The House on Sunset Lake

by Tasmina Perry

  There were no more tears left now. No emotion either. She felt empty, hollow – a husk that just wanted to run on autopilot. But although she felt numb, she knew she could not stay here for ever. Slowly she got to her feet and brushed the soil and leaves from the fabric of her dress. Her watch told her it was a little after five, but it was dark overhead; the blue sky had turned a malevolent shade of pewter. Marion had said there was a storm coming and she’d been right, thought Jennifer as a drop of rain plopped on her head and the breeze picked up in the trees around her.

  She began to run, her sneakers crunching the carpet of twigs and leaves underfoot. The temperature had dropped, and there was some comfort in feeling the wind slap across her face. It was strong now, cold and damp, but it was not powerful enough to erase the memories of the past few hours. She ran faster and faster, but still images of Bryn Johnson popped into her head like a nightmare.

  The trees were thinning now, as lightning flashed overhead, followed by the deep grumble of thunder. She knew she had to get to shelter quickly. She saw Marion’s cottage just a few hundred metres away. It was on the outskirts of the more manicured grounds of Casa D’Or, behind the old smokehouse, in the shade of one of the largest oak trees on the estate.

  Once she was out of the woods, the rain soaked her to the skin. Panting hard, she ran on to the porch of the cottage and collapsed into an Adirondack chair underneath the window as another fork of silver lightning flashed across the sky.

  The door of the cottage opened and Marion stood there, pulling a sweater on over her head.

  ‘Get inside,’ ordered the older woman. ‘It’s filthy out there. The storm will drown you before you reach the big house.’

  Jennifer got up and followed the housekeeper into the cottage.

  It was a single-storey building, the doorway leading straight into a living area dominated by a sofa, dining table and sideboard. Jennifer came in here rarely, but she noticed that there was a bigger television since the last time she’d visited, and a few more framed photographs on the bookcase.

  Marion disappeared for a few moments and reappeared with a towel.

  ‘Dry yourself off,’ she instructed.

  Jennifer towelled her hair, then pressed the fabric into her face to compose herself.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Marion kindly.

  ‘Just walking,’ Jennifer said, scratching her arms, her nails digging into the skin harder than was necessary.

  ‘Knew there was going to be a storm,’ observed Marion, looking up to the heavens. ‘Coffee?’

  Jennifer shook her head and looked at the older woman’s kind face. She wondered if she should tell her, and took a breath to steel herself, tears swelling behind her eyes, but as her mouth opened, she could not find the words to even begin to describe what had happened to her.

  A wave of shame engulfed her. She felt dirty, stupid, afraid. The consequences of even hinting at what had gone on in the boathouse were too awful to contemplate. No one would believe her, and even if they did, there was unlikely to be any sort of happy ending. How would anything make it better? What was done was done.

  A tear leaked down her cheek and she blinked it away.

  ‘Are you OK?’ said Marion. She moved closer and put her arms around Jennifer. For a split second, Jennifer flinched at the touch of another person, but as she relaxed into it, it became clearer what she had to do. She had to forget.

  ‘I will be,’ she muttered into the housekeeper’s shoulder.

  ‘You can still write to him,’ said Marion softly. ‘Just because he’s going home doesn’t mean you can’t see each other again. I hear London is beautiful in the fall,’ she chuckled.

  ‘I won’t be going to London,’ said Jennifer quietly.

  ‘Oh,’ said Marion more awkwardly.

  Jennifer pulled away and used every ounce of her self-control to stay strong.

  ‘Do you have paper and a pen?’ she asked.

  Marion nodded and went to get them. She put them on the small dining table in the corner of the room, then discreetly left Jennifer alone to write her note.

  In the woods, Jennifer had been so confused that she hadn’t known what to do, how to proceed. But now she had some clarity. There was only one way out of this mess, and however much it broke her heart, she knew it was the only thing she could do.

  She kept it simple.

