Page 8 of The House Across the Lake

She coughs again. A single, harsh bark.

“Are you going to be okay?” I say. “Do you need to go to a doctor or something?”

“I’ll be fine. Tom will be back soon. Until then, I think I’ll take a hot shower and a long nap.”

She steps onto the dock and realizes my blanket is still over her shoulders. “God, I forgot all about this.”

“Keep it for now,” I say. “You need it more than I do.”

Katherine nods her thanks and starts to make her way toward the house. Although I don’t think it’s intentional, she walks the dock as if navigating a runway. Her stride is lengthy, smooth, elegant. Katherine might have grown tired of the modeling world, with good reason, but the way she moves is a gift. She has the effortless grace of a ghost.

Once she reaches the house, she turns back to me and waves with her left hand.

Only then do I notice something strange.

Katherine mentioned her husband several times, but—for now at least—she’s not wearing a wedding ring.

My phone is ringing when I return to the lake house, its angry-bird chirp audible as I climb the porch steps. Because I’m wet, tired, and chilled to the bone, my first instinct is to ignore it. But then I see who’s calling.

Marnie.

Wonderful, caustic, patient-beyond-her-years Marnie.

The only person not yet completely fed up with my bullshit, which is probably because she’s my cousin. And my best friend. And my manager, although today she’s firmly in friend mode.

“This isn’t a business call,” she announces when I answer.

“I assumed that,” I say, knowing there’s no business to call about. Not now. Maybe not ever again.

“I just wanted to know how the old swamp is doing.”

“Are you referring to me or the lake?”

“Both.”

Marnie pretends to have a love-hate relationship with Lake Greene, even though I know it’s really only love. When we were kids, we spent every summer here together, swimming and canoeing and staying up half the night while Marnie told ghost stories.

“You know the lake is haunted, right?” she always began, scrunched atthe foot of the bed in the room we shared, her tanned legs stretched, her bare feet flat against the slanted ceiling.

“It feels weird to be back,” I say as I drop into a rocking chair. “Sad.”

“Naturally.”

“And lonely.”

This place is too big for just one person. It started off small—a mere cottage on a lonely lake. As the years passed and additions were added, it turned into something intended for a brood. It feels so empty now that it’s just me. Last night, when I found myself wide awake at two a.m., I roamed from room to room, unnerved by all that unoccupied space.

Third floor. The sleeping quarters. Five bedrooms in all, ranging in size from the large master suite, with its own bathroom, to the small two-bedder with the slanted ceiling where Marnie and I slept as children.

Second floor. The main living area, a maze of cozy rooms leading into each other. The living room, with its great stone fireplace and pillow-filled reading nook under the stairs. The den, cursed with a moose head on the wall that unnerved me as a child and still does in adulthood. It’s home to the lake house’s sole television, which is why I don’t watch much TV when I’m here. It always feels like the moose is studying my every move.

Next to the den is the library, a lovely spot usually neglected because its windows face only trees and not the lake itself. After that is a long line of necessities sitting in a row—laundry room, powder room, kitchen, dining room.

Wrapped around it all, like ribbon on a present, is the porch. Wicker chairs in the front, wooden rockers in the back.

First floor. The walkout basement. The only place I refuse to go.

More than any other part of the house, it makes me think of Len.

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