Stranger in the Lake

by Kimberly Belle

  Leave.

  Suddenly, it’s the only thing I can think about, getting out of this house, this family. I glance around the room, taking inventory. The cut crystal figurine, the base of the candlestick, the pokers by the fireplace. For the first time, I am afraid of the woman before me. I have no doubt she saw silencing Sienna as a necessary sacrifice to protect Paul, but Diana’s reasoning is just as faulty as her son’s. Loyalty can’t cancel out a wrong. Love, no matter how big and broad, can’t balance these scales.

  Only justice can.

  “Congratulations,” I say, standing. “You finally achieved what you’ve been trying for all this time, because I’m done. I’m walking out this door and out of this family, and there’s not enough money in the world to stop me.”

  I’m out the door seconds later, jogging down the steps to Chet’s Jeep, motioning for him to hurry up and start the car.

  Every person has a single defining moment. A moment that veers their life in a new direction, that changes them at a cellular level and makes them question everything they thought they knew, that colors every thought and decision afterward. For Paul and Micah and Jax, it was that moment they landed in the lake. It turned Micah into a killer, drove Jax into the woods, made Paul secretive, turned him inward.

  But this moment, this one right here, this is mine.

  39

  It’s only six blocks from Diana’s house to the police station, but Chet takes the long way, weaving up and down side streets so I can give him the highlights of my visit with Diana. The bribe. The jewelry. What I plan to do now that I know.

  Because my goal hasn’t changed. I went there to protect the littlest Keller, and that’s still my plan, in the best way I know how.

  “You’ll be here when I come out?” I say as he pulls to a stop in front of the door.

  Chet’s eyes go wide, and he gives me an enthusiastic nod. “Dude, I am going nowhere. Now get in there and give ’em hell.”

  By now it’s late afternoon, and the station is mostly empty, all but Doris, who runs the reception desk, and Sam, riffling through a file cabinet behind a waist-high wooden partition. He pulls out a well-thumbed file and points it at a sign on the wall to my left. I missed visiting hours by a whole twenty minutes.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  He gives me an apologetic shrug, though he doesn’t look the least bit sorry. “Rules are rules.” He sinks into a swivel chair at his desk and pretends to ignore me.

  Frustration rises, bubbling in my chest and up my throat. “Sam, please. If you and I were ever friends, you’ll give me this. Ten minutes, that’s all I need.”

  He looks up, his head tilted to the side. “Were we ever friends? Because, honestly, I can’t remember.”

  “You know we were.” I think back to his face when he stormed out of the church, the way he shoved the door open with a sharp bang, and I actually flinch. “To tell you the truth, you kinda broke my heart.”

  “Yeah, well, you broke mine first. So I guess that makes us even, doesn’t it?”

  At that, Doris gives up all pretense and her head snaps up, her gaze flicking between us. By bedtime, everybody on both sides of the mountain will know what happened here, how after all this time, Sam and I finally had it out. He waits, watching me from the other side of the partition.

  “You were right. Is that what you wanted to hear? I married a guy you warned me about, and now it’s blown up in my face, just like you said it would. Does that make you happy?”

  “No, Charlie. None of this makes me happy.” He still looks pissed, but the sharpest edge is gone from his tone. “And for what it’s worth, I remember us being friends. That’s what makes this so damn hard. Because for a while there, I honestly and truly thought we were on the road to being more than friends. I thought that’s where this thing between us was headed.”

  I nod because I know. If I’m being completely honest, I’ve always known. All those times Sam went quiet, watching me with a blend of frustration and longing. All the times he stood too close or stayed too long, like he was waiting for something to happen. He wanted me, and I wanted Paul. No wonder he spent this past year angry.

  “I should have been more sensitive to that, and I’m sorry. If I could go back and do it all over again, there are a lot of things I’d do differently. Like tell you how much I loved you, just not in that way. But that was the whole problem. I loved our friendship too much to risk it.”

  “So you sabotaged it instead.”

