Page 31 of The House Across the Lake

“So you haven’t watched my house?”

“Never.”

Another lie. Because it’s Katherine I’m lying to—right to her face, no less—the guilt that comes with it cuts deeper.

“Oh, I’d totally watch my house. Those huge windows? How could anyone resist?” Katherine picks up the binoculars and peers through them at her house on the opposite shore. “God, it’s so ostentatious. Like, who needs a house that big? As a vacation home, no less.”

“If you can afford it, there’s no reason not to enjoy it.”

“That’s the thing,” Katherine says as she lowers the binoculars. “Wecan’tafford it. Well, Tom can’t. I pay for everything. The house. The apartment. The five-thousand-dollar wine and the Bentley, whichispretty sweet. We should take it out sometime, just you and me.”

“Tom has no money of his own?”

“All of Tom’s money is tied up in Mixer, which still hasn’t turned a profit and probably never will. The joys of being married to a so-called tech titan. He looks the part and acts it exceptionally well, but in reality—” Katherine stops her rant with a gulp of coffee, followed by an apologetic “You must think I’m insufferable. Here I am, complaining about my husband, when you—”

“It’s fine,” I say, cutting off the rest of her sentence before she can utter it. “Most marriages have their difficulties.”

“Most? Was your marriage always perfect?”

“It wasn’t,” I say, looking at the lake, at how the morning light seems to dance across the water’s surface. “But it felt that way. Right up until the end.”

A pause.

“Then again, we weren’t married long enough for Len to get sick of me and initiate our inevitable divorce.”

Katherine turns my way, those large eyes of hers searching my face to see if I’m being serious. “Do you always do that?” she asks.

“Do what?”

“Make a joke to avoid talking about your true feelings?”

“Only ninety percent of the time,” I say.

“You just did it again.”

I shift uneasily in my chair. Katherine’s right, of course. She’s pinpointed one of my worst traits. The only person besides Marnie and my mother to do so. Not even Len, who bore the brunt of it, ever called me out on it.

“I make jokes,” I say, “because it’s easier to pretend I’m not feeling what I’m feeling than to actually feel it.”

Katherine nods, turns away, looks again to her glass house at the water’s edge. The side that faces the lake is still reflecting sky, although the sun has entered the picture now. A glowing circle right where her bedroom is located. So bright it could blind you if you stared at it long enough.

“Maybe I should try that,” she says. “Does it really help?”

“Yes. Especially if you drink enough.”

Katherine responds with a dry chuckle. “Now that Ihavetried.”

I stare deeply into my coffee mug, regretting that I didn’t add a splash of bourbon. I think about getting up to add some. I think about asking Katherine if she also wants some. I’m about to do just that when I spot a gray-clad figure stepping onto the patio outside Katherine’s house.

She sees it, too, and says, “That’s Tom wondering where I am.”

“You didn’t tell him you were coming over?”

“I like to keep him guessing.” She rises, does a little stretch, then comes in for her second surprise hug in two days. “Thanks for the coffee. We should do it again tomorrow.”

“My place or yours?” I say, aiming for a Mae West impersonation but ending up sounding more like Bea Arthur.

“Here, definitely. There’s only decaf at our place. Tom says caffeine blunts the body’s natural energy. That right there is grounds for divorce.” She pauses, no doubt taking in the look of surprise on my face. “It was a joke, Casey. To cover up how I truly feel.”

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