He doesn’t say a word, but he doesn’t have to. His silence tells me I’m right. He wraps the towel around his waist, tucking in the corner so it hangs low on his hips, and leans into the mirror. “Jesus, I look like Frankenstein’s monster.”
I roll my eyes at the obvious attempt to change the subject. “Chet talked to Wade, and Wade said Sienna was asking about you. Not Jax. You.”
Paul frowns at me in the glass. “Wait—who’s Wade?”
“He works at the B and B.”
“Sienna asked this Wade person about me? What about me?”
“I don’t know. Where to find you, I guess. He didn’t give many details.”
Paul shakes his head. “That...that doesn’t make any sense. She stopped me because of my coffee, and she didn’t ask me anything that was even remotely personal. We certainly didn’t introduce ourselves, not until you came along. You’re the one who said the name Keller, remember.”
“Okay, but that’s not how Wade’s telling it. If he told Chet, he’s told everybody else, too, including the police. Sam was already asking where we were yesterday morning from 4:00 a.m. on.”
Paul pulls his toothbrush from a drawer, squirts it with toothpaste. “What did you tell him?”
“That your alarm went off at six.”
His gaze finds mine in the mirror. “You lied for me?”
His words set off an electrical storm in my chest, and the big ball of emotion I’ve been carrying around for two days bursts into flame. “What was I supposed to say, Paul? You left me here to deal with everything, and I didn’t know where you were. I didn’t know if you were alive or dead or what the hell was happening. And then somebody skinned that animal on the back deck and—”
“Wait. What?”
I nod. “An opossum on the back deck. It was disgusting. And when the snow melts tomorrow it’s going to really smell. They also wrote something awful in the snow.”
Paul dumps his toothbrush in the sink and turns to face me. “What did they write?”
“KILLER, in blood. Enough to have come from a cow, according to Micah. I’ve been living in lockdown, terrified whoever killed that poor woman is coming back for me.” I study Paul’s face, the tight skin around his mouth, the way the color has drained from his cheeks again. “What?”
“I’m just... Jesus, Charlotte, I’m so goddamn sorry. I didn’t want any of this to touch you.” He says it quietly, purposefully, like he’s been practicing the words in his head for days.
“Any of what, Paul? That woman was asking about you. You go on an early-morning run around the same time she slides into the lake, and you come back covered in mud and cuts. They pull her out from under our dock, you lie about knowing her, and then you disappear.”
“Hang on, hang on.” He steps closer, his bare feet swishing against the tile. “Do you think I had something to do with that woman’s death? Do you really think I would kill some stranger, then dump her under my own dock? Is that what’s going on here?”
I lift both hands from my sides. “You have to admit it looks bad.”
“That’s not an answer.”
I bite my lip and look at him, and I can see him go still. I see him thinking. The skinned opossum rattled him, got his bones humming before he pushed the subject away into...what? How did this conversation get so turned around? And why does having him home make me feel even more alone, this terrible slippery fear rising all over again? That Sienna washing up under the dock was only the start of this nightmare?
He shakes his head, hurt and disappointed. “I thought you were... I don’t know. Not immune to what people were saying, but I thought you were different. I thought you knew me.”
The skin of my face tightens, and the fire in my chest moves higher, scorching the back of my throat. My body is gearing up for a good cry. Tears hang in my eyes, but I will not let them fall.
“I do know you,” I say, my voice high and tight. “That’s why I lied about what time you got up. To give you an alibi.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did, Paul. Because think about it. If I’d said anything else, you’d be in handcuffs right now. Especially after Katherine and the evidence you left all over Jax’s cabin. Micah knew where you were the whole time.”
He watches me for the span of a few deep breaths, and I try to read his expression, but I can’t. Not with the room going foggy with my tears, not with Paul’s bruises and cuts and that one eye bulging like a rotten apple. It’s like looking at Paul in a fun-house mirror, ugly and unfamiliar. I have no idea what he’s thinking.
He moves to the end of the counter, picks up his cell from the charger and punches at the screen. In the bathroom’s silence, I hear Micah’s voice answer.