  “You can’t help who you fall in love with, Sam. If you’ve learned anything from this shitshow, surely you know that.”

  He puffs a pained laugh, and when I smile at him, he smiles back. It’s not a big smile. It’s not an easy one. But it’s a crack in that big, angry wall he’s put up between us, and I’m just stubborn enough to keep hacking.

  With a sigh, he slaps the file to his desk. “Ten minutes, starting now.”

  He leads me down a hallway and parks me at a table in a windowless room that does double duty as a kitchen. A counter is shoved against a far wall, battered and basic: a fridge, a double sink, an industrial-sized coffeepot lined with dark sludge. A vent above my head pumps in stale air, drying my throat into brittle paper.

  Two seconds later the door opens, and in steps Paul, his jaw thick with two days’ worth of stubble. He’s wearing clothes that aren’t his—a grubby thermal and beige pants two sizes too big. They’re rolled at the ankle, a messy furl of wrinkled fabric that drags on the ground. He looks at me with eyes that are red and swollen, and the emotions cycle through me, love and regret and sorrow and fury.

  Behind him, the lock slides into the slot with a metallic thunk.

  “You must really hate me.”

  I hate him and I love him and I hate him and I love him. But the man I fell in love with—the one whose first wife’s death left him with broken and ragged edges that matched up against mine, the one who promised to care for me in ways my own parents didn’t—that man exists mostly in my head. Paul showed me only the sides of him he wanted me to see and the rest he shoved somewhere deep inside, and I traded whatever doubts I had for security. I lived in his house and I ate his food and I never demanded to know the real Paul. How can you love a man who’s only a shadow? How can you hate him?

  He gives me a resigned nod, reading the answer in my silence. He moves closer, pulls out the chair across from me. “I wanted to tell. For twenty years, I wanted to, but I owe Jax my life. I—”

  “Stop.” I slap the air between us with my palms, and Paul freezes, his hand still on the chair. “Seriously, just shut up. I didn’t come here for an apology, and I’m not looking for an explanation. I already heard both from your mother.”

  Paul frowns. “Okay.”

  I gesture for him to sit, and he sinks into the chair. He folds his hands and sits up straight, waiting, and I notice the two pale strips of skin where his Rolex and wedding band used to be. Confiscated when they tossed him in jail.

  “What did Sienna’s jewelry look like?”

  He startles at my sudden change of topic, and I can’t really blame him. This is a question that’s either coming out of nowhere, or it’s not. He either has an answer ready, or he doesn’t. I intend to find out which.

  He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. What?”

  “Sienna’s jewelry. Micah described it for us last week in the kitchen. Chief Hunt and your mother were there, too. We talked about how the killer would have been stupid to dump it in the lake. Remember?”

  “No. I don’t know.”

  “Think about it.”

  Paul humors me, and for the span of ten breaths. I watch his frown of concentration, those spider-fine lines fanning out from his eyes that mean he’s thinking really hard. I give him all the time he needs.

  Finally, he lifts his hands from the table. “A watch. A piece from her grandma with s
ome kind of stone. Some earrings, maybe? That’s all I remember.”

  “It was a pair of gold hoops, a pearl bracelet, a watch, a ruby-and-diamond ring that once belonged to her grandmother. That’s what Micah told us. He also told us the police weren’t releasing the list of jewelry to the media. I checked, Paul, and it’s nowhere. No one has mentioned those pieces specifically.”

  “Okay.” Paul drags out the word, still sounding for all the world like he still doesn’t know where this conversation is going. I stare across the table, taking in his furrowed brow, his measured breaths, the way his gaze stays strong and steady on mine, and I can’t decide if he’s playing me or not. His mother knows everything about him, but does he know what she’s capable of?

  “The thing is, there’s no way your mother could have known unless she saw the jewelry for herself.”

  “Could have known what?”

