Page 40 of The House Across the Lake

While the phone rings, I continue to watch him through the binoculars. An annoyed look crosses his face as he pats a front pocket of his fishing vest—a sign he’s definitely carrying his phone. After propping his fishing rod against the side of the boat, he looks at his phone, then at the lake house. Seeing me on the porch, my phone in hand, he gives me a wave and answers.

“If you’re calling to see if I’ve caught anything, the answer is no.”

“I have a different question,” I say, adding a warning. “An unusual one. Did you happen to hear a strange noise outside this morning?”

“What time?”

“Dawn.”

“I wasn’t awake then,” Eli says. “Decided to sleep in a little. I’m assuming you heard something?”

“I think so. I’m not sure. I was hoping you could back me up on that.”

Eli doesn’t ask me why I was awake at dawn. I suspect he already knows.

“What kind of noise are you talking about?”

“A scream.”

Saying it out loud, I realize how unlikely it sounds. The odds of someone, let alone Katherine Royce, screaming at the break of dawn are slim, although not impossible.

Bad things can happen on this lake.

I know that from experience.

“A scream?” Eli says. “You sure it wasn’t a fox or something?”

Am I sure? Not really. Even during this conversation, my certainty level has lowered from seventy-five percent to about fifty.

“It sounded like a person to me,” I say.

“Why would someone be screaming at that hour?”

“Why does anyone scream, Eli? Because she was in danger.”

“She? You think it was Katherine Royce you heard?”

“I can’t think of anyone else it could have been,” I say. “Have you seen any sign of her today?”

“No,” Eli says. “Then again, I haven’t exactly been looking. You worried something happened to her?”

I tell him no, when the opposite is true. Katherine’s lack of a response to my text and calls has me feeling unnerved, even though in all likelihood there’s a perfectly good reason for it. She could still be sleeping, her phone silenced or in another room.

“I’m sure everything’s fine,” I say, more to convince myself than Eli.

“Do you want me to stop over there and check?”

Because he’s the lake’s one-man neighborhood watch, I know Eli would be happy to do it. But this is my worry, not his. It’s time to pay the Royces a visit, and hopefully all my concerns will be put to rest.

“I’ll go,” I say. “It’ll be good to get out of the house.”

Tom Royce is on the dock by the time I reach it. Clearly, he saw me coming because he stands like a man expecting company. He’s even dressed for casual visitors. Black jeans. White sneakers. Cashmere sweater the same color as the pricey wine he brought over two nights ago. He offers an exaggeratedly friendly wave as I moor the boat and join him on the dock.

“Howdy, neighbor. What brings you by this afternoon?”

“I came by to see if Katherine wanted to come over for some girl talk and an afternoon cocktail on the porch.”

I prepared the excuse on the trip from my dock to his, hoping it would make it look like I’m not overreacting. Which I suspect I totally am. Katherine’s fine and I’m just worried because of something I saw and something I heard and something that happened to my husband more than a year ago. All of which are completely unrelated.

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