I take a sip of bourbon and stare at the person restrained to the bed, consumed with both fear and fascination that someone so evil can be contained
inside someone so beautiful. Such a thing shouldn’t be possible. Yet it’s happening. I’m witnessing it with my very own eyes. It makes me keep the bourbon glass pressed to my lips.
This time, I take a gulp.
“I remember when you used to get tipsy after a single glass of wine,” Len says as he watches me drink. “That’s clearly changed. I suppose I had a little something to do with that.”
I swallow. “More than a little.”
“Am I allowed to say I’m worried about you?” Len says. “Because I am. This isn’t like you, Cee. You’re very different from the person I fell in love with.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
“And because of that you’ve decided to drink yourself to death?”
“You, of all people, have no right to judge me,” I say. “I don’t want your fucking concern. Because this”—I raise the glass of bourbon still clutched in my hand—“is your fault. All of it. Now, we can talk all about why I drink, but only after you tell me more about those girls you killed.”
“You want to know how I did it?”
Len smiles. A sick, ghoulish grin that looks profane on Katherine’s kind and lovely face. It takes every ounce of
restraint I have not to slap it away.
“No,” I say. “I want to know why you did it. There was more to it than simple enjoyment. Something compelled you to act that way.”
A noise rises from outside.
A gust of wind, shrieking like a banshee across the lake. It slams into the lake house, and the entire place shudders, sending up a communal rattle of windowpanes.
The bedside lamp again starts to flicker.
This time, it doesn’t stop.
“You don’t really want to know, Cee,” Len says. “You only think you do. Because to truly understand my actions, you’ll need to confront all the things about me that you overlooked or ignored because you were too busy nursing wounds from your own shitty childhood. But you weren’t abandoned by your whore mother. You didn’t have a father who beat you. You didn’t grow up getting passed around foster homes like an unwanted mutt.”
Len wants me to feel sorry for him, and I do. No child should experience what he went through. Yet I also know that many do—and that they easily manage to go through life without hurting others.
“Those girls you killed had nothing to do with that,” I say.
“I didn’t care. I still wanted to hurt someone. I needed
it.”
And I’d needed him to be the man I thought he was. The
kind, decent, charming man I wrongly assumed I’d married. That he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do that fills me with a sticky combination of anger and sadness and grief.
“If you felt this way, why did you insist on dragging me into it?” There’s a quiver in my voice. I’m not sure which emotion is causing it—rage or despair. “You should have
left me alone. Instead, you let me fall in love with you. You let me marry you and build a life with you. A life that you knew all along you were going to destroy.”
Len shakes his head. “I didn’t think it would get so bad.
I thought I could control it.”
“Our marriage should have been enough to stop you,” I say, the quiver growing to a quake. “I should have been enough!”
“I tried not to act on it,” Len says. “The urge refused to go away, no matter how much I wanted it to. Some nights, while you were asleep, I’d lie awake and think about what it would feel like to watch the life go out of a person’s eyes and know I was the cause of it. The more I thought about it, the more I resisted. And the more I resisted, the stronger the urge became.”
“Until you came here and did it.”
“Not at first,” Len says, and my gut tightens at the thought of him killing others elsewhere. “In LA. Sometimes, when I was out there alone for work, I’d scour the streets, find a hooker, take her back to my room.”
I don’t flinch at the news. After knowing your husband murdered at least three women, finding out he also cheated doesn’t have the sting it would under normal circumstances.
“And then one night, I didn’t feel like bothering with the room. We just got in my car, parked somewhere quiet, made the necessary financial arrangements. And as it was happening, me with the front seat reclined, her kneeling in the wheel well, giving a blow job that wasn’t worth the money, I thought, It would be so easy to kill her right now.”
I shiver, repulsed. Once again, I can’t believe that this man was my husband, that most of my nights were spent sleeping by his side, that I loved him with every fiber of my
being. Even worse, I can’t get over how completely he had fooled me. During our time together, I never suspected— not once—he was a fraction this cruel and depraved.
“Did you?” I say, not wanting an answer but needing one all the same.
“No,” Len says. “It was too risky. But I knew it was going to happen someday.”
“Why here?”
“Why not here? It’s quiet, secluded. Plus, I could rent a car, drive here for a weekend, come back, and pretend I was in LA. You never suspected a thing.”
“I found out eventually,” I say.
“Not until it was too late for Megan, Toni, and Sue Ellen.”
I feel a pain in my gut, as sharp and twisting as if I’d taken the knife on the bed next to me and shoved it into my side.
“Tell me where you left their bodies.” “To atone for my sins?”
I shake my head and take another sip of bourbon. “To atone for mine.”
“I see,” Len says. “Then what? And don’t pretend you haven’t thought it through. I know exactly what you plan on doing. Once you learn where those bodies are, you’re going to kill me all over again.”
When he was alive, I found it uncanny how well Len could read my thoughts. Sometimes it felt like he knew my every mood, whim, and need, which I absolutely loved. What a pleasure it was to have my spouse know me so well. In hindsight, it was more curse than blessing. I suspect it’s how Len was able to hide his true nature from me for so long. I’m certain it’s how he knows exactly what I have planned now.
“Yes,” I say, seeing no point in lying. He wouldn’t believe me if I did. “That’s what I intend to do.”
“And what if I refuse?”
I set the glass on the nightstand, next to the lamp that continues to flicker. It’s like a strobe light, plunging the room into microbursts of darkness and light as my hand once again moves toward the knife. “Then I’ll kill you anyway.”
“I don’t think you want that much blood on your hands, Cee,” Len says, pronouncing the nickname with an exaggerated hiss. “I know from experience you won’t hesitate to kill me. But it’s your other victim that should give you pause.”
“What other victim?” “Katherine, of course.”
He doesn’t need to say anything else. I now understand exactly what he means.
If I killed him, I’d also be killing Katherine Royce.
Riding on the coattails of that revelation is another bit of clarity. One that’s more hopeful, if no less complicated.
“She’s still there,” I say.
Len doesn’t get a chance to respond. He’s blocked by another screaming wind outside.
Coming closer. Swooping in.
It rams against the house and everything shakes, me included. I reach for the nightstand to steady myself. In the hallway, something falls to the floor and shatters.
The nightstand lamp stops flickering long enough for me to see the rattling bourbon glass, Len straining against the ropes, the smug grin on his face.
Then the lamp, the room, and the entire lake house go completely dark.
The plunge into darkness is so sudden and quick it makes me gasp. The sound of it slithers through the room, made louder by the all-encompassing
blackness. Now this is darker than a coffin with the lid shut.
I remain on the bed, hoping it’s just a blip and that power will return in just a few seconds. When a minute passes and the lights remain out, I resign myself to the task ahead—finding flashlights and candles and making the place as bright as possible.
While I don’t trust Len in the light, I trust him even less in the dark.
I stand and leave the room, using muscle memory from a thousand nights here to navigate between the beds and out the door.
In the hallway, something crunches beneath my sneakers.
Broken glass.
A pool of it spreads across the hardwood floor. I try to step over it, accidentally nudging the source of the glass—a picture frame that fell from the wall when the house shook. I keep moving to the stairs. Rather than walk down them, I sit and scoot step by step to the bottom. By now, my eyes have adjusted to the darkness enough for me to make my way to the den, where an emergency supply of flashlights and candles is kept. I find an LED lantern, a
flashlight, and several fat candles that can burn for hours.
And I find a lighter.
One that’s likely been here for ages. At least since last summer.
And since Len was the person responsible for gathering and keeping track of the supplies, he knew of its existence.
That son of a bitch.
He’s wrong there. I still don’t understand any of it. Not just the perversion of nature that allowed the situation to happen, but how it works.
“Is she aware of what’s going on?” “You’d have to ask her,” Len says. “Is that possible?”
“Not anymore. It was back when she still mostly had control.”
My thoughts drift to my few interactions with Katherine. Talking in the boat after pulling her from the lake. Downing her husband’s five-grand-a-bottle wine. Drinking coffee the next morning, bemoaning the state of her marriage. That was all Katherine. Or most of it. I presume that sometimes Len broke through, like when he saw his binoculars sitting on the porch or texted me even though Katherine didn’t know my phone number.
