Stranger in the Lake

by Kimberly Belle

  Micah made them seal it with blood like they were twelve or something, slicing a gash into their palms with the sharpest rock he could find. He made them swear on the lives of everyone they ever loved and ever would love. And they were just drunk and desperate enough to agree.

  Especially Jax. The driver who wasn’t.

  Even after all of Micah’s revelations out there on the hill, Jax can still only call up fleeting snippets of that night with Bobby. The earthy scent of tobacco leaves. Empty bottles rolling around the floorboards. Vomit surging up his throat and nose. A baby’s cries piercing the nighttime quiet. The rest is just a big black hole in Jax’s head, an empty void of nothingness until then suddenly, everybody was screaming and there were only a few inches of air left in the car as it sank in the lake.

  Micah’s dad, when they showed up dripping on his doorstep, threw one hell of a tantrum. Jax still shudders when he thinks about it, the way Chief’s cheeks turned purple as he screamed and cussed and kicked a hole in the foyer wall. The words he said, the awful names he called his own son. Worthless. Pathetic. A retard. Micah just stood there, shaking from anger or embarrassment, maybe both. But he knew better than to say the first word.

  It was Chief who fetched Jax’s car from the trailer park and covered up the tire tracks leading into Pitts Cove. Who made arrangements, quick and dirty, so the case was closed before any witnesses could step forward to say the man who was about to become police chief had a murderer for a son. For twenty years Chief Hunt sat on the truth, not to protect his son but to cover his own ass.

  Jax meant what he said. It was a relief to finally tell, to clear Bobby’s black stain from his conscience. Only his confession got a woman killed. Not by Jax’s hands, just like Jax isn’t technically the reason Bobby ended up at the bottom of Pitts Cove.

  Jax came so close to shooting Micah out there on that hill. His finger was taut on the trigger when it occurred to him that blowing a hole through Micah’s chest would be a gift, that it would serve him in the same way the woods had been a relief for Jax. Alone and unseen. Ignored. Jax fooled himself into thinking it was some kind of penance, when really it was an escape. When people stop looking at you, do you really exist? Fading away was the only way he knew to survive.

  Stupid fucking Micah. Jax will never forgive him for what he did. To Bobby, to Jax and Paul. He can hear Paul crying in the next cell for his beloved Katherine. For Charlotte and their unborn child. The cruelest punishments don’t always come behind bars.

  But Jax is still guilty. He still has to pay.

  Maybe that’s what his sister, Pammy, means when she says everybody has their own cross to bear, a heavy burden that burns like a thorn in their flesh. Pammy’s thorn chased her to the church, Jax’s into the woods, his solitude a salvation and a damnation at the same time. In the quiet of the forest, Bobby only grew larger, louder in his mind. His laughter echoing in the trees, his shadow lurking behind every log. Every time Jax closes his eyes, it’s Bobby’s face he sees, floating behind the bubbles of his final scream. The desperation, the pleading, the terror when Jax went for Paul instead. The images will stay with Jax for the rest of his miserable life.

  There’s a rattling at the door, a chinking of keys against the metal bars. Sam, coming for a statement.

  Sacrifice.

  Penance.

  Atonement.

  Justice.

  In the end, we all reap what we sow.

  38

  Two days later, on a crisp Monday afternoon, Diana summons me to her house, a sprawling cottage of stone and shingle on the outskirts of town. She doesn’t tell me what for, or ask if I’ve been to see her son, languishing in the jail cell next to Jax’s. “I’ll explain once you get here” was all she would say, so here I am—too curious for my own good.

  The door pops open, and I look back at Chet, watching with one hand draped over the steering wheel of the still-running Jeep, his fingers tapping against the dash. Chet thinks I should wash my hands of the Kellers, let them sort out their own drama.

  But like I told him before he dropped me off, I’m not here for Diana or for Paul. I’m not even here for myself.

  I’m here for another Keller, the one it is my duty to protect.