“Charlotte was mistaken about the time I got up yesterday morning. It was more like five fifteen, and I was out the door fifteen minutes later. I passed Billy Barnes’s place as he was coming out his front door, probably around six or so. Tell Sam if he wants a revised statement, he can drop by tomorrow sometime.”
He presses End, and the phone clatters to the counter. “I’m going to fix this.”
“I know,” I say, even though what I really want to say is how? How are you going to bring back that woman? How are you going to bring back us?
These past two days have tipped the emotional scales in our relationship, pitched some of the weight from him to me, and I’m not sure I like where we’ve landed. It feels unbalanced, precarious, wobbly. Like one of us could topple over the edge any minute, and it’s not just the way Paul is swaying on his feet.
“Can we finish this tomorrow? I’m beat.” He turns for the bedroom without waiting for my answer, then stops halfway there. “What time do we need to leave?” I frown, and his gaze flicks down to my belly. “Don’t we have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow?”
And suddenly, I realize why he hasn’t slept, why he busted his ass to make it back tonight instead of stringing his hammock between two trees. So he could be here for my doctor’s appointment. The one that, thanks to the eight inches of snow, has been rescheduled. The office left a message on my cell this morning.
“It’s moved to next week.”
He nods and turns for the bedroom, dropping the towel on the rack on his way out of the room, leaving me alone—yet again—with more questions than answers.
* * *
The first thing I think when I open my eyes is Paul. He’s tangled in the covers beside me, his breathing deep and even. He didn’t stir when I crawled in beside him, at some time just past one, which could have been thirty minutes or three hours ago. I feel around on the nightstand for my phone, check the time. 3:34 a.m. A sliver of a milky moon lights up the glass of the window.
I push back the covers and slide out of bed.
It’s not the thought of Paul that woke me, actually, but two little words that pressed up from somewhere deep, creeping through my subconscious to poke me awake. Extenuating circumstances. Paul used those words to explain away the things I don’t understand, secrets from his past he tends to keep locked up tight. In his head, on his laptop, behind the three hundred pounds of solid steel bolted to the wall in his study.
The safe was the one place that I didn’t look, a place I didn’t even think about looking. Paul’s mention of it was too hasty when he left, and so insulting I’d shoved it to the back of my mind. If it weren’t for his emergency chase after Jax, I’d never know the code. Whatever secrets Paul might be harboring, he’d stash them there, the only private place in this palatial home, stowed away behind a five-digit combination lock.
I slink down the stairs in my nightgown, not bothering to remember the code Paul rattled off on his way out the door. Not since he followed it up by telling me where he wrote the combination, on the inside flap of the Le Corbusier. The book Paul once told me he comes to regularly for inspiration.
&nbs
p; “‘Mass. Surface. Plan,’” Paul had quoted, flipping proudly through the pages, and I nodded like it made any sort of sense. “‘The house is a machine for living in.’”
The Le Corbusier is what I look for first, running a finger down the spines on the bottom shelf until I find the right one, bloodred with golden lettering. I pull it out and flip it open on the floor.
Paul’s neat handwriting is on the inside flap. “AIA Design & Honor Awards, Atlanta, GA 30319.”
I leave it on the carpet and step to the far shelf, to the row of hardback novels at eye level, moving them into neat piles on the floor. Not the most clever place for a safe, maybe, but Paul always jokes that thieves would be sorely disappointed in the contents anyway—a couple thousand bucks if they’re lucky, but no real valuables.
He told me in case I needed money, but I happen to know that cash is not the only item in here. Important papers and documents—that’s what I’m here for.
I tap in the zip code on the digital pad, tug on the handle, and the lock slides open with a metallic thunk.
In the dim study light, I survey the contents: a gun, a box of bullets, a neat pile of papers and files a few inches thick, stacks of crisp bills held together with green rubber bands, and a small red box, the kind that contains jewelry. I peek inside and find two matching gold bands—one hers and the other his—then shove it to the back of the safe with the cash. I pull out the paper files and carry everything over to the desk.