“When did you take over?” I say.
“It happened gradually,” Len says. “It took me a while to get my bearings in a new form, to understand the logistics of how it worked, to learn how to control it. And, boy, did she resist. Katherine refused to go down without a fight.”
Good for her, I think, before being consumed by another thought.
“Is there a way to bring her back?” Len doesn’t answer.
“There is,” I say. “Otherwise you would have told me no.”
“There might be a way, yes,” Len says. “Not that I plan on sharing it with you.”
“You can’t stay like this. You’re trapped. Not just here, in this room, but in another person’s body.”
“And what a lovely body it is. I suspect it’ll make things easy for me.”
Len looks down at Katherine’s breasts with an exaggerated leer. Seeing him do it unleashes an anger I’ve probably been keeping in my entire life. Not just at him, although he’s left me plenty to be angry at, but at all men who think life is somehow easier for women, especially the pretty ones.
“Easy?” I say. “You have no idea how hard it is to be a woman. Or how maddening it is to always feel at risk because that’s just how our fucked-up society is. Trust me, you’re not equipped to handle it. Wait until you have to walk down the street alone at night or stand on a subway platform and wonder if one—or more—of the men around you will try to harass you. Or assault you. Or kill you just like you killed those three girls who are now somewhere in that lake.”
The knife is in my hand, although I have no memory of picking it up. Now that it’s in my grip, I fly across the room and, seething with pent-up rage, bring the blade to Len’s neck. He gulps, and the rippling of his skin scritches against the steel of the knife.
“Maybe I should do it right now,” I say. “Just so you know how it feels.”
“Remember what I told you,” he says. “You kill me, then you also kill Katherine. Stab me, and you’re stabbing her, too. My blood is her blood now.”
I don’t immediately remove the knife. Anger bubbling inside me like hot tar makes me keep it there another
minute, the blade on the cusp of breaking skin. During those sixty seconds, I feel bright and wildly alive and finally in charge of the situation.
This, I think, is what being a man must feel like.
But then I catch Len looking at me, and in those gray- green eyes that once belonged to Katherine Royce but are now his, I see approval.
“I always knew we were a good match,” he says as the knife blade continues to scratch his flesh.
Horrified, I recoil, drop onto the other bed, let the knife slip from my hands.
I’d become him. Just for a minute.
Long enough for me to feel something inside that I’m certain wasn’t part of me.
It was Len.
Curling around my organs and skittering between my ribs and tugging on my muscles and growing in my brain like a tumor.
I huff out a single, shocked breath. “What did you just do?”
Len keeps grinning. “Tom warned you I could be tricky.” He did, but it never occurred to me that Tom meant this. “How did you do that?” I say, even though I have a good idea. It happened earlier, when he’d sighed into my face as I was binding his right wrist. That foul breath had felt like
an invasion because it was.
Len had planted a part of himself inside of me. “Neat trick, right?” he says.
I scoot farther onto the bed, backing away from him until I’m pressed against the wall, more worried than ever about being too close to him. He’s contagious.
“How was that possible? How is any of this possible?”
Len stares up at the spot where the wall meets the ceiling and the bit of his long shadow that crosses that divide. “When I was alive, I never gave much thought to the afterlife. I assumed that when we die, that’s the end. But now I know better. Now I know that something stays behind. Our souls, I guess. When people die on land, I suspect it rides out with their final breath and eventually dissipates into the atmosphere. But when I drowned, it—”
“Went into the lake,” I say.
“Exactly. I don’t know if it can happen in all bodies of water or if there’s something special about Lake Greene that causes it. All I know is that I was trapped there.”
“What about Megan, Toni, and Sue Ellen?” I say. “Are their souls also trapped in the lake?”
“You need to die in the water for that to happen.” Len pauses, knowing he just gave me a hint about what happened to them. Completely intentional, I’m sure. “So, no, I’m afraid it was just me.”
While I’m not nearly as knowledgeable about Lake Greene as someone like Eli, I do know there hasn’t been a drowning there since my great-great-grandfather built the earliest version of the lake house. Len had been the first since at least 1878.
Until Katherine came along.
“How were you able to enter Katherine? Or me, for that matter?”
“Because our souls—if that is indeed what it is—don’t need to vanish into the ether. They’re like air and liquid and shadow combined. Slippery. Weightless. Shapeless. In order to remain, all they need is a vessel. The lake was one. Katherine’s body is another. I’m like water now, able to be poured from glass to glass. And what you experienced, my sweet, was a mere drop. How did it feel?”
Horrifying.
And powerful.
A realization that makes me reach for the glass of bourbon, desperate for another sip. It’s empty. I hadn’t realized.
Seized by both the need for a drink and the urge to get away from Len before he can slide into me again, I climb off the bed, grab the lantern, and back out of the room. In the doorway, I pause and fix him with a look of warning.
“Do that again and I will kill you,” I say.
Downstairs, I pour a splash of bourbon into the empty glass, shuddering at how it reminds me of what Len just said.
A mere drop. That’s all it took.
I’d turned into him, and it’s left me feeling violated, dirty, tainted.
I dump more bourbon into the glass, filling it the way Len could have filled me, emptying out of one vessel into another. I suppose that’s what Lake Greene is. A vast bowl in which his evil thrived like a virus in a petri dish, waiting for the right host to come along.
Now that it has in the form of Katherine Royce, I can think of only two ways to make it stop.
The first is to kill him on land and hope his soul evaporates into the atmosphere. Not an option when he’s currently inside Katherine. Len was right. I don’t want any more blood on my hands.
The second way is to pour him into a different vessel.
I look to the French doors that lead to the porch. The combined light of the lantern and a candle burning in the kitchen has turned the glass into a makeshift mirror. I approach it, my reflection getting more pronounced with each step. Looking at myself, I put a hand to my heart before sliding it over my breasts and down my stomach. Then I touch my head, my face, my neck, my arms—all the places I’d briefly felt Len—making sure he’s gone.
I think so.
I feel like my usual tormented, self-destructive, trainwreck self.
I move closer to the door until I’m only an inch from the glass, staring at my reflection, which in turn stares back at me. We look into each other’s eyes, both of us knowing what needs to be done next.
I step away from the door, grab the lantern, and leave the kitchen, forgetting the bourbon entirely.
I climb the stairs, pausing at the top step to take a deep breath, bracing myself to face Len again before continuing. Then it’s on to the landing and into the hall, where I crunch once more over the broken glass from the fallen picture frame. I then push through the doorway and into the bedroom, lit by the flickering glow of candlelight.
“If you tell me where the girls are, I’ll—” My voice withers and dies.
The bed is empty.
Where Len’s arms should be, two lengths of rope dangle from the bedposts. The ropes at the foot of the bed are shorter and their ends ragged, clearly sawed apart. Their other halves are curled in the spot on the floor where the knife had been.
It, like Len himself, is now gone.
I freeze in the middle of the bedroom, listening for signs as to where Len went. While I was downstairs, I didn’t hear a door open or close, which is both a pro and a
con.
The pro: He hasn’t left the house.
The con: He’s still inside, carrying both a knife and a grudge.
I raise the lantern and rotate slowly, my gaze sliding over the entire room, seeking out places where he could be hiding. Under both beds, for starters. Those dark spaces have me expecting to see Len’s hand springing out from under them, knife swinging. I jump onto the bed Len should still be in, barely able to breathe as I locate another potential hiding spot.
The closets.
There are two, both narrow spaces made for little clothes worn by little girls like Marnie and I used to be. Neither would be big enough to contain someone Len’s size.
Katherine Royce is a different story.
Her willowy frame could easily fit inside.
I step to the foot of the bed, cursing the squeak of the mattress springs. Gripping the bed frame with clammy hands, I force my feet onto the floor, one at a time. I then tiptoe forward, as quick as a ballerina, toward the first closet.
Holding my breath, I reach out.
I grab the doorknob. I give it a twist.
My heart halts when the door clicks open.
I pull it, slowly, as hinges neglected for years groan into use.
