Stranger in the Lake

by Kimberly Belle

  “What property? Where?”

  “I don’t know. He only said he might not have service. Did you try his cell?”

  “Of course I tried his cell, all day yesterday and today. It doesn’t even ring, just shoots me straight to voice mail. A scouting trip’s not on his calendar.”

  “He said something about it being super top secret.”

  Another ridiculous lie. Gwen is Paul’s longest employee, the closest thing to a partner he’s got. He doesn’t keep secrets from Gwen, not when it comes to Keller Architecture business. Anger wells in my chest, and I consider the words I’d really like to say. I don’t know where he is. He left me here holding a bag of lies. Go home and take a snow day. That’s what I’m doing.

  But as angry as a part of me is at Paul, a bigger part knows he doesn’t deserve all the blame. I lied, and then I lied again without him asking me to. So when the lies rolled off my tongue for the second and third time, I told myself I was looking out for Paul, but that’s horseshit, isn’t it? The truth is, by protecting Paul, I was also looking out for myself.

  “You know what?” she says, sighing. “I don’t have time for this. I need Paul’s laptop, otherwise we’re going to miss the Cedar Hill deadline.”

  Her words dull the sharpest edges of my thoughts. Cedar Hill is a development on the other side of Bald Rock, a potential build of up to thirty million-dollar homes situated along the Eastern Continental Divide. A big developer out of Atlanta invited only three firms to submit a bid, plans that showcase their vision for mountain luxury living. Paul has been working on the bid for months.

  I frown, sinking on the steps. “The bid’s not on the server?”

  Another sigh, this time louder. No, the bid’s not on the server.

  “Hold on,” I say, rising and heading up the stairs to the mudroom. I hang my head around the corner, and there it is, Paul’s bag on the bench under the coat hooks, leaned up against the wall. I unclip the buckles and toss open the flap. His silver MacBook Pro is inside.

  I pull it out, tuck it under an arm. “Got it. I’ll email them over right now.”

  “You can’t. The internet’s down in town. TV and landlines, too. Some bad accident on 64 cut the cables or something. I need them on a stick. Either that, or I need the whole laptop.”

  My gaze goes to the window, a patch of swirling white blocking the view of the lake and trees. Gwen may have made it to the office, but for her it’s only a three-block walk. For me, the only way there is by boat.

  I drop the laptop back into Paul’s bag and turn for the stairs. “I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  By the time Chet and I get to town, my clothes are soaked and my nerves frayed. I was wrong before when I thought we got a couple of inches. More like six or seven, and it’s nowhere near done. The snow is a swirling white curtain, turning the world opaque, and even slow going, moving through the snowstorm was like boating blindfolded. Three times I pointed the nose straight at the shore, pulling back on the gas just in time.

  The dock appears in a wall of white, and Chet scrambles to throw out the fenders. We hit the wood with a jarring thud, knocking Chet clear off the bench. I clear the lines of water, cut the motor and clamber out on shaky legs.

  Chet juts a thumb up the hill, the opposite direction of the office. “I’m going to see if anyone’s out. Want something from the deli?”

  “A sandwich would be great. Thanks. Bologna with extra mustard and pickles. Oh, and a strawberry milk over ice. Tell them to put it on the company’s tab.”

  He cocks his head at my unusual order, then heads one way while I head the other, a sharp gust of wind chasing me up the hill to town. It whips my coat taut and clears the snow at the top, where I pause to catch my breath. The streets are deserted, an eerie winter wonderland lined with buildings and white lumps the size of parked cars. I spot tracks, both human and car, already filled with several inches of powdery snow.

  At Paul’s office, amber light trickles through the glass, the promise of warmth in the subzero air. I push through the door, and Gwen pops off her chair.

  “Oh, thank God.” She rushes over, snatches the laptop from Paul’s bag. “T minus forty-nine minutes and counting.”

