I’m telling the truth. “How well do each of you know them?”

“Not well,” Boone says. “I met them a couple of times out and about on the lake.”

“I only met Tom Royce twice,” I say. “But Katherine and I have crossed paths a few times. She’s been over here twice, and we talked after I saved her from drowning in the lake.”

I know it’s wrong, but I’m pleased that last part of my sentence seems to surprise the otherwise unflappable Wilma Anson. “When was this?” she says.

“Day before yesterday,” I say, although it feels longer than that. Time seems to have stretched since I returned to the lake, fueled by drunken days and endless, sleepless nights.

“This incident in the lake—do you have any reason to believe her husband had something to do with it?”

“None. Katherine told me she was swimming, the water was too cold, and she cramped up.”

“When you talked to her, did Katherine ever give any indication she thought her husband was trying to do her harm? Did she say she was scared?”

“She hinted that she was unhappy.”

Wilma stops me with a raised hand. “That’s different than fear.”

“She also told me there were financial issues. She said she pays for everything and that Tom would never agree to a divorce because he needed her money too much. She told me he’d probably kill her before letting her leave.”

“Do you think she was being serious?” Wilma asks. “Not really. At the time, I thought it was a joke.” “Would you joke about a thing like that?”

“No,” Boone says. “Yes,” I say.

Wilma brings the binoculars to her eyes again, and I can tell she’s zeroed in on the lit windows of the Royce house. “Have you seen anything suspicious inside? You know, while casually observing?”

“I saw them fighting. Late last night. He grabbed her by the arm and she hit him.”

“Then maybe it’s for the best that they’re currently apart,” Wilma says.

“I agree,” I say. “But the big question is where Katherine went. Her husband says she’s back at their apartment. I called a friend in the city, who went there and checked. The doorman said she hasn’t been there for days. One of them is lying, and I don’t think it’s the doorman.”

“Or maybe it’s your friend who lied,” Wilma says. “Maybe she didn’t talk to the doorman at all.”

I shake my head. Marnie wouldn’t do that, no matter how fed up she is with me.

“There’s also this.” I show Wilma my phone, Instagram already open and visible. “Katherine allegedly posted this from their apartment today. But this picture wasn’t taken

today. Look at the leaves in the trees and the calendar on the wall. This was likely taken weeks ago.”

“Just because someone posts an old photo doesn’t mean they’re not where they say they are,” Wilma says.

“You’re right. But Katherine didn’t even take that picture. Her husband did. If you look closely, you can see his reflection in the teakettle.”

I let Wilma peer at the picture a moment before switching from Instagram to Mixer. I point to Katherine’s red triangle, nestled right next to the one belonging to her husband. “Why would Katherine post an old photo she didn’t even take? Especially when, according to the location-tracking software on her husband’s app, her phone is still inside that house.”

Wilma takes my phone and studies the map dotted with red triangles. “This is like a thousand privacy invasions in one.”

“Probably,” I say. “But don’t you think it’s weird Katherine would leave and not take her phone?”

“Weird, yes. Unheard of, no. It doesn’t mean Tom Royce did something to his wife.”

“But he’s covering up where she is!” I realize my voice is a bit too loud, a tad too emphatic. Faced with Wilma’s skepticism, I’ve become the impatient one. It also doesn’t help that I snuck two more gulps of bourbon while Boone used the powder room before Wilma arrived. “If Katherine’s not here, but her phone is, that means Tom posted that photo, most likely trying to make people think Katherine is someplace she’s not.”

“He also bought rope, a tarp, and a hacksaw,” Boone adds.

“That’s not illegal,” Wilma says.

“But it is suspicious if your wife has suddenly disappeared,” I say.

“Not if she left of her own accord after getting into a heated argument with her husband.”

I give Wilma a curious look. “Are you married, Detective?”

“Seventeen years strong.”

“And have you ever gotten into a heated argument with your husband?”

“Too many to count,” she says. “He’s as stubborn as a mule.”

“After those arguments, have you ever gone out and bought things you could use to hide his body?”

Wilma pushes off the railing and drifts to the rocking chairs, handing me the binoculars in the process. She sits, twisting the scrunchie around her wrist in a compulsive way that makes me think it doesn’t belong to her daughter at all.

“You seriously think Tom Royce is over there right now chopping up his wife?” she says.

“Maybe,” I say, slightly horrified that not only am I thinking it, but I now consider it a more likely scenario than Katherine running away after an argument with her husband.

Wilma sighs. “I’m not sure what you want me to do here.”

“Confirm that Tom Royce is lying,” I say. “It’s not that simple.”

“You’re with the state police. Can’t you trace Katherine’s phone to check and see if she’s called someone today? Or look at her bank and credit card records?”

Impatience thins Wilma’s voice as she says, “We could do all of those things—if Katherine is reported missing to

the local authorities. But I’m going to be straight with you here, if you do it, they’re not going to believe you. People are usually reported missing by someone closer to them. Like a spouse. Unless Katherine has other family members you might know about who are also worried about her.”

Boone looks to me and shakes his head, confirming that both of us are clueless about Katherine’s next of kin.

“That’s what I thought,” Wilma says.

“I guess searching the house is out of the question,” I say.

“It most definitely is,” Wilma says. “We’d need a warrant, and to get that we’d need a clear indication of foul play, which doesn’t exist. Tom Royce buying rope and a hacksaw isn’t the smoking gun you think it is.”

“But what about the scream?” Boone says. “Both of us heard it.”

“Have you considered that maybe Katherine had an accident?” Wilma looks to me. “You told me she almost drowned the other day. Maybe it happened again.”

“Then why hasn’t Tom reported it yet?” I say.

“When your husband went missing, why didn’t you report it?”

I had assumed Wilma knew all about that. She might even have been one of the cops I talked to afterwards, although I have no memory of her. What I do know is that, by bringing it up now, she can be a stone-cold bitch when she wants to be.

“His body was found before I got the chance,” I say through a jaw so clenched my teeth ache. “Because people immediately went looking for him. Unlike Tom Royce. Which makes me think he’s not concerned about Katherine because he knows where she is and what happened to her.”

Wilma holds my gaze, and the look in her large hazel eyes is both apologetic and admiring. I think I earned her respect. And, possibly, her trust, because she breaks eye contact and says, “That’s a valid point.”

“Damn right it is,” I say.

This earns me another look from Wilma, although this time her eyes seem to say, Let’s not get too cocky.

“Here’s what I’m going to do.” She stands, stretches, gives the scrunchie on her wrist one last twirl. “I’ll do a little digging and see if anyone else has heard from Katherine. Hopefully someone has and this is all just a big misunderstanding.”

“What should we do?” I say.

“Nothing. That’s what you should do. Just sit tight and wait to hear from me.” Wilma starts to leave the porch, gesturing to the binoculars as she goes. “And for God’s sake, stop spying on your neighbors. Go watch TV or something.

After Wilma leaves, taking Boone with her, I try to follow the detective’s advice and watch TV. In the den, sitting in the shadow of the moose head on the

wall, I watch the Weather Channel map the storm’s progress. Trish, despite no longer being a hurricane, is still wreaking havoc in the Northeast. Right now, she’s over Pennsylvania and about to bring her strong winds and record rains into New York.