  “Charlotte, thanks for coming.” The caramel-colored Pomeranian on her arm barks like we’ve never met before, and she gives him a little jiggle. “Dolly, hush. She’ll settle down once you’re inside. Can I get you something to drink?”

  I give her the best smile I can muster. “I go by Charlie now.”

  * * *

  Diana seats me on an overstuffed chair in the sun porch, a glass-walled, terra-cotta-tiled room at the back of the house. Paul once told me this is why he became an architect, because of these cramped, low-ceilinged spaces connected by narrow hallways, every inch of it crammed with fussy antiques and complicated decor. It made him yearn for open spaces and clean lines, and I can see why. Even without the sun beating through the windows and Diana a few feet away in the kitchen, gathering refreshments, the room feels stuffy and oppressive.

  “I just want to start by saying I’m sorry.” She settles a tray onto the table between us. Peppermint tea and raw honey and a porcelain plate piled with cookies she’ll never touch. “About Micah, I mean. What he did to you and Katherine. I had no idea he was that evil.”

  She passes me a steaming cup, but I leave it on the table. “Like father, like son, I guess.”

  “I suppose.” She sinks into her chair, scooping up the dog at her feet and settling it on her lap like a fuzzy pillow. “Still. I always thought those crazy stunts of Micah’s were some kind of...I don’t know...misguided attempt to prove his worth to his father—that man has never been nice, and you can quote me on that.” She strokes her dog with a hand, raking the fur with her fingernails. “It’s funny when you think about it. Micah spent his whole life trying to act so brave, when really he was a big ole scaredy-cat. Scared his daddy wouldn’t love him, scared of what people would think if they knew what he did. And in the end, scared to face up to his own sins. He took the coward’s way out. Of all the awful things he did, that one’s the worst.”

  I don’t really know what to say to that, so I say nothing at all. I could point out her son lied, too, that he sat on secrets so monumental it cost him two wives, but Diana already knows these things. I press my lips together and wait for whatever it is she brought me here to say.

  “Paul says you haven’t been to see him yet.”

  “I’m not ready to talk to him.” I lift one shoulder. “Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.”

  “I see.” She pauses to twist some honey around a polished silver spoon, then drops it into her tea. “You should know that these past twenty years have been torture for Paul. I know my son. I saw how he suffered after Katherine. He was convinced her death was the universe’s way of punishing him for what happened to Bobby. Paul didn’t want to lie to you, but he’d already lost one wife because he told her the truth. He couldn’t go through that again.”

  Resentment swells, both at her words and her puffed-up tone. Something didn’t just happen to Bobby. Three drunken idiots drove him into a lake and left him for dead, and Paul’s suffering can’t wipe away his guilt. But Diana has always been her son’s greatest defender. She’s always had blinders on where he and Jax are concerned.

  My eyes, however, are wide open.

  “But Paul did lie. He swore he wasn’t keeping any secrets from me, when really he was sitting on a big one. And now four people are dead. And okay, so maybe Paul didn’t technically kill them, but he had a hand in their deaths. He should have come clean after Bobby, but instead he doubled down. He should have confessed that very night.”

  I believe this with everything I am. Murder and you are a murderer. Lie and you are a liar. This is how the world works. Loyalty to an old friend, even one you love like a brother, can’t wipe aw
ay the fact you were accessory to a crime.

  Diana shakes her head. “But it wasn’t just anyone he was keeping quiet for, dear. It was Jax. The boy who risked his life to pull Paul from a sinking car. With the facts he was working with at the time, it felt like a fair trade. Paul’s life for his silence.”

  “What about loyalty to me? I mean, granted, I didn’t think to include the word in our wedding vows, but I kind of thought love and honor and cherish covered all the bases. Isn’t loyalty implied?”

  “Yes, Charlotte, but—”

  “I already told you. It’s Charlie.”

  Diana sighs, a quick burst of impatient air. “Charlie. But please try to think about it from Paul’s point of view. Jax chose Paul. He let another man die so Paul could live. There is nothing Paul wouldn’t do for Jax. Nothing I wouldn’t do for him. Jax is family.”

