Page 80 of The House Across the Lake

I nibble a piece of bacon, nervous it might send me running to the bathroom with nausea. To my surprise, it makes me feel better. As does a bite of pancake. Soon I’m shoveling the food into my mouth, washing it down with more coffee.

“We should have picked up some maple syrup at the store yesterday,” Boone says casually, as if we have breakfast together all the time.

I lower my fork. “Can we talk about last night?”

“Sure. If you can remember it.”

Boone immediately takes a sip of coffee, as if that will somehow soften the judgment in his voice. I pretend to ignore it.

“I was hoping you could fill in the blanks a bit.”

“I was just about to go up to bed when I saw Tom’s Bentley drive by the house,” Boone says. “Since there’s no reason for him to be driving on thisside of the lake, I assumed he was coming to see one of us. And since he didn’t stop at my place, I figured he had to be going to see you. And I didn’t think that was a good thing.”

“He caught me watching the house,” I say. “Apparently he picked up his own pair of binoculars while at the hardware store.”

“Was he mad?”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“What happened while he was here?”

I eat two more bites of pancake, take a long sip of coffee, and try to bring my blurry memories of Tom’s visit into focus. A few do, snapping into clarity right when I need them to.

“I turned off all the lights and hid by the door,” I say, remembering the feel of the door against my back as it rattled under Tom’s knocking. “But he knew I was here, so he yelled some stuff.”

Boone looks up from his plate. “What kind ofstuff?”

“This is where it starts to get foggy. I think I remember the gist of what he said, but not his exact words.”

“Then paraphrase.”

“He said he knew that I’ve been spying on him and that it was me who told Wilma about Katherine. Oh, and that he knew I’d broken into his house.”

“Did he threaten you?” Boone says.

“Not exactly. I mean, it was scary. But no, there were no threats. He just told me to leave him alone and left. Then you came to the door.”

I pause, signaling that I can’t remember anything else and that I’m hoping Boone can tell me the rest. He does, although he looks slightly annoyed at having to remind me of something I should have been sober enough to recall on my own.

“I heard you inside after I knocked,” he says. “You were mumbling and sounded dazed. I thought you were hurt and not—”

Boone stops talking, as if the worddrunkis contagious and he’ll become one again if he dares to utter it.

“You came inside to check on me,” I say, hit with the image of him looming over me, swathed in shadow.

“I did.”

“How?”

“The ground floor.”

Boone’s referring to the door to the basement. The one with faded blue paint and a persistent squeak that leads directly to the backyard beneath the porch. I didn’t know it was unlocked because I haven’t been down there since the morning I woke up and Len was gone.

“I found your phone out there, by the way,” he says, gesturing to the dining room table, where the phone now sits.

“Then what happened?”

“I picked you up and carried you to bed.”

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