Vermont is next.

The day after tomorrow.

Yet another thing to worry about.

I change the channel and am confronted by an unexpected sight.

Me.

Seventeen years ago.

Strolling across a college campus strewn with autumn leaves and casting sly glances at the blindingly handsome guy next to me.

My film debut.

The movie was a vaguely autobiographical dramedy about a Harvard senior figuring out what he wants to do with his life. I played a sassy co-ed who makes him consider leaving his long-term girlfriend. The role was small but meaty, and refreshingly free of any scheming bad-girl clichés. My character was presented as simply an appealing alternative the hero could choose.

Watching the movie for the first time in more than a decade, I remember everything about making it with dizzying clarity. How intimidated I was by the logistics of shooting on location. How nervous I was about hitting my marks, remembering my lines, accidentally looking directly into the camera. How, when the director first called action, I completely froze, forcing him to pull me aside and gently

—so gently—say, “Be yourself.” That’s what I did.

Or what I thought I did. Watching the performance now, though, I know I must have been acting, even if it didn’t feel like it at the time. In real life, I’ve never been that charming, that bold, that vivid.

Unable to watch my younger self a second longer, I turn off the TV. Reflected in the dark screen is present me—a jarring transformation. So far removed from the vibrant young thing I’d just been watching that we might as well be strangers.

Be yourself.

I don’t even know who that is anymore. I’m not sure I’d like her if I did.

Leaving the den, I go to the kitchen and pour myself a bourbon. A double, to make up for what I missed while Boone was here. I take it out to the porch, where I rock and drink and watch the house on the other side of the water like I’m Jay Gatsby pining for Daisy Buchanan. In my case, there’s no green light at the end of the dock. There’s no light at all, in fact. The windows were dark by the time I returned to the porch, although a quick look through the binoculars at Tom’s Bentley tells me he’s still there.

I keep watching, hoping he’ll turn on a light somewhere and provide a clearer idea of what he might be up to. That’s what Wilma wants, after all. Something solid onto which we

can pin our suspicions. Even though I want that, too, I get queasy thinking about what, exactly, that something solid would be. Blood dripping from Tom’s newly purchased hacksaw? Katherine’s body washed ashore like Len’s?

There I go again, thinking Katherine is dead. I hate that my mind keeps veering in that direction. I’d prefer to be like Wilma, certain there’s a logical explanation behind all of it and that everything will turn out right in the end. My brain just doesn’t work that way. Because if what happened with Len has taught me anything, it’s to expect the worst.

I take another sip of bourbon and bring the binoculars to my eyes. Instead of focusing on the still frustratingly dark Royce house, I scan the area in general, taking in the dense forests, the rocky slope of mountain behind them, the jagged shore on the far edges of the lake.

So many places to hide unwanted things. So many ways to vanish.

And don’t even get me started on the lake. When we were kids, Marnie would tease me about the depth of Lake Greene, especially when we were both neck-deep in the water, my toes straining to keep a little contact with the lake bed.

“The lake is darker than a coffin with the lid closed,” she’d say. “And as deep as the ocean. If you sink under, you’ll never come back up. You’ll be trapped forever.” While that’s not entirely true—Len’s fate proved that—it’s easy to imagine parts of Lake Greene so deep that something could be lost there forever.

Even a person.

That thought takes more than a gulp of bourbon to shake off. It requires the whole damn glass, downed in heavy swallows. I get up, wobbling into the kitchen for another double before heading back to my spot on the porch. With a decent buzz now, I can’t stop wondering: if Katherine really is dead, why would Tom do something like that?

I suspect money.

That was the motive in Shred of Doubt. The character I played inherited a fortune; her husband came from nothing—and he wanted what she had. Snippets of Katherine’s words float through my bourbon-soaked mind.

I pay for everything.

Tom needs me too much to agree to a divorce. He’d kill me before letting me leave.

I head inside, grab my laptop from the charging station in the den, say hi to the moose head, and go upstairs. Snuggled in bed under a quilt, I fire up the laptop and Google Tom Royce, hoping it’ll bring up information incriminating enough to persuade Wilma that something is amiss.

One of the first things I see is a Bloomberg Businessweek article from last month reporting that Mixer has been courting venture capital firms, seeking a cash influx of thirty million dollars to keep things afloat. Based on what Katherine told me about the app’s lack of profitability, I’m not surprised.

“We’re not desperate,” the article quotes Tom as saying. “Mixer continues to perform above even our loftiest expectations. To take it to the next level as quickly and as efficiently as possible, we need a like-minded partner.”

Translation: He’s absolutely desperate.

The lack of a follow-up article suggests Tom hasn’t yet been able to lure any investors with deep pockets. Maybe that’s because, as I read in a separate Forbes piece on

popular apps, Mixer is reportedly losing members while most others are steadily gaining them.

More words from Katherine nudge into my thoughts.

All of Tom’s money is tied up in Mixer, which still hasn’t turned a profit and probably never will.

I decide to switch gears. Instead of looking for information about Tom, I do a search of Katherine Royce’s net worth. Turns out it’s surprisingly easy. There are entire websites devoted to listing how much celebrities make. According to one of them, Katherine’s net worth is thirty- five million dollars. More than enough to meet Mixer’s needs.

That word lodges itself in my skull.

Need.

Contrary to Tom’s quote, the word smacks of desperation. Want implies a desire that, if not met, won’t change things too much in the long run. Need implies something necessary to survive.

We need a like-minded partner.

Tom needs me too much to agree to a divorce. He’d kill me before letting me leave.

Perhaps Katherine was being completely serious when she said that. She even might have been hinting.

That Tom was planning something.

That she knew she might be in danger.

That she wanted someone else to know it, too. Just in case.

I close the laptop, half sick from worry and half sick from too much bourbon downed way too quickly. When the room begins to spin, I assume either one of those things is to blame. Probably both.

The room continues to rotate, like a carousel steadily gaining speed. I close my eyes to make it stop and collapse

onto my pillow. A dark numbness envelopes me, and I’m not sure if I’m falling asleep or passing out. As I plummet into unconsciousness, I’m greeted with a dream of Katherine Royce.

Instead of the Katherine I met in real life, Dream Katherine looks the same way she did in that Times Square billboard all those years ago.

Begowned and bejeweled. Shoes kicked off.

Running through the dewy grass, trying desperately to escape the man she was going to marry.

Katherine is still sprinting through my dreams when I awake sometime after three a.m., slightly confused by, well, everything. All the bedroom

lights are on and I’m still fully dressed, sneakers and jacket included. The laptop sits on the side of the bed that used to be Len’s, reminding me that I’d been drunk Googling earlier.

I slide out of bed and change into pajamas before heading to the bathroom. There I pee, brush my teeth, which had grown filmy, and gargle with mouthwash to clear away my bourbon breath. Back in the bedroom, I’m switching off all the lamps I had left on when I spot something through the tall windows that overlook the lake.

A light on the opposite shore.

Not at the Royce house but in the copse of trees to the left of it, near the water’s edge.