  Jim,

  It’s been a wonderful summer but you should catch the plane to New York. Tonight. I love Connor. We are engaged, and last night should never have happened. Just go back to England, Jim. If you are truly my friend, you should do what is right for all of us and not contact me again.

  Jennifer

  She folded the paper in half, ashamed of her lies, sickened at the thought of Jim’s bewilderment when he read them.

  ‘Marion. Could you do me a favour?’ she asked simply.

  ‘Of course.’

  Jennifer handed her the letter.

  ‘Can you drop this off at the Lake House? It’s for Jim.’

  Marion looked at it.

  ‘I’ll fetch an envelope and go as soon as the rain dies down,’ she nodded.

  Storms came and went quickly in this part of the world. Jennifer gave the towel back to Marion and said her goodbyes. The Wyatts’ housekeeper didn’t push, didn’t question Jennifer’s melancholy mood any further, and if she had noticed that the younger woman hadn’t looked her once in the eye, she didn’t say so. Jennifer was grateful for her unwillingness to pry.

  She closed the door of Marion’s cottage behind her and started walking back to Casa D’Or, across the gravel drive and the lawns that led to the house. The clouds were beginning to clear, and the rain had softened to a gentle spit. Suddenly she could smell flowers on the breeze, as if the whole world had been infused with a springtime freshness that was in contrast to her own despair.

  There was only one thing she wanted to do now, and that was to shower the filth of the day from her body. She felt shivery and weak. Her stomach was grumbling but she felt nauseous, as if a pool of vomit had collected at the base of her throat.

  The Wyatts rarely locked the front door to Casa D’Or – there was no need to on the Isle of Hope – and Jennifer pushed it open. The house was silent, all traces of the party gone except for the fragment of a gold balloon in one corner of the hall. She began to walk up the sweeping staircase, holding the oak banister to steady herself. Every step seemed an effort. She felt exhausted, although her mind was a frantic whirl of thoughts. She imagined Marion walking to the Lake House right now, her shoes squelching in the wet grass, and wondered if she would see him on her way over – the monster in his boathouse lair.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  She recognised her mother’s voice instantly. The Southern inflections that were so syrupy on most people in this town sounded in Sylvia’s tones clipped and brusque.

  Jennifer was a few feet from the top of the stairs. Her mother stood on the mezzanine that overlooked the hallway, holding on to the balustrade so tightly her knuckles had turned white.

  ‘Just out,’ said Jennifer, not looking at her.

  ‘Where?’ pressed Sylvia.

  ‘Why does it matter?’ she said, clutching the banister harder.

  ‘What were you doing at the Lake House?’ asked her mother after a moment.

  Jennifer’s heart was thudding hard now. Her throat felt tight, her palms started to bead with sweat. She knew it was her opportunity to say something, to shout out the truth. Sylvia Wyatt was her mother. She was on her side.

  Or was she?

  A voice of doubt echoed in her head.

  ‘I went to see Jim,’ she said finally, her heartbeat almost banging out of her ribcage.

  ‘Jim phoned here,’ challenged her mother. ‘He hasn’t seen you.’

  She took a moment to think, but she could come up with no convincing excuse.

  ‘I’ve been walking,’ she said at last, her voice shimmering with emotional restraint. I
t wasn’t exactly a lie.

  ‘What were you doing at the Lake House then?’

  Her mother’s voice sounded odd. Jennifer knew the signs. Knew what was coming next. That the volcano was ready to erupt.

  ‘You were with Bryn Johnson, weren’t you,’ she said. It was an accusation, not a question.

  Jennifer turned and started to walk back down the stairs, counting her steps as she tried to control her breathing. She knew she had to get back outside and run. She had no idea where to.

  ‘Weren’t you?’ screamed her mother from the mezzanine.

  ‘I have to go,’ said Jennifer, quickening her pace, not daring to turn around.