  Emphasis on the family, as if that explains everything. And for Diana, I suppose it does. All that time I spent feeling like an outsider proves that I need more than a marriage certificate to crack that Keller nut. I need something I don’t have, something I’ll never have, especially since I am no longer willing to try. This person I tried so hard to become, this dream I worked so hard to attain, it doesn’t fit me anymore.

  She looks out the window, to the trees and the lake and the rolling hills on the other side, and her forehead crumples with new lines. “I mean, honestly. The second I heard that woman’s jewelry went missing, I knew that it couldn’t have been Jax. What would he want with some cheap costume pieces, anyway? He has no need for money, and he’s not that conniving. Jax is a good man.”

  “He managed to keep a skeleton buried for twenty years. Clearly, he’s no saint.”

  Her gaze, still defensive and hard, whips to mine. “Yes, and you can see what that did to him. Jax has paid deeply for his hand in Bobby’s death, and so has Paul. Both of them have lost so much.”

  The image of Paul’s face flashes, fierce and proud and happy as he watched me make my way down the aisle, and my heart pinches with the memory. My whole life stretched out before me that day. The life I wanted. The life I thought I deserved with a handsome husband, a pretty home, a bank account overflowing with cash. If only I had looked more closely at the man behind the offer.

  “Yes, and now Paul has lost me. Because I can’t be with him after this, Diana. I just can’t. If that makes me uncompromising, then so be it. This baby deserves better. I deserve better.”

  Her shoulders slump with disappointment. “That’s too bad. Because I hate thinking of that baby growing up without a father.”

  “A divorce won’t change the fact that this baby is Paul’s. And I’m not saying I’m cutting him out of our lives completely, just that I can’t be married to him anymore.”

  She gives a swirl to her tea, watching the way the liquid spins around her cup. “What I meant is, it’s hard enough to raise a child, but doing so on your own is a special brand of difficult. The midnight feedings, the constant worry. The money.” She sips, watching me over the lip of her teacup. “Babies are so very expensive.”

  Her tone is parked in Neutral, but her words still hit me wrong, like jumping into the lake before the sun has had a chance to warm up the water. “I don’t plan on asking Paul for anything more than what I’m entitled to according to the prenup, if that’s what you’re fishing for. Child support and health care, at least until the baby is born. That’s all I want.”

  “Of course you are entitled to those things. I wasn’t implying anything otherwise. But you should know that this case is going to trial, and people will be watching. In fact, they’re already watching, and they’ve seen how you’ve moved out of Paul’s house and into some rickety trailer. You can’t raise this baby in a trailer.”

  A hot flash of indignation, but I manage to keep it out of my tone. “Plenty of people raise babies in trailers. My mother did. Not very well, but that had nothing to do with the trailer. The point is, a baby doesn’t care where it lives as long as it’s loved and cared for.”

  Diana tries very hard not to roll her eyes. “What I’m saying is, it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to struggle.”

  It takes a few seconds for her meaning to sink in, and then I laugh out loud at the irony. After all these months trying to chase me away, after all the ways she’s cut and stabbed and poked at my feelings, now she wants me to stay.

  “Let me get this straight. You want me to stand by my man. No, no, wait. It’s more than that. You want me to waddle around town with my big belly on display so people will look at me and feel sorry for Paul. You want us to sit behind him at the trial so the jurors will think we’re a united front.” I place both hands on the table and lean in. “You want to pay me to stay.”

  “Not you, dear. The baby. A trust fund in his or her name, with you as the administrator. Enough so that you can buy a house of your own, take care of your child and never have to work again.” She settles her cup back onto the saucer and sinks back in her chair. “Think of it as a sort of insurance. You do this one little thing for me, and I’ll make sure you’re set up for life.”

  I blink at her in disbelief, in horror. “That’s not insurance. It’s a bribe.”