From where I’m standing, I don’t need the binoculars to know it’s the beam of a flashlight bobbing through the trees. The big unknown is who’s carrying that flashlight and why they’re roaming the lakeside at this hour.

I rush out of the bedroom and down the hallway, passing empty bedrooms along the way, their doors open and their beds neatly made, as if waiting for others to arrive. But there’s only me, all alone in this big, dark house, now descending the stairs to the main floor and heading to the porch where I spend most of my time. Once outside, I grab the binoculars.

It turns out I’m too late. The light is gone.

Everything is dark once more.

But as I return inside and head back upstairs, I suspect I already know who it was and why he was out so late.

Tom Royce.

Putting the rope, tarp, and saw he’d purchased earlier in the day to good use.

I wake again at eight, dry-mouthed and nauseated. Nothing new there. What is new is a gut punch of unease about Katherine’s fate, summed up by the

thoughts that hit me as soon as I gain consciousness.

She’s dead.

Tom killed her.

And now she’s either in the ground somewhere on the other side of the lake or in the water itself, sunk so deep she may never be found.

This leaves me so rattled my legs tremble when I go downstairs to the kitchen and my hands shake as I pour a cup of coffee. While drinking it, I use my phone to confirm that, no, Katherine hasn’t posted another photo to Instagram since yesterday and, yes, her location on Mixer remains directly across the lake from me.

Neither of those is a good sign.

Later, after forcing down a bowl of oatmeal and taking a shower, I’m back on the porch with my phone, in case Wilma Anson calls, and the binoculars, in case Tom Royce makes an appearance. For an hour, both go unused. When my phone does eventually ring, I’m disappointed to hear not Wilma’s voice, but my mother’s.

“I talked to Marnie and I’m concerned,” she says, cutting right to the chase.

“Concerned that I talk to her more than I talk to you?”

“Concerned that you’ve been spying on your neighbors and now seem to think your new model friend was

murdered by her husband.”

Goddamn Marnie. Her betrayal feels as pointed and painful as a bee sting. What’s worse is knowing it’ll get even more irritating now that my mother is involved.

“This has nothing to do with you,” I tell her. “Or Marnie, for that matter. Please just leave me alone.”

My mother gives a haughty sniff. “Since you haven’t denied it yet, I assume it’s true.”

There are two ways to play this. One is to issue the denial my mother so desperately craves. Just like my drinking, she’ll be doubtful but will eventually fool herself into thinking it’s true because it’s easier that way. The other is to simply admit it in the hope she gets as exasperated as Marnie did and leaves me alone.

I go with the latter.

“Yes, I’m worried the man across the lake murdered his wife.”

“Jesus, Casey. What has gotten into you?”

She shouldn’t sound so scandalized. Banishing me to the lake house was her idea. Of all people, my own mother should have realized I’d get up to no good after being left alone here to my own devices. Though in my mind, finding out what happened to Katherine is a good thing.

“She’s missing and I want to help her.” “I’m sure everything’s fine.”

“It’s not,” I snap. “Something very wrong is going on here.”

“If this is about Len—”

“He has nothing to do with this,” I say, even though this has everything to do with Len. What happened to him is the sole reason I’m willing to believe something bad also could have befallen Katherine. If it happened once, it could easily happen again.

it.”

“Even so,” my mother says, “it’s best if you stay out of

“That’s no longer an option. A guy staying at the

Mitchells’ place thinks the same way I do. We already told a detective friend of his.”

“You got the police involved?” My mother sounds like she’s about to get the vapors or drop the phone or pass out from shock. Maybe all three. “This—this isn’t good, Casey. I sent you there so you’d be out of the public eye.”

“Which I am.”

“Not when there are cops around.” My mother’s voice lowers to a whispered plea. “Please don’t get involved any further. Just walk away.”

But I can’t do that, even if I wanted to. Because as my mother talks, something catches my eye on the other side of the lake.

Tom Royce.

As he crosses the patio on the way to his Bentley, I raise the binoculars and my mother’s voice fades into background noise. I focus solely on Tom, searching for ways in which he could seem suspicious. Is his slow, easygoing walk to the car all an act because he knows he’s being watched? Is that grim look on his face because his wife left him? Or is it because he’s thinking about how he refused to let her leave?

My mother keeps talking, sounding like she’s a thousand miles away. “Casey? Are you listening to me?”

I continue to stare across the water as Tom slides behind the wheel of the Bentley and backs it out from under the portico. When the car turns left, heading toward town, I say, “Mom, I need to go.”

“Casey, wait—”

I hang up before she can finish. Staring at the now- empty Royce house, I think about the last birthday I celebrated with Len. The Big Three-Five. To celebrate, he rented an entire movie theater so I could finally fulfill my dream of watching Rear Window on the big screen.

If my mother were still on the line, she’d tell me what I’m doing is playing pretend. Role-playing Jimmy Stewart in his wheelchair because I have nothing else going on in my sad little life. While that’s probably truer than I’d care to admit, this isn’t just playacting.

It’s real. It’s happening. And I’m a part of it.

That doesn’t mean I can’t take a cue from good old Jimmy. In the movie, he had Grace Kelly search his suspicious neighbor’s apartment, finding the wedding ring that proved he had murdered his wife. While times have changed and I don’t know if Katherine’s wedding ring will be enough proof for Wilma Anson, maybe something else in that house will do the trick.

By the time Tom’s Bentley vanishes from view, the phone is stuffed back in my pocket, the binoculars are taking my place in the rocking chair, and I’m marching off the porch.

While he’s away, I plan on doing more than just watch the Royces’ house.

I’m going to search the place.

Rather than take the boat across the lake—the quickest and easiest option—I choose to walk the gravel road that circles Lake Greene. It’s

completely quiet and less conspicuous than the boat, which could be seen and heard by Tom if, God forbid, he returns while I’m still there and I have to make a quick getaway.

Also, walking gives me a chance to clear my head, gather my thoughts, and, if I’m being completely honest, change my mind. The road, so narrow and tree-lined in spots that it could pass for a path, invites contemplation. And as I walk, the lake glistening through the trees on my left and the thick forest rising to my right, what I’m thinking is that breaking into the Royce house is a bad idea.

Very bad. The worst.

I pause when I reach the northernmost corner of the lake, smack in the middle of the horseshoe curve separating Eli’s house from the Mitchells’, where Boone is staying. I wonder what both men would say if they knew what I’m planning. That it’s illegal, probably. That breaking and entering is a crime, even if my intentions are pure. Boone, ex-cop that he is, would likely list more than a dozen ways in which I’ll be charged if I get caught. And Eli wouldn’t hesitate to mention that what I’m about to attempt is also dangerous. Tom Royce will come back at some point.

Far across the water, all the way at the lake’s southern tip, I can spot the rocky bluff where Len and I had our afternoon picnic a week before he died. In the water below, Old Stubborn pokes from the surface. Because of the way it’s situated, the ancient tree can’t be seen from any of the houses on Lake Greene, which is probably why it’s attained such mythical status.

The guardian of the lake, according to Eli.

Even if he’s right and Old Stubborn is keeping watch over Lake Greene, there are limits to what it can do. It can’t, for instance, break into the Royce house and search for clues.

That leaves me to do the job. Not because I want to.