The closet is empty.
I sidestep to the other one in the room, ready to perform the dance all over again. Breath held. Doorknob grabbed and twisted. Hinges protesting. It all leads to the same outcome.
An empty closet and my mind full of thoughts. Len has escaped to other parts of the house.
It’s a big place, with so many spots to hide and wait.
Every moment I spend inside is one moment too long and I should get out.
Now.
I bolt from the bedroom, cut a hard left in the hall, and splash through the pool of broken glass on my way to the stairs. I fly down the steps so fast my feet barely touch them. I slide to a stop in the living room, which is a sea of shadows undulating in the candlelight. I skip my gaze from corner to corner, doorway to doorway, wondering if I’ve just stepped into a trap.
Len could be anywhere.
In a shadow-filled corner. Or that dark space by the fireplace. Or the gloom of the nook under the stairs.
It’s hard to tell because everything is dark, quiet, still. The only sounds I hear are the rain outside and the grandfather clock. Each tick from it is a reminder that every second I remain in this house is one second more I’ve spent in danger.
I start moving again, eager to leave but unsure of the best way. The French doors lead to the porch, the steps, the
dock, the water. I could take the boat and guide it over the rough water to Boone’s dock, assuming he’d give me shelter. Not a guarantee after what I’ve accused him of.
Then there’s the front door, with access to the driveway, the road, and, eventually, the highway. There, someone will surely stop to help me. Getting there won’t be easy in this weather, but it might be my only option.
Mind made up, I shoot toward the foyer, ticking off each room I safely pass.
Living room.
Powder room.
Library.
Den.
As soon as I reach the foyer, power returns. Light floods the house, as sudden and startling as when it went away. The shadows that had a second ago been all around me vanish like ghosts. I halt in the unexpected brightness, aware of something behind me that had once been hidden but is now exposed.
Len.
He leaps from a corner, knife raised, hurtling forward. I drop the lantern and fall to the floor, a move fueled more by surprise than strategy. Taken off guard, Len’s momentum keeps him moving long enough for me to grab one of his ankles. He’s smaller as Katherine, easier to topple than his former self.
He goes down quick. The knife comes loose.
We both lunge for it, scrambling on top of each other, our limbs tangling. I reach out, and my fingertips brush the knife’s handle. Len claws at my arm, yanking it away. He’s on top of me now, pressing down, Katherine’s body
shockingly heavy. Beneath him, I see his arm stretch past mine, reach the knife, grab hold.
Then we’re rolling across the foyer floor. I’m flipped onto my back.
Len’s on top of me again, straddling my waist, raising the knife.
My entire being clenches as the knife hovers, and I wait for it to drop, hoping it won’t but knowing it will. Fear pins me to the floor. Like I’m already dead, now just a corpse, heavy and motionless.
Above, Len is suddenly jerked backwards. His arms flap.
His weight lifts.
The knife is wrenched from his grip.
As he’s dragged away from me, I see the person responsible.
Eli.
Behind him, the front door hangs open, letting in a blast of night air and shivery drops of rain. Eli kicks it shut and, with Len writhing in his grip, looks down at me.
“I got your message. Are you okay?”
I remain on the floor, still as heavy as the dead, and nod. “Good,” Eli says. “Now would you mind telling me what
the hell is going on here?”
I agree to start talking after Eli helps me tie Len to a chair in the living room. Since she’s still Katherine in his mind, it takes some convincing. He ultimately goes
along with it only because he had just seen her on top of me brandishing a knife.
But now Len is restrained with ropes knotted too tightly for him to get free like he did in the bedroom, and Eli and I are in the den, watched by the moose on the wall as we sit across from each other.
“How much have you had to drink today?” Eli asks.
“A shitload.” I look him in the eyes, waiting until he blinks. “That doesn’t mean any of what I’m about to tell you is a lie.”
“I hope not.”
I proceed to tell him everything.
I start with Len’s crimes, using the driver’s licenses and locks of hair pulled from behind the loose board in the basement as proof. They now sit on the coffee table between us. After taking a single glance, Eli told me he didn’t want to look at them anymore, yet his gaze keeps drifting to the pictures of Megan Keene, Toni Burnett, and Sue Ellen Stryker as I recount how I learned what Len had done.
“Then I killed him,” I say.
Eli, in the midst of sneaking another glance at the IDs, looks up at me, shocked.
“He drowned,” he says.
“Only because I caused it.”
I hold his rapt attention as I describe the events of that night, detailing every step of my crime.
“Why are you telling me this now?” Eli asks.
“Because it helps everything else make sense,” I say.
The everything else is what’s been going on at Lake Greene. Again, no detail is skipped and not a single bit of my bad behavior is overlooked. I hoped admitting everything would leave me feeling as cleansed as a sinner after confession. Instead, I only feel shame. I’ve committed too many wrongs for the blame to rest solely with Len.
Eli listens with an open mind. After getting to the part about Len taking possession of Katherine’s body, I say, “You were right. Something was in the lake, waiting. I don’t know if it’s all bodies of water or just Lake Greene or something special about Len. But it’s true, Eli. And it’s happening right now.”
He says nothing after that. He simply stands, leaves the den, and goes to where Len is being kept. Their voices drift in from the living room, too hushed and urgent to be heard clearly.
Ten minutes pass. Then fifteen.
Eli ends up speaking with Len for twenty minutes. A fraction of the time I spent talking, but long enough for me to get anxious that he doesn’t believe me. Or, worse, believes whatever lies Len is telling him.
I hold my breath as Eli finally returns to the den and sits down.
“I believe you,” he says.
“I—” I struggle to speak, flustered by both surprise and relief. “Why? I mean, what convinced you?”
Eli cranes his neck to pass a glance into the distant living room. “She—sorry, he—admitted it.”
That word—he—tells me Eli’s serious. Knowing that he believes me would typically leave me fainting with relief if not for the last thing I need to tell him.
My plan for what’s next.
Again, I go through every step, answering all of Eli’s questions and addressing each of his concerns.
“It’s the only way,” I tell him when I’m done.
Eventually, Eli nods. “I suppose it is. When do you plan on doing it?”
I turn to the window, surprised to realize that while I was talking to Eli and he was talking to Len, the storm had moved on. No more gusts rattle the windows and no more rain thrums against the roof. In their place is the quiet stillness that always follows wild weather, as if the atmosphere, having blustered and bellowed to exhaustion, is now taking a long, restful breath. The sky, once so dark, has now thinned to a medium gray.
Dawn is on its way. “Now,” I say.
In the living room, Eli and I stand before Len, who’s still trying to pretend he’s bored by all of this. The old Len might have been able to get away with it. The new
one, stuck with Katherine’s exquisitely expressive face, can’t. Curiosity peeks through his impatient facade.
“Tell me where you put those girls,” I say, “and I’ll let you go.”
Len perks up, his feigned boredom vanishing in a snap. “Just like that? What’s the catch? There has to be one.”
“No catch. There’s not a whole lot I can do here. I can’t kill you because it would mean killing Katherine, too. And I can’t keep you tied up like this forever. Like Tom Royce, I could try. Chain you up in the basement. Feed you and bathe you. But more people are going to start looking for Katherine, and it’ll only be a matter of time before they find you.”
“And I can go anywhere?”
“The farther, the better,” I say. “You can try to live like Katherine Royce for a while, but I suspect that’ll be extremely difficult. She’s pretty famous. Her four million Instagram followers will easily pick you out in a crowd. My advice is to change your appearance and get away as far and as fast as you can.”
Len thinks it over, no doubt considering the hurdles of starting a new life in a new place in a very recognizable body.
“And you’re willing to help me?”
“I’m willing to drop you off at the Royces’ dock,” I say. “After that, you’re on your own. What you do is none of my concern.”
“It should be,” Len says. “I could cause a whole lot of trouble out there on my own. Or, for that matter, a whole lot of trouble right here. You know what I’m capable of.”
If his goal is to get a rise out of me, it doesn’t work. I assumed he would make such a threat. To be honest, I would have been shocked if he hadn’t.