  ‘Where are you going? Come back here this minute and tell me where you were!’ cried Sylvia, her voice echoing around the cavernous atrium space.

  Jennifer was at the bottom of the stairs now, her eyes fixed on the front door. Suddenly she heard a thud behind her, and then another, a toppling domino chain of noise that made her stop in her tracks. She turned in time to see her mother bounce twice off the final few steps, landing on the hard walnut with a sickening crack.

  Jennifer screamed and ran towards her. Throwing herself to her knees, she touched her mother’s cold face, recoiling in horror as she realised that Sylvia wasn’t moving.

  ‘Mom!’ she cried, looking around frantically, spotting a slipper on the stairs and then a trickle of blood oozing on to the brown floor.

  Her hands were shaking. She ran to the phone on the cabinet in the hall and dialled 911, screaming at them to come to Casa D’Or as quickly as they could. Still trembling, she tried to contact her father, but his secretary told her that he had left for the day.

  Tears were streaming down her face as she kneeled back down, desperately wondering what she could do. Only minutes before, she had thought her life could not get any worse, that she could sink to no further depths of misery, and yet touching her mother’s neck, feeling the pulse get weaker and weaker, she felt as if her own life was being drained out of her body.

  Sylvia’s face was ghostly pale, and quite beautiful, like the moon.

  ‘Mom, please. Stay with me. I love you,’ whispered Jennifer. It was such a clear and definite thought, she wondered why she had not told her mother so every day of her life.

  She heard the sound of tyres on the gravel but could not move. She took hold of her mother’s hand and did not let go until she heard footsteps behind her.

  ‘Oh God!’ cried her father as he ran across the hallway.

  ‘The ambulance is on its way,’ said Jennifer, getting to her feet to meet him.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was coming down the stairs. She was behind me, standing at the top.’ She pointed to the mezzanine. ‘She was upset.’

  David Wyatt took a sharp intake of breath, then squatted down on his haunches to stroke his wife’s forehead.

  Jennifer felt as if the world had stopped turning, as if she were suspended in space. She closed her eyes, wishing she had super-powers, that she could make the earth spin back on its axis and rewind time, but when she opened them again, she saw her father hunched over her mother’s body, and it was the saddest thing she had ever seen.

  Somewhere in the distance she could hear sirens.

  She went to the door to wait for them, as if staring down the oak-lined drive would make the ambulance come quicker. At last she saw a flash of red light coming closer and closer. Perhaps it was not too late, she thought, the beat of her heart speeding up.

  ‘Hurry. Hurry,’ she whispered, closing her eyes.

  She barely registered Marion’s arrival at the house, and then she was surrounded by people and noise. A stretcher was wheeled into the hall, and although the wail of the siren had stopped, the scarlet light of the ambulance seemed to cast the house in a fiery glow, as if she were in hell.

  She felt Marion’s reassuring hand on her shoulder. When she turned, she noticed that the housekeeper’s eyes were glassy with tears.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s too early to say,’ replied Marion soberly.

  Jennifer walked slowly, as if in a daze, to the porch, resting her hands on the ledge as she looked down at her grass-stained sneakers.

  ‘Jen.’

  A voice disturbed her. She looked up and saw a figure standing outside the house. Through her clouded vision, it took her a moment to recognise Jim Johnson.

  ‘What’s happening? Tell me,’ he pleaded as he came up the stairs towards her.

  ‘My mother. There’s been an accident.’

  ‘Oh God,’ he said, glancing towards the inside of the house then coming to put his arms around her.

  She shrugged him away.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, stepping back.

  She looked at him and it was as if she were looking at an old skin she had just shed. There was no point mourning it, no matter how beautiful it had once been, for it had gone.

  ‘I’ve got a new ticket,’ he said, trying to catch her eye.

  ‘Didn’t you get my letter?’ she said, her voice barely a croak.

  The paramedics wheeled the stretcher on to the porch. Her mother was lying there, attached to tubes and wires, her father moving alongside her, his hand gripping hers, as the two men lifted the stretcher down the steps.