Because I have to.

Especially if finding something incriminating inside is the only way I’m going to convince Wilma that Tom is lying about Katherine.

I resume walking, faster than before, not slowing until I’ve passed Eli’s place and the Royces’ house comes into view. The front is far different from the back. No floor-to- ceiling glass here. Just a modern block of steel and stone with narrow slats for windows on both the upper and lower floors.

The front door, made of oak and big enough for a castle, is locked, forcing me to go around the side of the house and try the patio door in the back. I had wanted to avoid the possibility of being seen from my side of the lake. Hopefully Boone is busy working inside the Mitchells’ house and not sitting on the dock, watching this place as fervently as I’ve been.

I cross the patio quickly, making a beeline to the sliding door that leads into the house. I give it a tug and the

unlocked door opens just a crack.

Seeing that two-inch gap between the door and its frame gives me pause. While I’m not up to speed on Vermont’s penal code, I don’t need Boone to tell me what I’m about to do is against the law. It’s not quite breaking and entering, thanks to the unlocked door. And I’m certainly not intending to steal anything, so it’s not burglary. But it is trespassing, which will result in at least a fine and some more horrible headlines if I’m caught.

But then I think about Katherine. And how Tom has lied

—blatantly lied—about her whereabouts. And how if I don’t do anything about it now, no one will. Not until it’s too late. If it isn’t too late already.

So I pull the door open a little wider, slip inside, and quickly close it behind me.

Inside the Royce house, the first thing that catches my eye is the view from the wall-sized windows overlooking the lake. Specifically the way my family’s charmingly ramshackle lake house appears from here. It’s so small, so distant. Thanks to the shadows of the trees surrounding it, I can barely make out the row of windows at the master bedroom or anything on the back porch beyond the railing. No rocking chairs. No table between them. Certainly no binoculars. Someone could be sitting there right now, watching me from across the lake, and I’d have no idea.

Yet Katherine knew I was watching. The last night I saw her, right before Tom jerked her away from this very spot, she looked directly at that porch, knowing I was there, watching the whole thing happen. My hope is that it comforted her. My fear is that it left her as unnerved as I feel right now. Like I’m in a fishbowl, my every move exposed. It brings a sense of vulnerability I neither expected nor enjoy.

And guilt. A whole lot of that.

Because today isn’t the first time I’ve entered the Royces’ house.

With my near-constant spying, in a way I’ve been doing it for days.

And although I’m certain, down to my core, that no one would have known Katherine was in trouble without me watching them, shame warms my cheeks harder than the sun slanting through the windows.

My face continues to burn as I decide where to search first. Thanks to that long-ago visit and my recent hours of spying, I’m well acquainted with the layout of the house. The open-plan living room takes up one whole side of the first floor, from front to back. Since it strikes me as the least likely place to find anything incriminating, I cross the dining room and head into the kitchen.

Like the rest of the house, it’s got a mid-century modern/Scandinavian-sparse vibe that’s all the rage on the HGTV shows I sometimes watch when I’m drunk and can’t sleep in the middle of the night. Stainless steel appliances. White everywhere else. Subway tile out the ass.

Unlike on those design shows, the Royce kitchen shows signs of frequent, messy use. Multicolored drops of food spatter the countertops. A tray on the center island holds a bowl and spoon crusted with dried oatmeal. On the stovetop is a pot with soup dregs at the bottom. From the milky film coating it, my guess is cream of mushroom, reheated last night. I assume Katherine was the cook of the marriage and Tom has been reduced to eating like a frat boy. I can’t help but judge him as I peek into the trash can and see boxes that once held microwave Mexican and Lean Cuisines. Even at my drunkest and laziest, I would never resort to frozen burritos.

What I don’t see—in the trash or anywhere else in the kitchen—are signs something bad happened here. No drops of blood among the food spatter. No sharp knife or hacksaw or weapon of any kind drying in the dishwasher. There’s not even a Dear John letter from Katherine, which is what Marnie had predicted.

Satisfied there’s nothing else to see here, I do a quick tour of the rest of the first floor—tasteful sun-room off the kitchen, guest powder room that smells like lavender, entrance foyer—before heading upstairs.

My first stop on the second floor is the only room not visible through the expansive windows at the back of the house—a guest room. It’s luxurious, boasting a king bed, sitting area, and en suite bathroom that looks like something out of a spa. It’s all crisp, clean, and completely boring.

The same goes for the exercise room, although I do examine the rack of free weights for dried blood in case any of them had been used as a weapon. They’re clean, which makes me feel both relieved and slightly troubled that I’d thought to check them in the first place.

After that, it’s on to the master bedroom, where the sight of my own house through the massive windows brings another guilt-inducing reminder that I watched Katherine and Tom in this most private of spaces. It’s made worse by the fact that I’m now inside their inner sanctum, casing it the way a burglar would.

I see nothing immediately amiss in the bedroom itself, other than an unmade bed, a pair of Tom’s boxer shorts discarded on the floor, and an empty rocks glass on his nightstand. I can’t decide which is worse—that my spying has already taught me which side of the bed is Tom’s or

that a single sniff of the rocks glass instantly tells me he was drinking whiskey.

When I round the bed and check Katherine’s nightstand, I encounter the first sign of something suspicious. A small bowl the color of a Tiffany’s box sits next to her bedside lamp. Resting at its bottom are two pieces of jewelry.

An engagement ring and a wedding band.

It immediately reminds me of Rear Window and Grace Kelly as seen through Jimmy Stewart’s telephoto lens, flashing dead Mrs. Thorwald’s wedding ring. In 1954, that was proof of guilt. Today, however, it proves nothing. That’s what Wilma Anson would tell me.

In this case, I’m inclined to agree. If Katherine did indeed leave Tom, wouldn’t it be natural for her to leave her rings behind? The marriage is over. She wants a fresh start. She doesn’t need to keep the jewelry that symbolized their unhappy union. Also, I know from our first, dramatic meeting that Katherine doesn’t always wear her wedding band.

Still, it’s suspicious enough for me to pull my phone from my pocket and snap a few pictures of the rings sitting in the bowl’s gentle curve. I keep the phone out as I peek into the bathroom, which is even bigger and more spa-like than the one in the guest room. Like everywhere else, the only thing it points to is that Tom Royce is a slob when left on his own. Exhibit A is the towel bunched next to the sink. Exhibit B is yet another pair of boxer shorts on the floor. This time, I don’t judge. Someone prowling my bedroom right now would see yesterday’s clothes in a heap at the foot of my bed and a bra tossed across the back of the easy chair in the corner.

I move from bathroom to walk-in closet. It’s large and tidy, the walls covered by an elaborate grid of shelves,

hanging rods, and drawers. Nothing appears to be missing, a realization that brings a renewed sense of worry. While roaming the house, I’d been slowly coming around to the idea that maybe Katherine really did just up and leave Tom without giving him a clue about where she went. All these clothes, bearing labels from Gucci, Stella McCartney, and, in a refreshing bit of normalcy, H&M, suggest otherwise. As does a matching set of luggage tucked in the corner that I would have assumed belonged to Tom if the tags dangling from the handles didn’t bear Katherine’s name.