“It’s a risk I have to take,” I say. “This isn’t an ideal option. It’s the only option. For both of us.”
Len looks to Eli. “He stays here.” “I already told him that.”
While I would love to have Eli by my side through all of this, I need him to go to the house next door and distract Boone. The last thing I want is for Boone to see me and someone he thinks is Katherine out on the lake.
He would definitely try to stop me.
So would Eli if he knew what I really have planned. “It’ll just be the two of us,” I tell Len.
He beams. “Like I always wanted.”
Before we leave, I fold Megan’s, Toni’s, and Sue Ellen’s driver’s licenses and locks of hair back into the handkerchief and force Eli to take them.
“If I don’t come back, give these to Detective Wilma Anson,” I say, writing down her name and phone number. “Tell her they’re from me. She’ll know what to do with them. And what they mean.”
“You do plan on coming back, right?” Eli says.
I respond with what I hope is a believable “Of course.”
With Eli’s help, I release Len from the chair. Once he’s standing, we force his wrists in front of him and bind them together, much to his protest.
“I thought you were letting me go.”
“I am,” I say. “After you show me exactly where you put those girls. Until then, the ropes stay.”
Len shuts up after that, remaining mute as we walk him onto the back porch. The blanket from the boat sits heaped in one of the rocking chairs. I pick it up and drape it over Len’s shoulders. While not quite a disguise, it will hopefully make it slightly harder for Boone to see who’s in the boat with me if Eli fails to distract him.
The three of us march down the porch steps, across the grass, and to the dock. Signs of the recently passed storm are everywhere. The trees have been stripped of their autumn leaves, which now litter the ground in patches of orange and brown. A large branch, snapped by the wind, lies across one of the Adirondack chairs by the firepit.
The lake itself has swollen past its banks, with water pooling in the grass along the shore and covering the dock in spots. Len splashes through it, a noticeable spring in his step. He has the appearance of a hostage who knows he’s about to freed.
I look forward to the moment he realizes that’s not going to happen.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come along?” Eli says.
“No,” I say. “But I am sure I need to do this alone.”
Eli insists on a hug before letting me get into the boat. An embrace so tight I think he might never let go. As it goes on, I whisper into his ear: “Tell Marnie and my mother anything you want about what happened. Whatever you think will be easiest for them to handle.”
He pulls back and searches my face, his own features going slack as he realizes I’m not going to follow the plan I laid out for him.
“Casey, what are you going to do?”
I can’t tell him. I know he’ll try to talk me out of it—and that he’ll likely succeed. A risk I’m unwilling to take. I’ve avoided paying for my sins long enough. Now it’s time to atone.
“Tell them I’m sorry for putting them through my bullshit,” I say. “And that I love them and hope they can forgive me.”
Before Eli can protest, I give him a peck on the cheek, pull away from his embrace, and step into the boat.
The last thing I do before pushing off the dock and starting the motor is free a length of rope knotted around a cleat on the boat’s rim. Still attached to the other end of the rope is the anchor.
I’ll need that for later.
We set off just before sunrise, with a mist rolling over the rain-swollen lake. The fog is so thick it feels like we’re in the clouds and not on the
water. Overhead, the predawn gray is beginning to blush. It’s all so beautiful and peaceful that I allow myself to forget what I’m about to do, just for a moment. I tilt my face skyward, feel the chill of a new day on my cheeks, and breathe in the autumn air. When I’m ready, I look at Len, seated in the front of the boat.
“Where?” I say.
He points to the southern end of the lake, and I tug the motor to life. I keep it on low—a slow glide over the water that gives me a dizzy feeling of déjà vu. This situation is just like the first time I met Katherine, right down to the blanket over her shoulders. Making it all the more surreal is knowing that nothing, not even Katherine herself, is the same.
I’ve changed, too.
I’m sober, for starters. A refreshing surprise.
Then there’s the fact that I’m no longer afraid. Gone is the woman so terrified of having her dark secret exposed that she couldn’t sleep without a drink or three.
Or four.
The freedom of confession I’d so wanted back in the house finally arrives. With it comes a sense of inevitability.
I know what’s going to happen next.
I’m ready for it.
“I’m surprised you haven’t asked me yet,” Len says, raising his voice to be heard over the motor’s bubbling hum.
“Asked you what?”
“The question that I know has been on your mind. This entire time you’ve been wondering if I ever intended to kill you when I was alive. And the answer is no, Cee. I loved you too much to even consider it.”
I believe him.
Which sickens me.
I hate knowing that a man like Len—a man capable of killing three women without remorse and then dumping them into the lake we now float on—loved me. Still worse is the fact that I had loved him in return. A foolish, hopeful, naive love that I refuse to subject myself to again.
“If you loved me at all,” I say, “you would have killed yourself before killing someone else.”
Instead, he was a coward. In many ways, he still is, using Katherine Royce as both shield and bargaining chip. He knows me well enough to assume I’ll refuse to sacrifice her in order to get to him.
The reality is that he has no idea how much I’m willing to sacrifice.
As we get closer to the southern tip of the lake, Len raises his hand. “We’re here,” he calls.
I cut the motor and everything goes silent. The only sound I hear is lake water, whipped into waves from the boat, lapping against the hull as it settles, calms, quiets. In front of us, emerging from the mist like the mast of a ghost ship, is a dead tree poking out of Lake Greene.
Old Stubborn.
“This is it,” Len says.
Of course he would choose this spot. It’s one of the few places on the lake not visible from any of the houses on shore. Now the sun-bleached log juts from the surface like a tombstone, marking three women’s watery graves.
“All of them are down there?” I say. “Yes.”
I lean over the side of the boat and peer into the water, naively hoping I’ll be able to look beyond the surface. Instead, all I see is my own reflection staring back at me with eyes widened by fearful curiosity. I reach out and run my hand through the water, scattering my reflection, as if that will somehow chase it away for good. Before my reflection collects itself again, my ghostly features sliding into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, I get a glimpse of the dark depths just beyond it.
They’re down there.
Megan and Toni and Sue Ellen. “Happy now?” Len says.
I shake my head and wipe away a tear. I’m nowhere near happy. What I am is relieved, now that I know the three of them aren’t lost forever and that their loved ones will finally be able to properly mourn and move forward.
I pull out my phone, take a picture of Old Stubborn stretching out of the water, and send it to Eli.
He’s expecting my text.
The last part of the plan he’s aware of. What’s next is known only to me.
First, I drop my phone into a Ziploc bag I snagged from the kitchen and seal it shut. The bag goes on my vacated seat, where hopefully it will be discovered if my text to Eli doesn’t go through. I then stand, sending the boat rocking slightly. It’s an effort to keep my balance as I move toward Len.
“I did what you asked,” he says. “Now you have to let me go.”
“Of course.” I pause. “Can I get a kiss first?”
I rush forward, pull him close, force my lips upon his. At first, the difference is jarring. I’d expected it to feel like kissing Len. But Katherine’s lips are thinner, more feminine, delicate. This small relief makes it easier to keep kissing the man I once loved but who now repulses me.
If Len senses that repulsion, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he kisses me back.
Softly at first, then brutal in its intensity.
Burning air pushes from his mouth into mine, and I know what he’s doing.
It’s what I want him to do.
“Keep going,” I whisper against his lips. “Don’t stop.
Leave her and take me instead.”
I push myself into him, my arms coiling around him, holding him tight. A moan escapes Len’s mouth, slides into mine, joins whatever else is pouring into me like bourbon from a bottle.
It’s silky. Exactly how Len described it. Like air and water combined. Weightless and yet so heavy.
The more of it that enters me, the more sluggish I feel. Soon I’m dizzy. Then weak. Then breathless. Then—oh, God
—drowning in a scary mix of water and air and Len himself, his essence filling my lungs until I’m blind and choking and dropping to the boat’s floor.
For a second, everything is gone. I feel nothing.
Finally, the full oblivion I’ve craved for fourteen months.
Then I come to, as startled as someone yanked back to life by CPR. My body spasms as I breathe in, then out. My
eyes blink open to a sky made cotton candy pink by sunrise. Beside me, Len sits up.