  I sink onto the chair at my desk, watching her fire up the laptop and type in Paul’s password. Laptops around here are communal property, and Paul requires everyone to use the same password, exactly for moments like this one. I see from her expression the moment she finds the files, and then she clicks in an external drive and waits for everything to copy.

  “How are you going to submit without Wi-Fi?” The logistics are something I hadn’t thought about earlier, in the stress of getting Paul’s computer across the lake. If Gwen doesn’t have internet to receive the files, she doesn’t have internet to send them, either.

  “I called Patrick at the Department of Transportation. He said their satellite can be sketchy in weather like this, but I’m welcome to come down and try. Cross everything, ’cause it’s going to be a Hail Mary pass. Not even postal workers are out in this mess.”

  “Thank you for doing this. I know Paul will really appreciate it.”

  She puffs a sarcastic laugh, a phlegmy sound. “Yeah, well, he better, because when he gets back I’m going to kill him. This snowstorm has taken five years off my life. If I hadn’t put about a billion hours into this project myself, I would’ve blown it off, kind of like Paul is doing now.” The laptop beeps, and she yanks the external drive out and drops it in her bag. “Wish me luck.”

  “Luck.”

  She snatches her coat from the back of another chair and leaves in a huff of swirling snow. A blast of icy wind slams the door behind her.

  I shrug off my coat, drape it over the back of my chair to dry and step to Gwen’s desk, where Paul’s laptop sits open. I smile at the wallpaper, a selfie of us, a close-up from a trip to Charleston last summer, all big smiles and tanned cheeks. The Cedar Hill files are lined up neatly along the right side of Paul’s head, and I skim them from top to bottom. His entire life resides on this hunk of plastic and metal. His correspondence, his finances, his calendar and to-do lists.

  And the camera footage. The one Sam is sending a subpoena for.

  The security website is bookmarked under House, the password the same one he uses for everything. It takes me a couple of minutes to figure out how to pull up the footage, then to limit the clips to the ones recorded after 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday. My heart gives a hard kick when it spits out dozens of clips. Why so many?

  I click on the first one, at just past five, the one of Paul and me returning from town. I smile at the way he helps me out of the boat, with an easy tug into his arms. He swings me around and dips me over an arm right there on the dock. Something catches in my chest at the image of us, so happy and obviously in love. I think of Sam watching this same clip. Maybe then he’ll finally believe my feelings are real.

  I move on to the next clip, working through them one by one, my shoulders relaxing a notch with each one. A deer on the edge of the lake. A fox shooting down the hill. Dark smudges moving on a dark screen, too faint to make out. But what’s clear is that in none of them is there a man, Paul or otherwise, tossing a body from the dock.

  When I get to the footage of me heading to the dock in my nightgown, I switch to Paul’s email and send the log-in information to Sam. While I’m there, I scan the subject lines in his inbox. New product notices, sales pitches, detailed back-and-forths about current and future projects. Except for a couple of junk ads for penis enlargement surgery, nothing sticks out as unusual. The mailboxes are organized just as meticulously as you’d expect from a guy like Paul, the projects listed by name and date, the contents separated into subfolders. I scroll through them, clicking on a folder marked Personal, but there’s not much here I don’t already know. His house, his health insurance and tax assessments. I back out and close the program
.

  The finder is more of the same. Work projects filed by address and dates, personal folders with copies of passports and tax reports. I’m about to move on when I spot it, a folder marked Katherine.

  Something tight and icy-hot spirals across my scalp at the sight of Paul’s first wife’s name, a yellow folder of memories and who knows what else sitting on his hard drive. I hover the mouse over her name, wavering between dread and curiosity.

  If I open this file, I can’t unsee what’s in it. I won’t be able to pretend I don’t know. There’s no going back from this.

  And yet I’ve already reached the point of no return, haven’t I, simply by seeing her name on his hard drive. Even if I don’t look inside this folder, for the rest of my life I will wonder what’s in it, this digital mystery stashed on his laptop.

  And that, somehow, feels even worse.