While I can understand leaving her engagement ring and wedding band behind, Katherine surely would have taken clothes with her. Yet the closet is filled with her things, to the point where I can spot only one empty hanger and one blank space on the shelves.

When Katherine left—if she left—she took only the clothes on her back.

I start opening drawers, seeing neatly folded sweaters, T-shirts and sweats, underwear in a rainbow of colors.

And a phone.

It’s stuffed into the back of Katherine’s underwear drawer, almost hidden behind a pair of Victoria’s Secret panties. Seeing it makes me think of Mixer and Katherine’s red triangle pinpointing her location.

I use my own phone to take a picture of it, then swipe through my call log until I find Katherine’s number. The second I hit the call button, the phone in the drawer starts to ring. I brush aside the panties until I can see my number lit up across its screen. Below it is the last time I called her.

Yesterday. One p.m.

I let the phone keep ringing until her voicemail message kicks in.

“Hi, you’ve reached Katherine.”

More worry pulses through me. Everything Katherine brought with her—her phone, her clothes, her jewelry—is still here.

The only thing missing is Katherine herself.

I pick up her phone, using a pair of panties to keep my fingerprints from smudging the screen. Thank you, guest arc on Law & Order.

The phone itself is locked, of course. The only information it provides is what’s available on the lock screen. Time, date, and how much juice is left in the battery. Very little, it turns out. Katherine’s phone is near death, which tells me it hasn’t been charged for at least a day, maybe longer.

I put the phone back where I found it, just in case Tom is keeping tabs on it. No need to alert him to my presence. I close the drawer and am about to leave the closet when Katherine’s phone begins to ring again, the sound muﬄed inside the drawer.

I return to the drawer, yank it open, see a phone number glowing white against the black screen. Just like me, whoever’s calling hasn’t been deemed familiar enough by Katherine to have their number saved in her phone.

But they have called before.

Along with the number is a reminder of the last time they did it.

This morning.

Because I can’t answer, I whip out my own phone and snap a picture of the number glowing on Katherine’s screen before the caller can hang up. It might be a good idea to call them later. Maybe they’re looking for Katherine, too. Maybe they’re as worried as I am.

I pocket my phone, close the drawer, leave the closet. After that, I move out of the bedroom and into the second-

floor hallway, on my way to the only room yet to be searched.

The home office. Very much Tom’s domain. The furnishings have a more masculine feel. Dark woods and glass and a distinct lack of personality. There’s a shelf of antique barware befitting the name of his app and a bookcase filled with business-y titles heavy on aspiration. Sitting atop the shelf, in a silver frame, is the same wedding photo of Tom and Katherine I’d seen years before in People magazine.

By the window is a glass-topped desk upon which sits Tom Royce’s laptop. It’s closed now, as flat and compact as a picture book. I glide toward it, remembering the night I watched Katherine at that desk, using that very computer. I can’t forget how surprised she had looked. So shocked it was clear even through the binoculars and a quarter mile of distance. I also recall how startled she seemed when Tom appeared in the doorway, barely managing to hide it.

My hand hovers over the laptop as I debate opening it up and seeing what I can find. Unlike Katherine’s phone, there’s no way to use it without getting my fingerprints all over it. Yes, I could use my shirt to wipe it down when I’m done, but that would get rid of Tom’s and Katherine’s prints as well. That might look like tampering with evidence, which courts tend to frown upon. Another thing I picked up from Law & Order.

On the flip side, this laptop could be the key we need to unlock the truth about what happened to Katherine. Showing Wilma Anson pictures of Katherine’s phone and discarded rings might not be enough to get a search warrant. In the meantime, it would be so easy for Tom to make sure no one else sees what’s on the laptop. All it would take is a single toss into Lake Greene.

That thought—of the laptop sinking to the lake’s dark, muddy floor—makes me decide to open it. If I don’t look— right now—there’s a chance no one ever will.

I crack the laptop open, and its screen springs to life, revealing a home page of a lake in full summer splendor. Trees a shade of green that only exists in July. Sunlight twinkling like pixie dust on the water. A sky so blue it looks like CGI.

Lake Greene.

I’d recognize it anywhere.

I tap the space bar and the lake is replaced by a desktop strewn with tabs, icons, and file folders. I let out a relieved breath. I’d been worried the laptop was as locked down as Katherine’s phone.

But now that I have access, I can’t decide what to search first. Most of the folders look Mixer specific, with names like Q2 data, Ad roster, Mockups2.0. I click on a few of them, seeing spreadsheets, saved memos and reports using so much business-speak they might as well be written in Sanskrit.

Only one of the spreadsheets catches my eye. Dated three months ago, it consists of a column of numbers, all of them red. I take a picture of the laptop screen despite not knowing if the figures are dollars or subscribers or something else. Just because I can’t understand it doesn’t mean it won’t come in handy later.

I close the folder and start looking for ones that seem unrelated to Tom Royce’s app. I choose one marked with a telling name.

Kat.

Inside are more folders, labeled by year and going back half a decade. I peek inside each one, seeing not only photos of Katherine from her modeling days but more

spreadsheets. One per year. Atop each is the same heading: earnings. I scan a few of them, noting there’s not a red number to be found. Even though she’s no longer a model, Katherine’s been making an obscene amount of money. Far more than that net worth website estimated and far more than Mixer.

I take photos of spreadsheets for the past three years and move on to the laptop’s web browser. Two seconds and one click later, I find myself staring at the browsing history.

Jackpot.

Immediately, I see that Tom hasn’t done any obvious web surfing in the past two days. There are no instantly suspicious searches for ways to dispose of a body or the best hacksaws for cutting through bone. Either Tom hasn’t touched the laptop since Katherine disappeared or he cleared the browsing history for the past forty-eight hours.

Three days ago, however, brings up a bonanza of visited sites. Some, including the same Bloomberg Businessweek article about Mixer I’d found, strike me as the work of Tom Royce. Others, such as the New York Times fashion section and Vanity Fair, suggest Katherine’s doing. As does an interesting Google search.

Causes of drowning in lakes.

I click the link and see a brief list of reasons, including swimming alone, intoxication, and boating without a life jacket. That last one makes me think of Len. It also makes me want to clomp downstairs and pour myself something strong from the living room bar.

Trying to rid myself of both the thought and the urge, I do a little shimmy and move on. I go to Google and check the most recent topics searched on the laptop, finding more about drowning and water.

Swimming at night.

Ghosts in reflections. Haunted lakes.

A sigh escapes my lips. Eli’s campfire tale sent either Tom or Katherine running to Google. One of them, in fact, did a lot of searching a few days ago. In addition to lake- related topics, I find searches for World Series scores, the weather forecast, paella recipes.

One topic, however, stops me cold.

Missing women in Vermont.

Why on earth was Tom or Katherine interested in this?

Shocked, I move to click on the link when I spot a name just beneath it.

Mine.

Seeing my name in the browser history isn’t a surprise. I’m sure I’ve been Googled by plenty of complete strangers in the past year. It makes sense my new neighbors would do it, too. I even know what the top hit will be before I click it. Sure enough, there’s a picture of me guzzling down a double old-fashioned and the headline that will likely dog me for the rest of my life.