I flip on the desk light and start at the top, moving through the files one by one. The first is marked Personal, and its contents are exactly what you’d expect: Paul’s birth certificate, Katherine’s death certificate, a copy of our prenup and Paul’s last will and testament, updated to list me as sole beneficiary this past March. I close the file and move on.
The rest of the files are filled with property deeds, grouped together according to their location. For years now, Paul has been buying up lots under PJK Real Estate Investments, LLC, clusters of individual properties that, grouped together, make up a subdivision. It’s a brilliant strategy, one that with minimal investment—a paved road, a fancy sign and a big iron gate at the entrance—more than doubles the value of a lakeside lot. If you’re the investor, all you need is patience and a butt-ton of money. Apparently, Paul has both.
My fingers pause on a file labeled Pitts Cove.
I flip it open and it’s more of the same, property deeds for the land lining the northernmost finger of Lake Crosby. Uninhabitable land, as the cove’s waters are bordered by cliffs, muddy swampland and a curvy state road. There’s no flat spot for Paul to put a subdivision on, and even if there was, nobody would ever plunk down money for a house there. Pitts Cove is rumored to be haunted, thanks to the Camaro filled with human bones those recreational divers accidentally swam up on earlier this year, buried for two decades under a hundred feet of water. Skeleton Bob, the ghost shows dubbed him, and the nickname stuck. There’s not a soul in a hundred miles who would ever want to live there.
And Paul owns it all, every square foot.
22
The rest of the night is filled with dark, sticky dreams. Of Skeleton Bob, doing doughnuts across the silty bottom of Pitts Cove, one bony arm dangling out the window of a rusted-out Camaro. Of Jax, flitting in and out of the waves above his head while Micah circles him like a shark. Of Paul at the water’s edge, hollering for them both to quit goofing around and come on shore.
A buzzing on the nightstand pops my eyes open on a gasp, and I snatch my phone up and silence the ringer, even though I needn’t have bothered. Paul’s already gone. His side of the bed is cool, the goose down comforter flattened like a rumpled snowdrift. I roll onto my back, my hair fanning prettily on the pillow—silk, a gift from Diana. For your hair, dear. So the blowouts will last longer. The time on the screen says 8:47. The text was from Paul, an FYI he’s on the way to the doctor for the cut on his brow.
I lie in the flickering morning light, processing that Paul left without waking me for part two of our conversation. I picture him slipping out of the bed silently, carefully, so as not to wake me. I see him dragging clothes up his battered body in the closet, cringing at the noise of the zippers and snaps, tiptoeing across the carpet, and I’m caught between anger and amazement.
My stomach lurches, its daily morning protest propelling me to my feet. I make it to the toilet just in time, dropping to my knees on the cold tile as the bile surges up my throat.
It’s not like I haven’t dragged the internet enough to know that I’m one of the lucky ones. My morning sickness is mostly confined to the morning, and once I choke down a cracker or slice of dry toast, my stomach typically settles. Mama used to brag about how she puked for nine months straight when she was pregnant with me, so sick she begged the doctors to induce her at six months—though that was also around the time people started giving her dirty looks in the bar, so her motivation wasn’t entirely pure. Still, as much as she hated being pregnant, I’m pretty sure she hated being a mother even more.
I sit on my heels and flush with a shaky hand, my throat burning. If only I could flush my thoughts of my mother, too, watch them swirl like last night’s steak dinner down the drain. I hate the way this pregnancy has cleared new space for her in my brain, allowed thoughts of her to bubble up more and more often.
Sunning in a banged-up folding chair in the yard, her skin slick with baby oil. Smoking cigarette after cigarette while Chet and I run wild, pelting us with the butts she’d fling into the yard. Every time I spot a cigarette stub smeared with lipstick on the ground, I think of her.
But also, memories of her French-braiding my hair, her fingernails tickling my scalp. Of clomping around the trailer in her favorite boots, the hot thrill when she’d gloss my lips or spritz me with her perfume. There, she’d say when she was done. Now you’re prettier than me. In the space between her words, I understood: pretty can get you a man. Pretty can snag you a better provider than your father.