  I click her name, and there are two subfolders, Legalities and Memories. I don’t know which one is scarier.

  The first file contains pdf documents, filed by name and date. Her birth and death certificates, their marriage certificate, bank statements and tax returns. Her will is complicated, trusts and properties and a whole bunch of legalese I don’t understand, no list of assets other than that they all went to Paul. I back out and click the most recent bank statement, a portfolio summary from J.P. Morgan, and my eyes bulge at the amount. Before Katherine died, her investments had a market value of almost six million dollars.

  Maybe this is why we don’t talk about money, because if we did, he’d have to tell me that the majority of his wealth came from a former swimmer who sank to the bottom of the lake she did laps in every summer morning. It’s a hard pill for even the most trusting, most gullible wife to swallow. No wonder Sam thinks the worst. If I didn’t know Paul so well, I might, too.

  I back out and keep scrolling, and a file catches my eye: Fertility Eval. A chart, a long list of medical tests and terms. It doesn’t take me long to get the gist. Katherine was infertile, something about ovulatory dysfunction and a diminished ovarian reserve, and I think back to Paul’s reaction on the boat, his obvious joy when he found out he was going to be a father, and an invisible fist punches into my chest and squeezes my heart. Finally something I’ve beaten her at, but it doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like a tragedy, especially for Paul.

  I shake it off and move on to the Memories folder, and it’s pictures. Thousands and thousands of them. Smiling. Kissing. Gazing lovingly into the other’s eyes. Capturing moments from the time they met, in grad school at Cornell, to the weekend before she died. Glamorous shots from their wedding, grainier shots at parties and on vacations, candid shots at home—Paul’s home, the one I can’t quite think of as mine because it’s her hyacinth bulbs that push through the dirt each spring.

  I zoom in on a shot of her sunning on my favorite chair on the dock, and she really is lovely. Long and lean, with high cheekbones and eyes so aqua it’s hard to look away. I take her in, but it’s Paul’s face I concentrate on. He looks happy. Relaxed. I measure the edges of his smile, compare them to the one he aimed at me two days ago when I told him I was pregnant. Did he smile bigger with her? Was his face brighter?

  And what was it Sam said? All you have to do is take off the blinders.

  My eyes flutter shut, and I steel myself against something ugly and dark.

  The door bangs open, and I jump so hard my body loses contact with the seat. Chet shakes off the snow and his coat, hanging it on the door handle.

  “Deli was closed. Everything is, even the post office. It’s like a ghost town out there. What? What’d I do now?”

  I shake my head. “It’s not you. It’s just...” I gesture vaguely to the laptop screen. “I was going through Paul’s computer. I don’t like what I found.”

  Chet leaves a trail of snow and ice on his trek across the office, nodding knowingly. “Porn?”

  “What? No, not porn.” I frown. “Stuff about Katherine.”

  It takes him a second or two to place the name. “Wait—isn’t Katherine his wife?”

  “First wife. Was. The wife he refuses to talk to me about, ever. She was loaded, Chet.”

  “Well, of course she was. Her daddy was Pete-O-Pedic.” He sings part of a jingle anyone in fifteen counties would recognize: “‘Buy your mattress from a local dealer, get it for a little cheaper.’ Remember those commercials?”

  I remember. They only played them every five minutes on the radio. Those stores were everywhere until Mattress King swooped in and bought Pete out. He died of a heart attack less than a year later.

  Chet leans over the desk, craning his neck to see the laptop screen. “Whoa. No wonder you’re so bent out of shape. She’s hot.”

  I snap the laptop closed. “Oh my God, you are literally the worst brother in the world.”

  “What? She was. And how’d you get on his computer, anyway?”

  “I know his password. Everybody here does. We all have the same ones.”

  Chet points at me over the desk. “See? You’re good, then. A husband with something to hide is going to lock down his technology. One hundred percent.”

  “Then why keep the pictures on his hard drive?”