Only it’s no longer Len. It’s Katherine Royce.
I know because she gives me the same wide-eyed look of terror I saw when she came back to life the day we first met.
“What just happened?” she says, her voice unmistakably her own again.
“He’s out of you,” I say.
It’s clear Katherine knows enough about the situation to understand my meaning. Touching her face, her throat, her lips, she says, “Are you sure?”
I am. Len is inside me now. I feel him there, as invasive as a virus. I might look fine on the outside, but inside I’m no longer fully myself.
I’m changing. Quickly.
“Here’s what I need you to do.” I talk fast, afraid I won’t have control over my voice for much longer. Already Len is winding his way through my system. He’s done this before. He now knows where to go and what to control. “Take the boat to Boone’s place. Eli will be there. Tell them you got lost in the woods. Boone might not believe you, but Eli will help convince him. The story is you and Tom got into a fight, you went for a hike and got lost, although Tom thought you’d left him.”
I let out a cough as ragged as sandpaper. “Are you okay?” Katherine says.
“I’m fine.” I notice the change in my voice. It’s me, but different. Like a recording that’s been slightly slowed. “Tom is in the Fitzgeralds’ basement. While I don’t know for sure
if he’ll go along with your story, I think he will. Now let me untie you.”
It takes a frightening amount of effort to unknot the rope around Katherine’s wrists. Len’s starting to fight me. My hands are awkward and numb, and sudden random thoughts push into my brain.
Don’t do this, Cee. Please don’t.
I manage to loosen the rope enough for Katherine to do the rest. As she slides her hands from the restraints, I set to work creating my own. It’s not easy. Not with Len getting louder.
Don’t, Cee.
You promised.
My vision has blurred and my depth perception is off. It feels, I realize, like I’m drunk.
Only this has nothing to do with alcohol. It’s all Len.
With him fighting my every move, it takes me three tries to grasp the rope attached to the anchor. Knotting it around my ankle takes even longer.
“Remember—” I need to pause. Forcing out that single word has left me breathless. “Tell them you got lost. That you don’t know what happened to me.”
“Wait,” Katherine says. “What’s going to happen to you?”
“I’ll be the one missing.”
I pick up the anchor and, before Katherine—or Len—can try to stop me, leap into the chilly depths of Lake Greene.
Water surrounds me.
Cold. Churning. Dark. So dark.
As dark as death as I hurtle to the lake’s floor. I’d been foolish to think my descent would be gentle—a slow, inexorable drop akin to drifting off into permanent sleep. In truth, it’s chaos. I twist through the black water, the anchor still hugged to my chest. Within seconds I hit bottom, the centuries of sediment collected there doing nothing to lessen the impact.
I land on my side in an eruption of silt, and the anchor jolts from my arms. I grasp for it, blind in the dark, dirty depths as my body starts to rise. Already, it wants air, and I have to fight to keep my arms from flailing, my legs from kicking.
They try anyway. Rather, Len tries.
His presence is like a fever, both chilly and hot, coursing through my limbs, moving them against my will. I spin in the darkness, not knowing if I’m floating up or sinking down. Still blind and fumbling, my hand finds the rope stretching between my ankle and the anchor.
I grab on to it even as Len tries to pry my fingers away, his seething voice loud in my head.
Let go, Cee.
Don’t make me stay down here, you fucking bitch.
I keep hold of the rope, using it to pull myself back toward the lake bed. When I reach the end of the rope, I grab the anchor, hoist it to my chest, and roll onto my back. It feels inevitable now that I’m here.
It feels right.
In the same place where Megan Keene, Toni Burnett, and Sue Ellen Stryker were laid to rest.
My limbs have turned numb, although I don’t know if it’s from fear or cold or Len taking over. He remains so desperate to get to the surface. My body jerks uncontrollably against the lake floor. All his doing.
But it’s no use.
This time I’m stronger.
Because I’m giving Len exactly what he wanted back when he was alive.
It’ll be just the two of us. Staying here forever.
It isn’t long before Len gives up. He has to, now that this body we share is winding down. My heartbeat slows. My thoughts fade.
Then, when every bit of strength has left me, I open my mouth and let the dark water pour in.
Movement.
In the darkness.
I sense it on the distant edge of my consciousness. Two bits of motion going in separate directions. Something approaching while something else slithers away.
The motion that’s stayed has moved to my ankle, the touch feathery as it unwinds the rope knotted there.
Then I’m lifted. Up, up, up.
Soon I’m breaking the surface and my lungs start working overtime, somehow doing two things at once. Hacking out water while gulping down air. It goes on like this. Out, in, out, in. When it’s over, there’s no more water, only sweet, blessed air.
I feel more movement now. Something being slipped over my shoulders and tightened around my chest until I’m floating.
I open my eyes to a sky that’s dazzlingly pink.
My eyes. Not his.
My body, containing only my thoughts, my heart, my soul.
Len is gone.
I know it the same way a sick person can tell their fever has broken.
Len has poured himself from one vessel—me—into another.
Lake Greene.
The place he came from and where he’ll hopefully remain.
I turn away from the sky to the person swimming beside me. Katherine beams, her smile brighter and more beautiful than any picture she’s ever been in.
“Don’t freak out,” she says. “But I think you almost drowned.”
What are we going to tell people?” Tom says to Katherine. “I tried to keep it a secret, but word got out you were missing. The police were
involved.”
He looks my way, his gaze not quite accusatory but sharp enough to know he’s still annoyed, despite the fact that Katherine’s only back—literally her old self—because of me. He made that clear when we returned to the Fitzgeralds’ basement. At first, Tom looked ready to kill us both. But once Katherine started reciting bits of knowledge only she could know, he became overjoyed at her presence. Less so with mine.
The three of us now sit with Eli in the Royce living room. Tom and Katherine are both freshly showered and changed. I’m in a set of Versace athleisure wear borrowed from Katherine that’s as comfortable as it is ridiculous.
“We tell them something as close to the truth as possible,” I say. “You two fought.”
Katherine turns to her husband, surprised. “We did?” “You decked me.” Tom leans in to give her a good look
at the still-fading bruise under his eye. “Well, he did.”
Len’s name hasn’t been uttered once since Katherine and I returned. I suspect it makes them uncomfortable acknowledging the person who, for all intents and purposes, possessed her.
I’m fine with that. I never need to hear his name again.
“The police will believe that, after the fight, Katherine left in a huff,” I say. “She went for a long hike in the mountains, leaving everything behind.”
“And she got lost in the woods,” Tom says.
I reply with a nod. “You thought she left you, which is why you never reported her missing and posted that photo to Instagram. You were too embarrassed to admit your marriage was falling apart.”
Katherine touches the bruise on her husband’s face. “Poor Tom. This must have been so hard on you.”
“I thought you were lost forever,” he says with a quiver in his voice and tears in his eyes. “I had no idea how to bring you back.”
“I tried,” Katherine says. “I tried so hard to keep it from happening.”
“So you knew what was going on?” Eli says.
“Sort of.” Katherine hugs herself, as if chilled by the memory. “Obviously, there were the blackouts. One minute I was fine, the next I was waking up somewhere with no memory of how I got there. Then there was this weird sixth sense. I knew things I had no reason for knowing. Like your phone number, Casey. Or those binoculars on your porch. I never owned a pair. I was never into birding. But when I saw them, I suddenly had these memories of buying them, of holding them in my hands, of watching the trees across the lake right from that porch. And then they went away.”
I’m chilled myself as Katherine tells us what it felt like to have someone else slowly take control. Even though I, too, experienced it, I at least knew what was happening. For Katherine, it seemed like she was losing her mind.
“I didn’t fully figure out what was going on until the night I looked it up online. I felt stupid Googling articles about haunted lakes and ghosts in mirrors. But then I found
stories about other people who had experienced the same thing I was going through. Strange memories of things they never experienced and sudden weakness and this sense that they were slowly losing control. That’s when I knew what was happening.”
It also turned out to be a moment I witnessed from the other side of the lake. Watching Katherine intently scan the computer, her shock writ large on her face.
“You should have told me,” Tom says.