“Casey’s Booze Binge.”

Below it are articles about my firing from Shred of Doubt, my IMDb page, Len’s obituary in the LA Times. All of the links had been clicked, making it clear that either Tom or Katherine had been researching me.

What’s not so clear is which one it was. And why.

When I return to the browser history to try to find out, I notice another familiar name had been entered into Google.

Boone Conrad.

The search brought up an article about his wife’s death. Reading it over, I learn two surprising facts. The first is that Boone is indeed his real name. The second is that he was a

cop in the police department closest to Lake Greene. Everything else in the article is exactly what he’d told me yesterday. He came home from work, found his wife at the bottom of the stairs, and called paramedics, who declared her dead. The chief of police—Boone’s boss—is quoted as saying it was a tragic accident. End of story.

I move on, seeing that it’s not just people on the lake who have been Googled by one of the Royces. I also spot a search for someone I’ve never heard of: Harvey Brewer.

Clicking on it brings up a staggering number of hits. I choose the first one—a year-old article from a Pennsylvania newspaper with a ghoulish headline.

“Man Admits to Slowly Poisoning His Wife.”

I read the article, each sentence making my heart thump faster. It turns out that Harvey Brewer was a fifty- something mail carrier from East Stroudsburg whose forty- something wife, Ruth, suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack inside a Walmart.

Although she was a healthy type—“Fit as a fiddle,” a friend said—Ruth’s death wasn’t a complete surprise. Her siblings told police she had been complaining about sudden weakness and dizzy spells in the weeks leading up to her death. “She said she wasn’t feeling quite like herself,” one of her sisters said.

Because Harvey was set to receive a healthy sum of money after her death, Ruth’s family suspected foul play. They were right. An autopsy discovered trace amounts of brimladine, a common ingredient in rat poison, in Ruth’s system. Brimladine, a stimulant that some experts have called “the cocaine of poisons,” works by increasing the heart rate. In rodents, death is instantaneous. In humans, it takes a good deal longer.

When the police questioned Harvey, he caved immediately and confessed to giving his wife microdoses of brimladine for weeks. The poison, doled out daily in her food and drink, weakened Ruth’s heart to the point of failure. Harvey claimed to have gotten the idea from a Broadway play the two of them had seen on a recent trip to New York.

Shred of Doubt.

Holy. Shit.

Harvey Brewer had been in the audience of my play. He’d seen me onstage, playing a woman who comes to realize her husband is slowly poisoning her. He’d sat in that darkened theater, wondering if such a thing could be done in real life. Turns out, it could. And he almost got away with it.

By the time I reach the end of the article, different moments with Katherine are gliding through my thoughts like a slide show.

Floating in the lake, motionless, her lips an icy blue.

It was like my entire body stopped working, was how she later described it.

Slumped in a rocking chair, gripped by a hangover.

I’m just not myself lately.

Woozy from only two glasses of wine.

I don’t feel too good.

It’s that night by the fire I latch on to the hardest, as details that seemed small at the time suddenly loom large with meaning.

Tom telling me how fantastic he thought I was in Shred of Doubt.

Him insisting on pouring the wine, doing it with his back to us, so we couldn’t see what he was doing.

Him carefully handing each of us our own glass, as if they’d been specifically assigned.

Katherine downing hers in a mighty gulp, getting a refill from her husband.

For a second, I’m dumb struck. The realization is like an old-timey flashbulb going off in my face. White-hot and blinding. Dizzy from the shock of it all, I close my eyes and wonder if what happened to Ruth Brewer also happened to Katherine.

It makes sense in the same way a jigsaw puzzle does once all the pieces have been snapped into place. Tom saw Shred of Doubt and, like Harvey, got to thinking. Or maybe he stumbled upon Harvey Brewer’s crime first and decided to see the play for himself. There’s no way to know the how, the why, or the when. Not that it matters. Tom decided to imitate both Harvey and the play, slipping Katherine tiny doses of poison when he could, weakening her until, one day, everything just stopped.

And Katherine found out, most likely by doing what I’m doing now and simply seeing it in her husband’s browsing history.

That’s what she saw the night before she vanished.

That’s why she looked simultaneously shocked and curious as I watched her from the porch. Sitting in this very chair. Staring at this very laptop. As stunned as I am now.

And it’s why she and Tom fought later that night. She told him she knew what he was doing. He denied it, maybe demanded to know where such an idea came from. How? Who?

By dawn, Katherine was gone. Tom either killed her or she ran, leaving everything behind. Now she could be buried in the woods or resting at the bottom of the lake or in hiding. Those are the only options I can think of.

I need to find out which one it is.

And convince Detective Wilma Anson to help me do it.

I grab my phone again and take a picture of the laptop screen, the article about Harvey Brewer unreadable but the headline crystal clear. I’m about to take another when I hear an unwelcome sound arrive outside the house.

Tires crunching gravel.

To my right is a window that provides a view from the southwestern side of the house. I go to it and see Tom Royce’s Bentley vanishing under the portico.

Shit.

I run out of the office, only to stop and turn back around when I realize the laptop is still open. I rush back to the desk, slam the laptop shut, speed out of the office again. I pause in the second-floor hall, unsure where to go next. Within seconds, Tom will be inside. If I run down the stairs now, it’s likely he’ll spot me. It might be wiser to stay on this floor and hide in a place he probably won’t enter. The guest room seems to be the best bet. I could crawl under the bed and wait until I’m certain I can escape unseen.

Which could be hours.

Meanwhile, Tom still hasn’t come into the house. Maybe he’s doing something outside. Maybe there is enough time for me to fly down the stairs and zoom out the front door.

I decide to risk it, mostly because hiding here—possibly for a long time—is no guarantee Tom won’t find me anyway. The safest thing to do is leave the house.

Right now.

With no thoughts in my head other than getting out of here as fast as possible, I sprint for the stairs.

Then down the stairs.

Then toward the front door. I grab the handle and pull.

The door is locked, which I already knew but had forgotten because, one, there are other things on my mind and, two, I’ve never done this before.

As I reach for the lock, I hear another door being pushed open.

The sliding glass door in back of the house.

Tom is coming inside—and I’m a second away from being caught. The front door is just off the living room. If he goes anywhere but the dining room or kitchen, I’ll be spotted. Even if he doesn’t, the click of the lock and sound of the door opening will alert him to my presence.

I spin around, ready to face him, my mind whirling to come up with a vaguely logical excuse as to why I’m inside his house. I can’t. My brain is blank with panic.

As a second passes, then another, I realize I haven’t heard the sliding door close or Tom’s footsteps inside the house. What I do hear, drifting on the autumn breeze coming through that still-open door, is water lapping on the shore, the sound of a boat arriving at the Royces’ dock, and a familiar voice calling Tom’s name.

Boone.

I remain by the door, waiting for verification that Tom’s still outside. I get it when I hear Boone, now on the back patio, ask him if he needs any work done on the house.

“I figured I’d check, since I’m pretty much done with the Mitchells’ place.”

“I’m good,” Tom replies. “Everything seems to be in—”

I don’t pay attention to the rest because I’m too busy unlocking the door and yanking it open. As soon as I’m outside, I do the only reasonable thing.