  “Diana told me they were costume. She called them cheap.” I watch a shadow flit across his face, but he remains silent. He doesn’t move, either, other than to clasp his hands a little tighter, his knuckles going sharp and white. “Except how could she know that unless she saw it herself? Unless she held them in her own hands?”

  “What exactly are you accusing her of?”

  “Exactly what you think I am, and for the record, she didn’t deny it. Not even when I said they’d be looking to you for Sienna’s murder. Jax has an alibi, and Micah told all of us he didn’t kill Sienna. By then he’d already admitted to killing Katherine and driving the car that killed Bobby. Why not just come out and say he killed Sienna, too? At that point, he had no reason not to.”

  “I don’t know. Because Micah was a monster. Because he wasn’t the person I thought he was.”

  “And your mother? Is she the person you think she is?”

  There’s a long stretch of silence, and I let him sit with things for a minute, giving him time for the full weight of his realization to sink in. Diana, who loves her son so fiercely, she’d silence anyone who got in his way. He winces, closing his eyes.

  “When I heard there was a woman waving Jax’s necklace around town, I figured that was it. Finally this long, hellish nightmare would be over. For twenty years I’ve been waiting for someone to arrest me, but Mom kept telling me to sit tight. She told me to trust her, that she’d take care of it.” His eyes snap open, his gaze sticking to mine. “I thought she meant she’d talk to Chief Hunt or something. I never thought... Jesus.”

  I puff out a breath, not a laugh exactly, but close. If Paul’s words are true—and I’m not saying they are—then I’m not the only one guilty of having blinders on. We see what we want to see, and we disregard the rest. I know this better than anyone.

  “So when Sienna washed up under the dock, who did you think killed her?”

  “Micah.” Paul stabs a finger into the table and leans forward. “That’s why I went to find Jax, because Chief Hunt was never going to let his own son go down for murder. I knew they were going to try to pin it on Jax. Blame the crazy person. Plant some evidence or, hell, I don’t know, drum up a witness or two. But never, not once, did I think it was Mom. You have to believe me. It didn’t even cross my mind.”

  I don’t respond, because the truth is, I don’t believe him. I don’t know if what he’s saying is real or yet another falsehood from his bag of lies. A woman who was only asking about coffee, a deal to build million-dollar homes on swampland. So many stories, and I am done taking this man at his word.

  “Your mother offered me money to stay through the trial, maybe longer. She said she’d set up a trust fund under the baby’s name but give me control of how to spend it.” I pause, shifting in my chair. “I don’t know how much, but I’m guessing a lot. I didn’t exactly give her time to finish.”

  “You don’t need her money. You can have half of mine. Screw the prenup—I’ll split everything straight down the middle. My attorney will draw up the papers first thing tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want Katherine’s money.”

  “Okay, mine, then. All of it. Every cent. It’s not as much as hers, but it’s more than enough to care for you and the baby.”

  “Guilt gifts, like the ones you’ve been buying Jamie Holmes.”

  “This isn’t about guilt, Charlotte. This about paying my debts. Taking care of people caught in the crosshairs through no fault of their own. I know money doesn’t fix things, but I figured if I could just...take some of the pressure off, maybe it would make things easier.”

  I can’t deny money makes things easier, just like Paul doesn’t deny he’s been paying for the upkeep on Jamie’s home. I should have known it was him and not Jax. Paul’s love language is money. What’s some electronics and a monthly landscaping bill to a man with so many millions? He has more than enough to spare.

  “I want to take care of you, Charlotte. And our child. Please let me.”

  “That’s not why I came.”

  He shakes his head. Frowns.

  There are footsteps outside in the hallway, moving closer. Sam coming to get me.

  “I came because I need you to understand what it feels like to grow up like I did, under the shadow of parents who’ve done awful things. That shit leaves scars, and I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone, least of all an innocent child.”

  My words hit him like a punch, and his eyes shimmer with regret, with pain. “I get it. Of course I do. And for the rest of my life, I will hate myself for what I’ve done. To you, to our baby. Our child will suffer because of me, because of the mistakes I’ve made, the wrongs I’ve done. I know I don’t deserve anyone’s forgiveness, least of all yours, but I need you to know that I’m sorry. I am so goddamn sorry.”

