Page 103 of The House Across the Lake

I’m beside the bed now, close enough to touch him. I reach out a trembling hand, place it on his right leg, retract it like I’d just bumped a hot stove.

“Don’t be scared,” Len says. “I would never hurt you, Cee.”

“You already have.”

He lets out a rueful chuckle. “Says the woman who watched me drown.”

I can’t disagree with him. That’s exactly what I did, and in the process I’d condemned an untold number of people to a life of uncertainty. They need answers. Just as much as I need to be relieved of the guilt that’s weighed me down for more than a year.

My hand returns to Len’s leg, sliding over the hump of his knee and down his shin, traveling all the way to the rope around his ankle. I reach for the other end of the rope, wrapped tight around the bed frame and capped off with a large, messy knot.

“What are you doing?” Len says.

I give the knot a tug. “Getting you out of here.”

It takes me a while to loosen the knot. So long that I’m surprised Tom doesn’t appear before I’m finished. I do nothing to the rope around Len’s ankle. Like the binds on all his limbs, I plan on using those again.

Rather than free his other leg, I move to his hands. I untie his left one first, the knot yielding faster now that I’ve gotten the hang of it. The moment his hand is free, Len moves it toward me, and for a panicked second I think he’s going to hit me. Instead, his palm rests against my cheek, caressing it with feather-like gentleness, just like he used to do after we made love.

“Christ, I’ve missed you.”

I pull away from his touch and start untying the rope attached to his right hand. “I can’t say the same.”

“You’ve changed,” he says. “You’re meaner now. Harder.”

“Because of you.”

I unwind the rope from the bed frame and give it a tug while quickly moving away from the bed. Len’s forced to move with it, jerked partially upright like a marionette. I keep the rope taut as I cross in front of the bed and grab the one still tied around his left hand.

“You forgot my other leg,” Len says.

“No, I haven’t,” I say. “Slide forward and let me tie your hands behind your back. If you make it easy for me, then I’ll untie your other leg.”

“Can I get a kiss first?”

He gives me a flirty wink. Seeing it makes me want to puke.

“I’m serious,” I say. “Tom’s going to come back any second now.”

Len nods and I let the rope go slack. Once his hands are behind his back, I press them together and wind the rope around both wrists several times before tying the tightest knot I can manage. Satisfied that he can’t get loose, I move to the foot of the bed and work on the length of rope around his left ankle.

Tom returns just as I finish untying it, the rope still falling away from the bed frame as his footfalls ring out from the stairwell.

Len slides off the bed as I search for something to fight off Tom, if it comes to that. I assume he won’t let us go easily. I settle on a broken table leg leaning against a steamer trunk. Grabbing it, I realize that we have no plan. There wasn’t time to come up with one. The best I can hope for is that Len is just as determined as I am to get out of this basement.

And that he won’t try to hurt me in the process.

At the bottom of the stairs, Tom stops, glances at the bed, does a double take.

“What the—”

Len rushes him before he can get the rest of the sentence out, battering Tom with his shoulder like a wild ram.

Caught off guard, Tom tumbles to the floor.

Len remains upright and hustles toward the stairs, the ropes around his ankles trailing behind him. Tom reaches out, grabs one, yanks. Before he can pull hard enough to bring Len to the floor, I slam his arm with the broken table leg. Tom howls in pain and lets go of the rope, allowing Len to skitter away.

Standing between them, still brandishing the chunk of wood I’ve just used as a weapon so the spirit of the man whose death I caused can escape in the body of the woman I’d thought Tom had killed, one thought rings through my skull.

---