Page 27 of The House Across the Lake

Boone was right when he said the lake was too quiet. It is. Especially at this hour, when the only things breaking the steady nighttime silence are the occasional loon call or a nocturnal animal scurrying through the underbrush along the shore.

Caught in that quiet, I stare at the lake.

I take a sip of beer.

I try not to think about my dead husband, although that’s difficult after what happened earlier.

It’s been hours since everyone left, the party breaking up immediately after Katherine passed out in the grass. The Royces were the first to go, Tom mumbling apologies as he led a woozy Katherine down the dock. Even though she regained consciousness after only a few seconds, I was still concerned. I suggested letting her rest and giving her some coffee, but Tom insisted on taking Katherine home immediately.

“This time you’ve really embarrassed yourself,” he hissed at her before starting the powerboat and zipping away.

Hearing that side comment made me feel sorry for Katherine, who’d clearly been more drunk than I thought. I then felt guilty for feeling sorry, because it meant I was pitying her, which is a by-product of judging someone. And I had no right to judge Katherine Royce for drinking a little too much.

On the bright side, Tom left in such a rush that he forgot his other five-thousand-dollar bottle of wine. I found it on the porch steps and put it in the liquor cabinet. Finders keepers, I guess.

Eli lingered a little longer, dousing the fire and plucking shards of broken wineglass out of the grass.

“Just leave it,” I told him. “I’ll get the rest tomorrow when the sun’s out.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Eli asked as I walked him around the house to his truck.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’m doing a lot better than Katherine right now.”

“I meant about the other stuff.” He paused, looking at the gravel driveway under his feet. “I’m sorry for talking about the lake like that. I was just trying to entertain them. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

I gave Eli a hug. “You did, but it was only temporary.”

I believed it then. Not so much now, as thoughts of Len glide through my head as smoothly as the loons out on the lake. When my mother banished me here, I didn’t protest. She was right. I do need to lie low for a few weeks. Besides, I thought I’d be able to handle it. I’d spent more than a year living in the apartment I’d shared with Len. I didn’t think the lake house could be any worse.

But it is.

Because this is the place where Len died.

It’s where I became a widow, and everything about it—the house, the lake, the damn moose head in the den—reminds me of that fact. And it will continue to do so for as long as I’m alive.

Or sober.

I take another sip of beer and scan the shoreline on the other side of thelake. From the Fitzgerald place to the Royces’ to Eli’s house, all is dark. A thick mist rises from the lake itself, rolling languidly toward land in billowy waves. Each one skims onto shore and surrounds the support beams below the porch in a swirl of fog like seafoam crashing against the pylons of a pier.

I’m watching the mist, hypnotized, when a sound breaks the night’s silence.

A door creaking open, followed by footsteps on wood.

They’re coming from my right, which means the Mitchell place.

After a few more seconds, Boone Conrad appears—a slim silhouette making its way toward the end of the Mitchells’ dock.

The binoculars still sit on the table next to my chair. I lift them to my eyes and get a closer view of Boone. He’s reached the edge of the dock and stands there in nothing but a towel, confirming my first impression of him.

Boone Conrad is fit as hell.

Even though Eli suggested I keep clear of Boone, which I completely understand, he said nothing about not being allowed to look at him. Which I do, feeling only a twinge of guilt as I keep watching him through the binoculars.

That twinge becomes a pang—and something more—when Boone loosens the towel and lets it fall to the dock, revealing that he’s not wearing anything underneath.

I lower the binoculars.

I raise them again.

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