  ‘I’m going to the hospital,’ said David, glancing at Jim.

  ‘I’m coming too,’ replied Jennifer quickly.

  ‘I’ll take you,’ said Jim, a quaver of desperation in his voice.

  She sighed, and her breath shook in her throat.

  ‘Catch your plane. Go back to England,’ she whispered.

  He came to her and grabbed her hand, tears welling in his own eyes.

  ‘I’m here for you, Jen. Just tell me what you want me to do.’

  She summoned all her courage and looked straight at him.

  ‘You’ve read my letter. Go back home, Jim,’ she said as she followed her father into the back of the ambulance.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  2015

  Jim felt horrible. He stood there for a moment, listening to the breeze. Everything Jennifer had said made sense, and yet it was the most vicious and vile story he had ever heard.

  He remembered vividly where he’d been on the afternoon following Jennifer’s twenty-first birthday party: in Savannah, trying to change his airline ticket. His mother had gone downtown too, wanting to buy last-minute presents for everyone back in London, and a little something for Saul Black, whom they were due to meet the next day in New York. Jim had driven them both there in the truck, and on the way he’d confided to Elizabeth that he wanted to stay in Georgia just a little while longer.

  ‘You’re in love with her,’ his mother had teased.

  ‘I think I am,’ he’d smiled, wanting to get back to the Isle of Hope as quickly as possible.

  Everything had taken for ever. The drive into town, the queue in the travel agent’s, where they had eventually confirmed Jim’s suspicions that he would just have to buy a fresh ticket if he wanted to postpone his trip back home. His mother hadn’t met him at the time she’d said she would, and then she wanted to stop on the way back for one last slice of her favourite key lime pie from a bakery on Abercorn Street.

  Jim had got back to the Lake House at around four o’clock. Their bags were already packed and his father was upstairs, apparently pulling together his notes to show his agent in New York. It was the lazy time of the day, when Jim would usually sit on the pontoon with a book or his guitar, but his mother had asked him to help do a final tidy of the house. He’d been grateful for the opportunity to keep busy. He was anticipating a knock on the door, or the ring of the telephone in his room. He was waiting for Jennifer to get back in touch, and he didn’t quite believe it when he didn’t hear a peep.

  He remembered, quite clearly, calling Casa D’Or, only to be told by Sylvia in crisp and certain terms that her daughter wasn’t at home. She’d sounded upset, even pee
ved, and at the time Jim thought it was because she absolutely hated him. But now, armed with the knowledge of Bryn and Sylvia’s affair, he suspected other reasons.

  He imagined his father typing his Dear John letter to Sylvia. Imagined it being left under a stone or in the pavilion, like a Cold War drop of secret intelligence, perhaps even brazenly slotted into the Casa D’Or mailbox itself. He imagined Sylvia watching the Lake House from a window at Casa D’Or. Imagined her seeing Jennifer disappear inside the boathouse and not come out for thirty minutes or more, and speculating what had happened. Jim did not know how long Bryn and Sylvia’s affair had been going on, but judging from the dated letters he had found, it had been at least a month, and knowing how intensely he himself had felt about Jennifer after just a few short weeks, he had a good idea of how hurt Sylvia had been by it all.

  It was quite easy for Jim to imagine everything, except what had gone on in the boathouse. He could not let himself accept the version of events that Jennifer had told him, even though the voice in his head told him it was all true.

  He squeezed his eyes tightly closed to help him think more clearly, and when he opened them, he could see the shadow of someone standing by the door to the pavilion.

  ‘Mum,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘It was always the quietest and most lovely spot out here,’ Elizabeth said.

  He groaned silently, feeling sickened at the thought that she might have overheard his conversation with Jennifer.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you two were down here,’ she added, almost apologetically.

  He didn’t reply, and the silence seemed to stretch on for ever.