“You would have thought I was crazy. Which is exactly how I felt. So I kissed you on the cheek and suggested we go back to bed. I know it sounds foolish, but I hoped it was temporary. Like I would go to sleep and wake up in the morning feeling like my old self.”
“Instead, the opposite happened,” Eli cuts in.
“Yes,” Katherine says with a grim nod. “The last thing I remember is Tom going back to bed and me going into the bathroom. I stared into the mirror, panicking as my reflection began to blur. Everything went out of focus. Then there was nothing but darkness. I have no memories after that besides waking up in the boat this morning. But the second I came to, I knew it was over and that he was gone. Thanks to you, Casey. It’s like I was lost and you found me.” “Which is what we’ll tell the police,” I say. “I couldn’t sleep, went out in the boat to see if there was any storm damage to the shore, and saw you stumbling out of the
woods in a daze.”
All in all, it’s a good story. Not too far out of the realm of possibility, when ignoring the whole being-possessed-by-a- drowned-man thing. I think people will believe it.
Even Wilma.
With our story straight, I get ready to go to my house across the lake. I glimpse it through the giant windows of
the Royces’ living room, looking as warm and inviting as a nest. One I want to return to as soon as possible.
Before leaving, Tom shakes my hand and says, “I understand why you did what you did. That doesn’t mean I liked being locked in that basement for twelve hours. Or having the police after me.”
“Or being hit with a table leg?” I say, cringing at how unhinged I must have seemed to him at the time.
“Especially that.” Tom’s pissed-off look softens, as does his voice. “But it was all worth it because you brought Katherine back to me. So, thank you.”
“You’re forgetting that Katherine also brought me back,” I say. “I think that makes us even.”
Tom stays behind as Eli, Katherine, and I step onto the patio. Outside, the day is bright with promise. With the sun on my face and a breeze brushing my still-damp hair, I can’t quite believe that, two hours earlier, I was at the bottom of the lake, ready to remain there.
I don’t regret making that choice.
But someone else made a different choice. Katherine decided that I should live, and who am I to disagree? Especially when there’s still unfinished business to take care of.
It’s Eli, of course, who reminds me of that. Before walking to his house next door, he places a folded handkerchief in my hands. “You know what to do with this more than me,” he says. “I hope it doesn’t get you into too much trouble.”
“It very well could,” I say. “But I’m ready to deal with the consequences.”
Eli departs with a hug, leaving me and Katherine alone to stroll to the dock and my boat tied to the end of it. She
loops her arm through mine and makes sure our shoulders bump—so touchy-feely even without Len’s influence.
“I need to tell you something,” she says. “Those memories that I talked about? The ones that weren’t mine but I had them anyway? I got some of them before he took over. Others arrived while I was unconscious and he was completely in control. But all of them are still there.”
My pace quickens. I don’t want to know what Len remembered.
“You made him very happy, Casey. I know that’s probably not what you want to hear, but it’s true. He truly did love you, and what he did—that had nothing to do with you. You can’t blame yourself for any of it. He would have done it no matter what. In fact, I got the sense your presence in his life kept him from trying earlier. He thought he had too much to lose.”
“Yet he still went ahead and did it anyway,” I say.
Katherine stops walking and turns me until we’re face- to-face. “Which is why I don’t judge you for what you did to him.”
Of course she knows. Len is as imprinted on Katherine as a tattoo. God help her.
“I probably would have done the same thing,” she says. “It’s easy to talk about justice and responsibility and taking matters into your own hands when it’s not happening to you. But this did happen to you, Casey. And you did what a lot of women would have done in your shoes.”
“I’m afraid that won’t matter to the police.”
“Maybe not,” Katherine says. “But I don’t plan on telling them anything about it. This will stay just between us.”
I desperately wish it could, but this goes beyond me and Katherine. There are others to consider, including the friends and families of three women still submerged in the
frigid darkness of Lake Greene. They’re at the forefront of my thoughts as I climb into the boat and make my way across the water. I keep a grip on my phone, still in its Ziploc bag, ready to call Wilma Anson as soon as I get back to the house.
The person standing on my dock delays that plan a bit.
“Hey,” Boone says, giving me a wary wave as I cut the motor and bring the boat into the dock.
“Hey yourself.”
I let Boone tie up the boat because, one, he seems eager to do it and, two, I’m exhausted. Definitely far too tired to be talking to him at the moment, although it’s clear that can’t be avoided.
“Eli told me you found Katherine,” he says, shooting a glance across the water. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine.”
I give him an abridged version of the official story as we walk from the dock to the porch. I collapse into a rocking chair. Boone remains standing.
“I’m relieved to hear that she’s safe and sound,” he says. “Good for her. And good for Tom.”
He stops talking after that, leaving me to pick up the slack. “Was that why you came by?”
“Yes. And also to tell you that I’m leaving the lake. I’ve done all the work I can do at the Mitchell place, so I found a nice studio apartment a few towns over. Now you no longer need to worry thinking there’s a murderer living next door.”
While Boone’s voice retains a hint of the anger I heard the last time we talked, another mood rides on his words. It sounds like sadness.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t completely honest. But it should be clear to you by now that I had nothing to do with what
happened to Katherine or those other missing girls,” Boone says, reminding me that he still knows nothing about Len’s crime—or how I made him pay for them.
Twice.
“As for what happened to my wife,” Boone says, “yes, I was investigated after her death. And, yes, there was a time when people thought I had killed her. There was no proof of that, but there also wasn’t any proof that I hadn’t. At least, proof that I was willing to show people.”
I look up at him, surprised and suddenly insatiably curious.
“There was more to it than what you told the police?”
“My wife didn’t fall down the stairs by accident.” Boone stops, takes a breath. “She killed herself.”
I flinch, shocked.
“I know because she left a note telling me she was sorry and that she had been unhappy for a long time—something I thought I knew but didn’t. Not really. She had been more than unhappy. She’d been plunged into darkness, and I blame myself for never noticing how bad it was until it was too late.”
Boone finally sits.
“I called Wilma as soon as I found the suicide note. She came over, read it, and told me I needed to go public with it. By then we both knew I looked suspicious. It was obvious. But I still couldn’t do it. That kind of news would have destroyed her family. I decided that thinking it was an accident would be easier for them to deal with than knowing she’d taken her own life. They, like me, would have blamed themselves for not noticing how much pain she was in and failing to get her the help she needed. I wanted to spare them all of that. And I didn’t want people judging Maria for what she did to herself. Or, worse, letting
that taint their memories of her. I wanted to shield everyone from the same guilt and pain I was going through. Wilma grudgingly agreed, and together we burned the note.”
No wonder Wilma had been so certain about his innocence. Unlike me, she knew the whole story. And what looked like blind trust was in reality a beautiful kind of loyalty.
“She’s a good friend,” I say.
“She is. She did her thing and convinced everyone we worked with that I was innocent. I hope that, eventually, you’ll believe me, too.”
I think I already do.
I don’t know enough about his marriage to judge Boone
—something I had no trouble doing when there was more bourbon than blood in my system. Right now, all I know is that, deep down, Boone seems like a good person who’s struggling to tame his demons just like the rest of us. And as someone who’s been terrible at demon taming, I should give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Thank you for stating your case,” I say. “And I believe you.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Then I should go before you change your mind,” Boone says, flashing me that killer grin one last time. Before leaving the porch, he hands me a business card. Printed on it is the name of a nearby church, a day of the week, and a specific time.
“That’s the weekly AA meeting I go to,” he says. “Just in case you ever feel the need to give it a try. It can be intimidating at first. And it might be easier for you if there’s a familiar face present.”
Boone leaves before I can respond, already assuming that my answer is no. He’s right, of course. I have no intention of subjecting myself to the indignity of standing before a group of strangers and exposing my many, many flaws.
Right now.
But maybe soon.
It all depends on how what I’m about to do next goes.
Before today, I would have downed several drinks before calling Wilma Anson. Now, though, I don’t hesitate, even when I know I’m about to be hit with major anger from her and a likely murder charge from her colleagues.
I’ve avoided it long enough.