  He breaks down then, sobbing into his hands, and I know what he wants to hear—that I accept his apology, that I understand and forgive him. That our baby will be okay, that together we will see to it.

  But I can’t say any of those things. Maybe one day I’ll be able to, but not today. Not yet.

  The lock chinks in the door, and I know I don’t have much time.

  “Paul. Paul.” I slap a hand to the table to get his attention, waiting until he looks up from his fingers. “Years from now, when our baby is old enough to understand, I am going to tell him or her what you did, and I will use it as a lesson. To teach right from wrong, how to pick the good from the bad. And when I do, I sure would like to be able to say that, in the end, when push came to shove, your father did the right thing.”

  The handle twists, the door creaking open, and I plant both hands on the table and lean in close to make sure my next words land, that he hears them and understands.

  “Do the right thing here, Paul. Or I will.”

  40

  I steer Chet’s Jeep around the last hairpin turn on the driveway, and there it is, the sleek box of steel and glass hanging from rocks high above the glittering lake. I remember the first time I saw it, from the passenger seat of Paul’s fancy SUV, the excitement I felt when I counted all the windows and doors. Twelve, and that was only across the front side.

  By now it’s winter, and the wind is achingly cold as I make my way to the front door, icing over my skin and rustling the plants in the pots on either side of the stoop. Hellebores, Katherine’s favorite. I know, because I heard it on “Gone Swimming,” episode 5 of Grant’s podcast, along with the fact that she was a master gardener, ate cold pizza for breakfast and detested country music. Silly, trifling details I’d been longing to hear for so long, and I heard them from a stranger.

  But thanks to the podcast, media attention has been brutal. Reporters chasing me through town, ambushing me at the coffee shop and in the grocery store, shoving microphones like furry ice cream cones under my nose. My answer to them is the same every time—“no comment”—but like Micah once said, they’re a persistent bunch.

  The people in town have been kinder, rallying around me when
things get too crazy, herding me into one of the shops and letting me escape through the back door. Oh, sure, they still whisper about me behind my back, still give me sideways glances, but Chet says they’re coming around, and so is Sam. Especially now that I’ve moved back to his—no, my side of the hill, his icy demeanor is starting to thaw. We’re not back to being friends yet, but we’ll get there.

  He hasn’t said as much, but I can tell Sam respects me for refusing to take part in Grant’s podcast, even though he offered me a number that made my eyes bulge. Chet called me crazy when he heard, but I don’t expect him or anybody else to understand. I’m done profiting from Paul Keller.

  Paul opens the door and I take him in, his familiar face with a few more wrinkles, the thread of gray at his temple, and I brace for the pang—sadness combined with lingering bitterness for the lies and betrayals he brought into our marriage. But Paul did the right thing that day I went to see him at the police station, and I owe it to our daughter to do the same.

  “How are you? You look good.” His gaze dips to our daughter in my belly, a little small for her five months, but otherwise perfect.

  “I feel good. The doctor says everything’s right on schedule.” I pull a slip of paper from my bag, small and gray and grainy. “Here, I brought you a picture.”

  Episode 12 was the ugliest of all: “A Mother’s Love.” Diana’s genteel Southern cadence, her pretty voice saying all those horrible, awful words after Paul coaxed out a confession. His forgiveness, the promise of his forever devotion and love, but only if she turned herself in. She plunked herself down at Sam’s desk and told him how she’d lured Sienna to the edge of town then bashed in her skull with a garden shovel, which she ditched along with Jax’s necklace and the costume jewelry in a firepit at the Singing Waters campground. By the time Sam got to it, there was nothing but melted plastic and charred metal, licked clean of her fingerprints by weather and flames. But there wasn’t a lawyer on the planet who could keep Diana out of jail after that confession.