Page 25 of The House Across the Lake

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m fine.”

“Your tilt says otherwise.”

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

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

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

“Was it a cramp?”

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

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

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

Eli shakes his head. “No.”

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

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

And it’s what Eli told me and Marnie every summer when we were kids. Advice we ignored as we splashed and swam for hours under the full weight of the sun. It was only after the sun set that the lake frightened us, its black depths made even darker by the shroud of night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Like a lake?” Katherine says, a smile in her voice.

Eli touches the tip of his nose. “Exactly.”

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

I empty it in three gulps.

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