It’s well past time to come clean.
Wilma is clearly not a fan of the life vest I forced her to put on before leaving the dock. She tugs at it the way a toddler strains at a car seat,
unhappy and constricted.
“This really isn’t necessary,” she says. “I damn well know how to swim.”
“Safety first,” I say from the back of the boat, where I man the motor in a matching life vest.
I refuse to allow a repeat of what happened to Katherine Royce. Lake Greene might look harmless, especially now as the reflection of sunset makes the water sparkle like pink champagne, but I know it’s not.
Len is still down there. I’m sure of it.
He left me and returned to the water. Now he lurks just beneath the surface, biding his time, waiting for someone else to come along.
Not on my watch.
Wilma also casts a wary glance at the water, although for a completely different reason. The western side of the lake, out of reach from the setting sun, has grown dark. Shadows gather on the shoreline and creep across Lake Greene’s surface.
“Can’t this wait until tomorrow?” she says. “Afraid not.”
I get why she’s tired. It’s been a long, trying day. After I called to tell her Katherine had been found, Wilma spent
the afternoon interviewing all of us. Katherine and Tom went first, giving their scripted version of events. Katherine swore she got lost on a hike. Tom swore he thought she’d left him. As for where he was last night when Wilma stopped by, he told her he had been worried about the severity of the storm and decided to ride it out in the Fitzgeralds’ basement.
I learned all of this from Wilma herself, when she came over to get my statement. I went through my side of the story, which lined up completely with the Royces’. If she still harbored suspicion about any of us, Wilma didn’t show it. No surprise there.
“There’s something else I need to tell you,” I said. “But not here. On the lake.”
Now we’re here, the lake’s surface split into two distinct halves. To the left, heavenly pink. To the right, shimmering black. I steer the boat down the middle, the wake from the motor stirring the light and the dark together.
“I talked to Boone,” I say as we glide over the water. “He told me the truth about what happened to his wife.”
“Oh.” Wilma sounds unsurprised. I suspect she already knows. “Does it change your opinion of him?”
“Yes. And of you. I thought you were a by-the-book kind of gal.”
“I am,” Wilma says. “But I’m also willing to make an exception now and again. As for Boone, he’s one of the good guys, Casey. Trust me on that.”
We’ve reached Old Stubborn, which sits on the shadow side of the lake. I cut the motor, remove the handkerchief from my pocket, and hand it to Wilma. She unfolds it, and her eyes go wide with shock.
Finally, an unambiguous reaction.
“I found them in the basement,” I say. “My basement.”
Wilma doesn’t take her eyes off the licenses and locks of hair. She knows what it all means.
“All three women are in the lake.” I point to Old Stubborn, now a silhouette in the quickening dusk. “Right there.”
“How do you know?”
“Because there’s no other place my husband would have put them.”
I can’t tell her the truth, for oh so many reasons, the chief one being that she wouldn’t believe me. My hope is that this—one wife confiding to another—might be enough to convince her.
“I’ll bring in divers tomorrow and see if you’re right,” she says. “If you are, well, life’s about to get a whole lot more complicated for you. People will know your husband was a killer—and they’re going to judge you for it.”
“I know.”
“Do you? This is a lot more damning than a tabloid headline,” Wilma says. “You’re going to spend the rest of your life tied to that man. You can try to distance yourself from his actions, but it’ll be hard. You might not be able to show your face in public for a very long time.”
I think about that picture of me raising a glass to the paparazzi that ran on the front page of the New York Post. “I’ve already got that covered. Besides, I just want there to be justice. I want everyone who knew and loved Megan, Toni, and Sue Ellen to know what happened to them—and that the man who did it can’t hurt anyone else.”
Quiet settles over the boat—a moment of silence for the three women whose bodies now rest far below. When it ends, the last of the sunset has slipped behind the mountains, leaving the two of us sitting in the murkiness of early evening.
“How long have you known?” Wilma says. “Long enough.”
“Enough to have taken matters into your own hands?” “If I did,” I say, “it’ll be awfully hard to prove now.”
I stay motionless, too nervous to move as I wait for Wilma’s response. She doesn’t make it easy for me, taking almost a full minute before saying, “I suppose you’re right.” Hope blooms in my chest. I think that this is maybe,
hopefully, possibly one of those rare exceptions Wilma talked about earlier.
“Len was cremated, after all,” I say. “There’s no body to examine.”
“That makes it impossible,” Wilma says. “Besides, I see no reason to reopen that case, considering no foul play was ever found in the first place.”
I exhale, letting go of most of the fear and tension that had been rising inside of me. Apparently it’s my lucky day. I was given a second chance at life by Katherine Royce. Now here’s Wilma Anson offering me a third.
I have enough self-awareness to know I don’t deserve them.
But I’ll accept them all the same.
All that remains is concern over one small loose end. “What about the postcard?”
“What about it?” Wilma says. “That thing’s been examined six ways to Sunday. We’ll never know who sent it. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if it just up and vanished from the evidence room. Things like that get lost all the time.”
“But—”
She stops me with a look uncharacteristically readable in every way. “Are you seriously going to argue with me about this? I’m giving you an out, Casey. Take it.”
I do.
Gladly.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You’re welcome.” Two seconds pass. “Never bring it up again or I’ll change my mind.” Two more seconds. “Now take me back to shore. It’s late, and you’ve just given me a shitload of paperwork to deal with.”
Night has fully fallen by the time Wilma leaves. I go through the dark house turning on lights before heading to the kitchen to decide what to make for
dinner. The glass of bourbon I poured last night still sits on the counter. The sight of it makes me quake with thirst.
I pick it up.
I bring the glass to my lips.
Then, thinking better of it, I take it to the sink and pour the bourbon down the drain.
I do the same with the rest of the bottle. Then another.
Then all the bottles.
My mood swings like a pendulum as I rid the house of alcohol. There’s the same fury one feels when clearing out a no-good lover’s belongings. There’s I-can’t-believe-I’m- doing-this laughter. There’s excitement, wild and chaotic, along with catharsis and desperation and pride. And there’s sadness—a surprise. I didn’t expect to be mourning a drinking life that has only brought me trouble. Yet as the contents of bottle after bottle swirl down the drain, I’m overcome with grief.
I’m losing a friend. A horrible one, yes. But not always.
Sometimes drinking did indeed bring me great joy, and I’ll miss it.
After an hour, the doors to the liquor cabinet sit wide open, exposing only emptiness within. Filling the counter are all the bottles it had once contained, each one now drained. Some were older than a millennial; others were bought this week.
Now only one remains, a five-thousand-dollar bottle of red on the dining room table that belonged to Tom Royce. Knowing how much it cost, I couldn’t bring myself to pour that one down the drain. Through the dining room window, I see the Royce house blazing in the October night. I’d return the wine now if it weren’t so late and I weren’t so tired.
Emptying all those bottles has left me exhausted. Or maybe that’s just a symptom of withdrawal. Already, I’m dreading the myriad side effects that are surely in store.
A new Casey is on her way.
A strange feeling. I’m me—but also not. Which, come to think of it, is probably how Katherine felt before Len completely took over.
I’m just not myself lately, she told me. I haven’t felt right for days.
The memory arrives with the force of a thunderclap.
Loud. Jarring. Charged with electricity.
Because what Katherine told me that day doesn’t track with everything else. When I learned that Len had returned and was controlling her like a marionette, I assumed he was the reason she’d felt so weird, so weak.
He was partly to blame, of course. I learned that myself from the short time he was inside me.
But Len wasn’t the sole reason Katherine felt that way.
I know because when she confessed to not feeling quite herself, it was the morning we had coffee on the porch. One day after I pulled her out of the lake. But according to
Katherine, she felt off earlier than that—before Len entered the picture.
It was like my entire body stopped working.
I turn away from the window and look at the bottle of wine sitting on the table.
Then I grab my phone and call Wilma Anson.
The call immediately goes to voicemail. After the beep, I don’t leave my name or number. I simply shout what I need to say and hope Wilma hears it in time.