Stop.
Maybe it’s the hormones, but the memories suddenly sting more than they used to, a hot poker pang that throbs for hours. I banish the woman from my thoughts and step into the shower.
Paul’s return last night conjured up more questions, especially after my middle-of-the-night peek into the safe. More than once, I considered marching into the bedroom, shaking him awake and demanding some answers. Why Pitts Cove? What happened with Jax, really? I try to think about it logically, to shove aside my feelings for Paul and examine everything with clinical detachment, but I can’t. I’m too emotionally entangled.
In the kitchen, I stand for a moment at the window, looking out at the lake. In the few months I’ve lived here, it’s become a morning ritual, watching the sun climb up the trees, golden flashes that light up like a sea of stars. Most of the snow is gone now, only an occasional white patch in the shaded spots—down by the dock, under the trees, a big smudge on the opposite shore.
No, not snow. A boat.
Micah and his crew, I think, except...
I lean into the glass and squint. Pointy bow, beefy hull, deadrise sharper than usual—a boat made for water sports. Even from here, even in the dim morning light, I can see there’s no one at the helm or hanging over the sides.
It’s Paul’s boat. Unmanned and adrift—or at least it was, until its draft got caught in the rocky shore. It’s sitting all wrong in the water, pitched at a sharp angle.
“Shit.”
I think back to yesterday, when I slid the boat up to Micah’s dock. By the time I climbed out, Chet had already tied two lines, but since I didn’t know how long the boat would be there, I made him tie up two more. The spring lines were good and tight, the slipknots solid. I checked. There’s no way that boat could have gotten loose, not without someone helping it.
Shit shit shit.
I grab the keys from the mudroom hook and run down the stairs, flipping on ligh
ts as I go. “Chet? Chet, wake up.” I rap a knuckle on the guest room door, open it a crack. “Somebody untied the boat and set it adrift.”
His groan comes from the larger room behind me, from a lump on the far end of the couch. “Go away. It’s not morning.”
“Did you hear me? I said the boat’s loose. It’s caught in the rocks on the other side of the lake.”
The lump moves, and he lifts his head. “For real?”
“For real. Get dressed. I need you to hike around the lake and bring it back.”
“What, now?”
“Yes, now.” I toss him a sweatshirt hanging inside out over the back of the couch. “And hurry, before it gets really stuck.”
His grumbling is muffled as he pulls the hoodie over his face. “You do know it’s not actually my boat, right? If anything, you’re the one who should be traipsing through a freezing lake to bring it back, not me. I’m just the houseguest.” He shoves his feet in his jeans and hauls himself off the couch. He steps into his boots with a sigh. “You owe me for this.”
I hand him the keys, disarm the system and shove him out the door. “I love you. I’ll make it up to you. Now go.”
I head up the stairs, ticking off the incidents in my mind. The opossum. The boat. The snapped branches and planted footprints Paul told me about last night. None are exactly life-threatening, unless you happen to be an opossum. Still, it was a targeted threat, and Micah agreed. If he peeks out his back window and sees the boat, I already know what he’ll say: Batty Jax, at it again.
In the kitchen, I tune the television to a local channel, dropping the last bagel in the toaster on my way to the fridge. Not much there other than yesterday’s leftovers stacked in clear Tupperware containers. I’m working on a grocery list on the back of an envelope I dig from the drawer when the chief’s mountain twang, thick as paste, fills the air. My fingers freeze on the pen.
“...update on the investigation up to this point. Early Wednesday morning, November 20, at sometime before 7:00 a.m., a Lake Crosby citizen discovered the body of an adult female, floating in the waters of Lake Crosby. The police were called to the scene, as was a unit of underwater crime investigators from Asheville, divers trained in both body and evidence recovery. The body was removed, then transferred to the medical examiner at Harris Regional for autopsy and processing.”
Stranger in the Lake Page 16