  “Be smart, Charlie. I’m offering you security, a future without money worries.”

  “Seriously, lady. You have lost your ever lovin’ mind. I don’t want your money. I don’t want Paul’s. All I want is to get off this crazy train and go back to my side of the hill, where people might not have as much but at least they’re not killers—”

  The words die in my throat because it hits me then. The thing Diana said before, about Jax and the costume jewelry. I close my eyes and struggle to recall the missing pieces Micah rattled off in the kitchen that morning with Chet and Paul and Chief Hunt and Diana. She was there. She heard it, too.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Diana says, but I ignore her.

  A pair of golden hoops. A pearl bracelet and a watch. A ruby-and-diamond ring that once belonged to Sienna’s grandmother. That’s what Micah said. He told us to keep it quiet, too, that the police weren’t releasing the list of jewelry to the media.

  I open my eyes, and she’s watching me. “How did you know about Sienna’s jewelry being costume?”

  Diana frowns. “What are you talking about? Micah said—”

  “Micah told us what pieces he was looking for, but he never said the jewelry was fake. And even if it was, he’s not the kind of guy who would have known the difference. Even if he held the pieces in his hand, he wouldn’t have recognized gold from gold plate, or that those stones in her grandmother’s ring were colored chips of glass.”

  There’s a voice in my head telling me to leave it, to leave this house and never look back. But my heart is pounding, my skin tingling with realization, and I never could let things lie.

  I lean forward in my chair. “But you would.”

  Diana, who insists on only the best. Who once paid a jewelry designer to pour pure twenty-four-karat gold into three identical wax molds and engrave the town’s coordinates on the back. Who had not one man she loved to protect from the truth coming out, but two. Jax is family, she just told me. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for him.

  Her whole body changes in that instant of understanding. Everything about her hardens—her eyes, her mouth, her expression. I sit there for a moment, watching her scramble for her game face, but she doesn’t quite get there. And it’s too late. I’ve already seen it. I already heard.

  She tucks a hank of hair behind an ear, fidgets. “I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

  “You do know what this means, right? Jax has an alibi. He was twelve miles away at the time of Sienna’s death, and three people heard Micah deny killing her, right before he admitted to killing Bobby. Why would he admit to one and not the other?”

  Diana doesn’t answer. The only sound is a cl
ock ticking in another room and a light snore coming from the fur ball on her lap. She stares at me and I stare at her, but she doesn’t say a word.

  “This means all signs point to Paul. Your beloved son, the last of the three with both motive and opportunity. You’re really going to let him go to prison for something he didn’t do?”

  She waves off my words with a hand. “It’ll never come to that. I’ve already retained the best defense attorney in the South, who assures me Paul won’t get much jail time, if any. And they can’t prove something that never happened. Whatever evidence the police have on him for Sienna’s death is purely circumstantial.” But she doesn’t sound very certain.

  “You people are bonkers. Do you know that?” My rising tone wakes the dog, who jumps to its feet on Diana’s lap, yipping. She slides a hand around its snout like a muzzle. I was crazy to think this woman would ever accept me into her family, just like I’d be crazy to let a murderer anywhere near my child. “There’s not enough money in the world to make me want to stay in this family. You’re unhinged.”

  “I’m just a mother protecting her son.” Her gaze dips to my belly. “You’ll understand soon enough.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I’ll never understand. You killed a woman to protect your son’s secret and in the process blew his life to smithereens. You deserve everything you have coming to you.”

  Her eyes narrow into slits. “Is that a threat?”

  I stare at her across the teacups and that ridiculous dog, and my heart gives a warning thud. It wasn’t a threat, not an intentional one at least, but she’s already killed one woman to keep her son’s secret. Maybe it was a crime of passion—an impulse, a threat that threw her into a sudden rage—or maybe it’s something more sinister. Maybe she lured Sienna to the lake, to a place where the murder weapon was within reach. Either way, who’s to say Diana wouldn’t do it again?