“That piece of wineglass I made you take? Did a report come back from the lab yet? Because I think I was right, Wilma. I think Tom Royce was—is—trying to murder his wife.”
I end the call, rush out to the porch, and grab the binoculars. It takes me a second to adjust the zoom and the focus. The Royce house blurs and unblurs before becoming crystal clear.
I scan the house, checking each room. The kitchen is empty.
So is the office directly above it and the master bedroom to the right.
I finally locate Katherine in the living room. She’s on the sofa, propped up by throw pillows and lying under a blanket. On the coffee table beside her sits a large glass of red wine.
Still holding the binoculars to my eyes with one hand, I reach for my phone with the other. It bobbles in my hand as my thumb slides along the screen, scrolling to Katherine’s number.
Across the lake, she reaches for the wine, her hand curling around the glass.
I grip the phone tighter and hit the call button.
Katherine brings the glass to her lips, about to take a sip.
The phone rings once.
She perks up at the sound, the hand holding the glass going still.
Second ring.
Katherine looks around the room, trying to locate her phone.
Third ring.
She spots it sitting on a nearby ottoman and sets the glass back down on the coffee table.
Fourth ring.
Katherine reaches for the phone, the blanket slipping from her lap. She clutches it with one hand while the other stretches for the phone.
Fifth ring.
“Hang up the phone, Casey.”
I lower the binoculars and whirl around as Tom emerges from my house, joining me on the porch. The bottle of wine is in his hand, gripped by the handle like a club. He smacks the blunt end into the open palm of his free hand as he comes closer.
Katherine’s voice squawks from my phone as she finally answers.
“Hello?”
Tom wrenches the phone from my hand, hangs up, and flings it over the porch railing. The phone lands with a crack in the darkness below before bleating out a ring. Katherine calling me back.
“By now, I bet you wish you hadn’t been so nosy,” Tom says. “None of this would be happening if you had just stayed out of it. Katherine would be dead, you’d be here drinking yourself into a stupor, and I’d have enough money
to save my company. But you just had to rescue her and then watch us nonstop, like our lives were a fucking reality show. And you ruined everything once you got the police involved. Now I can’t just slowly poison Katherine. Now I need to be extra careful, cover my tracks, make it truly look like an accident. That’s why I kept her tied up in the basement instead of killing her outright. Lucky for me, your husband had a lot of interesting things to say about that.”
I flinch—a reaction I can’t prevent because I’m too focused on the heavy glass of the wine bottle still slapping into Tom’s palm.
“We talked a lot while he was in that basement,” he says. “Chatted for hours. There wasn’t much else to do once your detective friend started breathing down my neck. You want to know the most surprising thing he told me?”
He lifts the bottle, brings it down.
Slap.
“That I killed him,” I say.
“Not just that. It was how you did it that was so fascinating.”
Slap.
“A perfect murder,” Tom says. “Far better than what was in that play of yours. That’s where I first got the idea, but you already know that. Poisoning my wife little by little so she dies of something else and I inherit everything.”
Slap.
“But your husband—good old talkative Len—gave me a much better idea. Antihistamine in some wine. Make her good and drowsy. Drop her into the water and let her sink. The police around these parts never seem to suspect foul play when a person drowns. As you well know.”
Slap.
Somewhere below, my phone stops ringing as Katherine gives up.
“She’s probably taking a sip right now.” Tom gestures to the binoculars still clutched in my hands. “Go ahead and watch. I know you enjoy doing that.”
I raise the binoculars, needing both hands to keep them from shaking. The Royce house jitters anyway, as if an earthquake is taking place. Through the shimmying lenses, I see that Katherine has moved to the living room window. She stares outside, the glass of wine back in her hand.
She brings it to her lips and drinks. “Katherine, no!”
I don’t know if Katherine hears my scream flying across the lake because Tom is upon me in an instant. I swing the binoculars at his head. He blocks them with his arm before slamming the bottle against mine.
I drop the binoculars as pain shoots through my arm.
I cry out, stumble backwards against a rocking chair, and collapse onto the porch.
“Now you know how it feels,” Tom says.
He swings the bottle again. It whooshes past my face, mere inches away.
I scramble backwards along the porch, my right arm throbbing as Tom continues to swing the bottle, slicing the air, bringing it closer.
And closer. And closer.
“I know how to make you disappear,” Tom says. “Len told me that, too. All it takes is some rope, some rocks, some deep, deep water. You’ll vanish, just like those girls he killed. No one will ever know what happened to you.”
He swings the bottle again, and I scoot out of the way, edging onto the top of the porch steps.
Tom swings again and I duck, trying to keep my balance. A moment of weightlessness follows—cruel in its deception that I might be able to resist the pull of gravity. It ends with a thud onto the next step.
Then I tumble, backflipping down the steps, the edge of each one feeling like a punch.
To my hip.
To my back.
To my face.
When it’s over, I’m flat-backed on the ground, clanging with pain and woozy from the fall. My vision blurs. Tom drifts in and out of focus as he follows me down the steps.
Slowly.
One at a time.
The bottle again smacking into his hand.
Slap.
I try to scream, but nothing comes out. I’m too hurt, too out of breath, too scared. All I can do is try to stand, stumble toward the water, hope someone will see me.
Tom catches up to me at the lake’s edge. I’m sloshing into the water when he snags my shirt, tugs me toward him, swings the bottle.
I lurch to the left, and the bottle crashes down onto my right shoulder.
More screaming pain.
The blow knocks me to my knees. I splash deeper into the lake, the water now at my hips, cold as ice. The chill zaps me with just enough energy so I can twist toward Tom, wrap my arms around his knees, and pull him down with me.
We submerge as one—a seething, writhing mass of tangled arms and kicking legs. The wine bottle slips from Tom’s hand, vanishing into the water just as he drags me
out of it. He wraps his hands around my neck and, squeezing, dunks me back under.
I run out of air instantly. The lake is so cold and Tom’s hands are so tight around my neck and I can’t see anything in the dark water. Shoved to the bottom of the lake, I kick and writhe and thrash as my chest gets tighter and tighter. So tight I fear it’s going to explode.
Yet all I can think about is Len. In this very same lake.
Waiting for me to die in the dark water so he can take over once more.
I can’t let that happen. I fucking refuse.
I run a hand along the lake bed, seeking out a rock I can use to hit Tom. Maybe it’ll be enough to make him stop pressing against my throat. Maybe he’ll let go entirely. Maybe I’ll be able to escape.
Instead of a rock, my fingernails brush glass. The wine bottle.
I reach for it, grab it by the neck, swing.
The bottle bursts from the surface, slicing through the air before slamming into the side of Tom’s skull.
His hands fall away from my neck as he grunts, sways, topples over. I rise from the water. Tom splats into it, facedown and motionless.
On the other side of the lake, police cars have started to gather in the Royces’ driveway. Their lights reflect off the water in spinning streaks of red, white, and blue as officers swarm the back patio and rush inside.
Wilma got my message. Thank God.
I try to stand, but am only able to bring myself into a kneeling position. When I attempt to yell to the cops, my
cries come out a muted croak. My throat’s too battered.
Next to me, Tom remains facedown in the water. Just above his left ear is a small crater where the bottle connected with his skull. Blood pours from it, mixing with the water and forming a black cloud that blooms and spreads.
I know he’s dead the moment I flip him over. His eyes are as dull as old nickels and his body eerily still. I touch his neck, finding no pulse. Meanwhile, the blood continues to ooze from the dent in his head.
I finally stand, bending my legs to my will. The wine bottle, still intact, remains gripped in my hand. I take it to shore, placing it in a strip of rocks between lake and land.
Behind me, Tom jerks back to life with a watery gasp. Not a shock.
Not in this lake.
I march back into the water and grab his arms. I try not to look at him, but it can’t be avoided as I drag him ashore, making sure no part of his body is still touching the lake. He catches my eye and smiles.
“We need to stop meeting like this,” he says before hissing the nickname I’m both dreading and expecting. “Cee.”
“We will,” I say.
I grab the bottle, smash it against the rocks, and, with a stab and a twist, drive the jagged edge into his throat until I’m certain he’ll never be able to speak again.
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