  “So what if he does? She’s not here, and you are. From where I sit, that means you’re winning.”

  It’s such a maddeningly male thing to say and on so many levels. As if my love life is some kind of game, a competition to win Paul’s heart. As if the first wife’s death automatically guarantees the second wife’s security, like love is a matter of proximity and wives are interchangeable. But mostly, that I should just suck it up and let it go.

  Chet studies me from across the desk. “I scrounged up some intel for you, but now I don’t know if I should tell you.”

  “What kind of intel?”

  “I swung by the B and B.” He leans in, lowers his voice to a shout-whisper. “I talked to Piper.”

  “I thought you said nobody was out.”

  “Not on the streets. They were all hunkered down in the bar, pounding Jack Daniel’s. Something like twenty people, all of ’em plastered. The place was a madhouse.”

  “And? What’d Piper say?”

  “Nothing. Not one goddamn thing, but Wade was there, too, and he sure was talkative.”

  Wade. The guy leaning against the side of the B and B two days ago, when I came to town looking for Paul. The one who called me Charlie and Paul my old man.

  Chet leans with both elbows on the desk. “Wade said he talked to Sienna the day before she died. She talked to a lot of people, apparently, and she was asking all of them about Jax. The cops are looking everywhere for him. They think Jax had something to do with Sienna ending up in the lake.”

  Jax, who was looking for Paul hours before a woman washed up dead. I see him stepping out of the shadows at the back of the terrace, the skittish way he looked everywhere but at me. Tell Paul I need to talk to him.

  “But according to Wade, it wasn’t just Jax she was asking about. She was also asking about Paul.”

  The room goes hot. “My Paul?”

  Chet gives me a who else? look.

  “What about Paul? What did she want from him?”

  Chet shrugs. “Like I said, Wade was baked. I couldn’t get much more out of him that made sense. You know how he tends to...”

  Chet’s voice bleeds away, and new worries snag in my brain. Why was Sienna looking for Paul? Did she know who he was when she approached him in town, or did I feed that info to her when I introduced myself as a Keller? And Wade isn’t exactly known around these parts for his discretion. If he told Chet, he’s told other people. People like Sam, who will automatically think the worst.

  Chet pushes up from the chair. “Hey, you got something to drink? I’m parched.”

  “Check the fridge.” I gesture behind me, in the general direction of the kit
chen.

  He wanders off, and I sit here for a moment, the breath turning sluggish in my lungs. If what Wade said is true, if this woman was here asking about Paul, if he knew her, then he looked me in the eyes and lied like it was nothing. What else has he lied about? What other secrets has he stuffed down, hidden in files on his hard drive or buried around the house like rotten Easter eggs? Happy couples don’t keep secrets, and they don’t lie. What does all this say about us? What does it mean for our future? For the future of the baby growing in my belly?

  And then the darkest, ugliest question rises above the rest, sticking to my brain.

  What time did Paul get out of bed, really?

  18

  The snowstorm blows off on a warmer wind, clearing the clouds into a bright blue sky. Late-afternoon sunshine heats the hill behind the house, a blinding white field of smooth crystals melting like ice cream in the summer, sliding into the lake in slushy chunks. According to the news, we got a full eight inches, a record for this time of year, all of which is supposed to be melted by this time tomorrow. Welcome to winter in the South.

  Word of Sienna’s murder has also made the news, though the details are scarce. They haven’t mentioned her name or where she washed up, only that she was fished out yesterday morning. I keep Paul’s laptop tuned to a local news station and roam from room to room, poking through closets and dressers, searching for anything that might explain why a dead woman under our dock might have been asking about my husband.

  I save the study for last, settling in at Paul’s desk and digging through the drawers. I rearrange the pens, sort the paper clips and rubber bands, flip through a stack of unopened bills, Post-it notes and papers. I spread a pile of business cards across the desk, examine the names, put them back in the drawer with neat, exacting edges. He’s been gone too long. He could have made it around the lake three times by now.