Run.

Thanks to his boat, Boone beats me back to our side of the lake. Even though I’d stopped running as soon as I passed Eli’s house, I’m still out of breath

when I see him standing in the road ahead, his arms folded across his chest like an angry parent.

“That was a stupid and dangerous thing you did back there,” Boone says as I approach him. “Tom would have caught you if I hadn’t jumped in my boat and stopped him.”

“How did you know I was there?”

The answer, I realize, is gripped in Boone’s right hand. The binoculars.

Handing them to me, he says, “I borrowed them after I saw you walking past the house. I knew what you were up to and ran onto your porch to keep watch.”

“Why didn’t you stop me from going?”

“Because I was thinking about doing it myself.”

“But you just told me it was stupid and dangerous.”

“It was,” Boone says. “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t necessary. Did you find anything?”

“Plenty.”

We resume walking, making our way past where Boone is staying on the way to my place. Strolling side by side as leaves the color of a campfire swirl around us, it would be a lovely walk—almost romantic—if not for the grim subject matter at hand. I tell Boone about how Katherine’s rings, phone, and clothes are still in her bedroom before getting

into what I found on Tom’s laptop, including Harvey Brewer.

“Tom was slowly poisoning her,” I say. “Just like what this guy did to his wife. I’m certain of it. Katherine told me she hadn’t been feeling well. She kept getting suddenly weak and tired.”

“So you think she’s dead?”

“I think she found out about it. Hopefully, she ran. But there’s a chance . . .”

Boone gives me a somber nod, no doubt thinking about the tarp, the rope, the hacksaw. “Tom got to her before she could.”

“But we have proof now.” I grab my phone and start swiping through the photos I took. “See? That’s the article about Harvey Brewer, right on Tom’s own laptop.”

“It’s not enough, Casey.”

I stop in the middle of the leaf-strewn road, letting Boone walk several paces ahead before he realizes I’m no longer at his side.

“What do you mean it’s not enough? I have pictures of Katherine’s phone and clothes, not to mention proof her husband was reading about a man who murdered his wife.” “What I mean,” Boone says, “is that it’s not legal. You

got all that stuff by breaking into their house. A crime that’s worse than spying.”

“You know what’s even worse?” I say, unable to keep an impatient edge out of my voice. “Planning to kill your wife.”

I still haven’t budged, forcing Boone to come back and wrap one of his big arms around my shoulders to get me moving again.

“I agree with you,” he says. “But that’s how the law works. You can’t prove someone committed a crime by committing another crime. In order to really nail him, we

need some kind of evidence—not gained illegally—that could point to foul play.”

What he doesn’t say—but what I infer anyway—is that, so far, Tom Royce has been very good at covering his tracks. That Instagram photo he posted on Katherine’s account is proof of that. Therefore it’s unlikely he left some damning piece of evidence within legal reach.

I stop again, this time stilled by the realization that there is a piece of evidence in my possession.

But it wasn’t left by Tom.

This was all Katherine’s doing.

I start off down the road again, the motion as abrupt as when I’d stopped. Rather than walk, I return to running, trotting far ahead of Boone on the way to the lake house.

“What are you doing?” he calls.

I don’t slow as I shout my reply. “Getting evidence.

Legally!”

Back at the house, I head straight for the kitchen and the trash can that should have been emptied a day ago but thankfully wasn’t. A rare win for laziness. I sort through the garbage, my fingers squishing into soggy paper towels and clammy wads of oatmeal. By the time Boone reaches me, I’ve overturned the can and dumped its contents onto the floor. After another minute of searching, I find what I’m looking for.

A piece of broken wineglass.

Triumphantly, I hold it to the light. The glass is dirtier now than when I found it glinting in the yard. Crumbs dust the surface, and there’s a white splotch that might be salad dressing. Hopefully that won’t matter because the saltlike film I’d seen the other day remains.

If Tom Royce really did slip something into Katherine’s wine that night, hopefully this piece of glass will be able to

prove it.

When Wilma Anson arrives, the glass shard has been safely tucked inside a Ziploc bag. She studies it through the clear plastic, the tilt of her

head signaling either curiosity or exasperation. With her, it’s hard to tell.

“Where’d you get this again?”

“The yard,” I say. “The glass broke when Katherine passed out in the grass while holding it.”

“Because she’d allegedly been drugged?” Wilma says. “Poisoned,” I say, correcting her.

“The lab results might say otherwise.”

Boone and I agreed it wasn’t a good idea to tell Wilma just how, exactly, I came to suspect Tom of trying to poison his wife. Instead, we told her I had suddenly remembered Katherine mentioning the name Harvey Brewer, which led me to the internet and my theory that Tom might have tried the same thing Brewer had done to his wife. It was enough to get Wilma to come over. Now that she’s here, the big question is if she’ll do anything about it.

“That means you’re going to test it, right?” I say.

“Yes,” Wilma says, the word melting into a sigh. “Although it’ll take a few days to get the results back.”

“But Tom could be gone by then,” I say. “Can’t you at least question him?”

“I plan to.” “When?”

“When the time is right.”

“Isn’t now the right time?” I start to sway back and forth, put into motion by the impatience fizzing inside me. All the things I want to tell Wilma are the same things I can’t tell her. Revealing that I know Katherine’s phone, clothes, and rings remain in her bedroom would also be admitting that I broke into the Royces’ house. So I keep it in, feeling like a shaken champagne bottle, hoping I don’t explode under the pressure. “Don’t you believe us?”

“I think it’s a valid theory,” Wilma says. “One of several.”

“Then investigate it,” I say. “Go over there and question him.”

“And ask him if he killed his wife?” “Yes, for starters.”

Wilma moves into the adjoining dining room without invitation. Dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and sensible shoes, she finally resembles the TV detective of my imagination. The only similarity to her outfit from last night is a scrunchie around her wrist. Green instead of yellow and clearly not her daughter’s. Slung over Wilma’s shoulder is a black messenger bag, which she drops onto the table. When she sits, her jacket flares open, offering a glimpse of the gun holstered beneath it.

“This isn’t as simple as you think,” she says. “There might be something else going on here. Something bigger than what happened to Katherine Royce.”

“Bigger how?” Boone says.

“You ever do a trust exercise? You know, one of those things where a person falls backwards, hoping he’ll be caught by the people behind him?” Wilma demonstrates by raising her index finger and slowly tilting it sideways. “What I’m about to tell you is a lot like that. I’m going to trust you with classified information. And you’re going to

reward that trust by doing nothing and saying nothing and just letting me do my job. Deal?”

“What kind of information?” I say.

“Details of an active investigation. If you tell anyone I showed them to you, I could get in trouble and you could get your asses put in jail.”

I wait for Wilma to reveal she’s exaggerating with a just-kidding smile. It doesn’t happen. Her expression is as severe as a tombstone as she gives the scrunchie on her wrist a twirl and says, “Swear you will tell no one.”

“You know I’m good,” Boone says. “It’s not you I’m worried about.”

“I swear,” I say, even though Wilma’s seriousness makes me wonder if I want to hear what she’s about to say. What I’ve discovered already today has me sparking with anxiety.

