Page 99 of The House Across the Lake

Something overcame me as I watched my husband cry for mercy after showing none for others. An internal realignment that left me feeling as hollow and ablaze as a jack-o’-lantern.

It was hatred.

The seething, unquenchable kind.

I hated Len—for what he’d done, for deceiving me so thoroughly.

I hated him for destroying the life we had built together, erasing five wonderful years and replacing them with this moment of him weeping and begging and grasping for me even as I recoiled.

I hated him for hurting me.

But I wasn’t the only victim. Three others suffered far worse than me. Knowing this made me hope they had at least tried to fight back and, in the process, brought Len some amount of pain. And if they hadn’t, well, I was now able to do it on their behalf.

Because someone needed to make Len pay.

As his angry, deceived, now-ruined wife, I was suddenly in a position to do just that.

“I’m so sorry, Cee,” Len said. “Please, please forgive me. Please don’t turn me in.”

Finally, I relented and pulled him into an embrace. Len seemed to melt as I wrapped my arms around him. He put his head to my chest, still sobbing, as a thousand memories of our marriage passed through my thoughts.

“I love you so much,” Len said. “Do you love me?”

“Not anymore,” I said.

Then I pushed him over the side of the boat and watched him vanish into the dark water.

You killed me,” Katherine says again, as if I didn’t hear her the first time.

I did, but barely. My whole body is vibrating with shock. An internal hum that gets louder and louder, building from a whisper to a scream.

That’s what I want to do.

Scream.

Maybe I am screaming and just don’t know it, the noise still rising inside me so loud it eclipses all outside sound.

I bring a hand to my mouth and check. It’s shut tight, my lips flattened together, my tongue still and useless. The inside of my mouth is dry—so parched and numb from surprise, fear, and confusion that I begin to wonder if I’ll ever be able to speak again.

Because there’s no way Katherine could know what I’d done to Len.

No one knows.

No one but me.

And him.

Which means Tom is right about Eli’s campfire tale being true. Even though it’s utterly preposterous, it’s literally the only explanation for what I’m experiencing right now. Len’s soul or spirit or whatever the fuck was left of him after life fled his body remained in Lake Greene, waiting in thedark water, biding its time until it could take the place of the next person to die there.

Who happened to be Katherine.

She was dead the afternoon I went out to rescue her. I’m certain of that now. I hadn’t reached her in time, a fact the state she was in—that lifeless body, those dead eyes, her blue lips and ice-cold flesh—made clear.

And I’d believed she was dead.

Until, suddenly, she wasn’t.

When Katherine sprang back to life, jolting and coughing and spitting up water, it was like some kind of miracle had occurred.

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