Wilma hesitates, just for a moment, before grabbing her bag. “When did the Royces buy that house?”

“Last winter,” I say.

“This was their first summer here,” Boone adds.

Wilma unzips the messenger bag. “Did Tom Royce ever mention coming to the area before they bought it?”

“Yeah,” I say. “He told me they spent several summers at different rental properties.”

“He told me the same thing,” Boone says. “Said he was glad to finally find a place of their own.”

Wilma motions for us to sit. After we do, Boone and me sitting side by side, she pulls a file folder out of her bag and places it on the table in front of us.

“Are either of you familiar with the name Megan Keene?”

“She’s that girl who disappeared two years ago, right?” Boone says.

“Correct.”

Wilma opens the folder, pulls out a sheet of paper, and slides it toward us. On the page is a snapshot, a name, and a single word that brings a shiver to my spine.

Missing.

I stare at the photo of Megan Keene. She’s as pretty as a model in a shampoo commercial. All honey-blonde hair and rosy cheeks and blue eyes. The embodiment of Miss American Pie.

“Megan was eighteen when she vanished,” Wilma says. “She was a local. Her family owns the general store in the next town. Two years ago, she told her parents she had a date and left, kissing her mother on the cheek on her way out. It was the last time anyone saw her. Her car was found where she always left it—parked behind her parents’ store. No signs of foul play or struggle. And nothing to suggest she never planned to come back to it.”

Wilma slides another page toward us. It’s the same format as the first.

Picture—a dark beauty with lips painted cherry red and her face framed by black hair.

Name—Toni Burnett. Also missing.

“Toni disappeared two months after Megan. She was basically a drifter. Born and raised in Maine but kicked out of the house by her very religious parents after one too many arguments about her behavior. Eventually, she ended up in Caledonia County, staying at a motel that rents rooms by the week. When her week was up and she didn’t check out, the manager thought she’d skipped town. But when he entered her room, all her belongings still seemed to be there. Toni Burnett, though, wasn’t. The manager didn’t immediately call the police, thinking she’d return in a day or two.”

“I guess that never happened,” Boone says. “No,” Wilma says. “It definitely did not.”

She pulls a third page from the folder. Sue Ellen Stryker.

Shy, as evidenced by the startled smile on her face, as if she’d just realized someone was taking her picture.

Missing, just like the others.

And the same girl Katherine had mentioned while we sat around the fire the other night.

“Sue Ellen was nineteen,” Wilma says. “She went missing last summer. She was a college student spending the season working at a lakeside resort in Fairlee. Left work one night and never came back. Like the others, there was nothing to suggest she packed up and ran away. She was simply . . . gone.”

“I thought she drowned,” Boone says.

“That was one theory, although there’s nothing concrete to suggest that’s what really happened.”

“But you do think she’s dead,” Boone says. “The others, too.”

“Honestly? Yes.”

“And that their deaths are related?”

“I do,” Wilma says. “Recently, we’ve come to believe they’re all victims of the same person. Someone who’s been in the area on a regular basis for at least two years.”

Boone sucks in a breath. “A serial killer.”

The words hang in the stuffy air of the dining room, lingering like a foul stench. I stare at the pictures spread across the table, my gut clenched with both sadness and anger.

Three women.

Girls, really.

Still young, still innocent.

Taken in their prime. Now lost.

Studying each photograph, I’m struck by how their personalities leap off the page. Megan Keene’s effervescence. Toni Burnett’s mystery. Sue Ellen Stryker’s innocence.

I think of their families and friends and how much they must miss them.

I think of their goals, their dreams, their disappointments and hopes and sorrows.

I think of how they must have felt right before they were killed. Scared and alone, probably. Two of the worst feelings in the world.

A sob rises in my chest, and for a stricken moment, I fear it’s going to burst out of me. But I swallow it down, keep it together, ask the question that needs to be asked.

“What does this have to do with Katherine Royce?”

Wilma removes one more item from the folder. It’s a color photocopy of a postcard. An aerial view of a jagged lake surrounded by forests and mountains. I’ve seen the image a hundred times on racks in local stores and know what it is without needing to read the name printed at the bottom of the card.

Lake Greene.

“Last month, someone sent this postcard to the local police department.” Wilma looks to Boone. “Your old stomping grounds. They passed it on to us. Because of this.”

She flips the page, revealing the photocopied back of the postcard. On the left side, written in all-caps handwriting so shaky it looks like the work of a child, is the address of Boone’s former workplace, located about fifteen

minutes from here. On the right side, in that same childlike scrawl, are three names.

Megan Keene.

Toni Burnett.

Sue Ellen Stryker.

Beneath the names are four words.

I think they’re here.

“Holy shit,” Boone says.

I say nothing, too stunned to speak.

“There’s no way to trace who sent it,” Wilma says. “This exact postcard has been sold all over the county for years. As you can see, there’s no return address.”

“Fingerprints?” Boone says.

“Plenty. That card passed through more than a dozen hands before coming to the state police. The stamp was self-stick, so there’s no DNA on the back. A handwriting analysis concluded it was written by someone right-handed using their left hand. That’s why it’s barely legible. Whoever sent it did a very good job of covering their tracks. The only clue we have, really, is the postmark, which tells us it had been dropped into a mailbox on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. That, incidentally, is where Tom and Katherine Royce’s apartment is located. It could be a coincidence, but I doubt it.”

Boone rubs a hand through his stubble, contemplating all this information. “You think one of them sent that postcard?”

“Yes,” Wilma says. “Katherine, in particular. The handwriting analysis suggests it was written by a female.”

“Why would she do that?” “Why do you think?”

It takes less than a second for it to sink in, with Boone’s expression shifting as he moves from thought to theory to

realization. “You really think Tom killed those girls?” he says. “And that Katherine knew about it? Or at least suspected it?”

“That’s one theory,” Wilma says. “That’s why we’re being very careful here. If Katherine sent that postcard as a way to tip off the police about her husband, then it’s also possible she ran away and is in hiding somewhere.”

“Or that Tom found out and silenced her,” Boone says. “That’s also a possibility, yes. But if she has gone into

hiding as a way to protect herself, we want to find her before her husband does. Either way, both of you deserve some credit for this. If you hadn’t called me about Katherine, we never would have thought to tie her and Tom to this postcard. So thank you.”

“What’s the next step?” Boone asks, beaming with pride. Once a cop, always a cop, I guess.

Wilma gathers up the pages and stuffs them back into the folder. As she does, I get one last glimpse at the faces of those missing girls. Megan and Toni and Sue Ellen. Each one squeezes my heart so tight that I almost wince. Then Wilma closes the folder and the three of them vanish all over again.

“Right now, we’re looking into all the places Tom rented in Vermont in the past two years. Where he stayed. How long he was there. If Katherine was with him.” Wilma drops the folder into her messenger bag and looks my way. “If the dates match up to these disappearances, then that will be the right time to talk to Tom Royce.”

Another shiver hits me. One of those full-body ones that rattle you like a cocktail shaker.

The police think Tom is a serial killer.

Although Wilma didn’t say it outright, the implication is clear.

They think he did it.

And the situation is all so much worse than I first thought.