I start moving again, eager to leave but unsure of the best way. The French doors lead to the porch, the steps, the dock, the water. I could take the boat and guide it over the rough water to Boone’s dock, assuming he’d give me shelter. Not a guarantee after what I’ve accused him of.

  Then there’s the front door, with access to the driveway, the road, and, eventually, the highway. There, someone will surely stop to help me. Getting there won’t be easy in this weather, but it might be my only option.

  Mind made up, I shoot toward the foyer, ticking off each room I safely pass.

  Living room.

  Powder room.

  Library.

  Den.

  As soon as I reach the foyer, power returns. Light floods the house, as sudden and startling as when it went away. The shadows that had a second ago been all around me vanish like ghosts. I halt in the unexpected brightness, aware of something behind me that had once been hidden but is now exposed.

  Len.

  He leaps from a corner, knife raised, hurtling forward. I drop the lantern and fall to the floor, a move fueled more by surprise than strategy. Taken off guard, Len’s momentum keeps him moving long enough for me to grab one of his ankles. He’s smaller as Katherine, easier to topple than his former self.

  He goes down quick.

  The knife comes loose.

  We both lunge for it, scrambling on top of each other, our limbs tangling. I reach out, and my fingertips brush the knife’s handle. Len claws at my arm, yanking it away. He’s on top of me now, pressing down, Katherine’s body shockingly heavy. Beneath him, I see his arm stretch past mine, reach the knife, grab hold.

  Then we’re rolling across the foyer floor.

  I’m flipped onto my back.

  Len’s on top of me again, straddling my waist, raising the knife.

  My entire being clenches as the knife hovers, and I wait for it to drop, hoping it won’t but knowing it will. Fear pins me to the floor. Like I’m already dead, now just a corpse, heavy and motionless.

  Above, Len is suddenly jerked backwards.

  His arms flap.

  His weight lifts.

  The knife is wrenched from his grip.

  As he’s dragged away from me, I see the person responsible.

  Eli.

  Behind him, the front door hangs open, letting in a blast of night air and shivery drops of rain. Eli kicks it shut and, with Len writhing in his grip, looks down at me.

  “I got your message. Are you okay?”

  I remain on the floor, still as heavy as the dead, and nod.

  “Good,” Eli says. “Now would you mind telling me what the hell is going on here?”

  I agree to start talking after Eli helps me tie Len to a chair in the living room. Since she’s still Katherine in his mind, it takes some convincing. He ultimately goes along with it only because he had just seen her on top of me brandishing a knife.

  But now Len is restrained with ropes knotted too tightly for him to get free like he did in the bedroom, and Eli and I are in the den, watched by the moose on the wall as we sit across from each other.

  “How much have you had to drink today?” Eli asks.

  “A shitload.” I look him in the eyes, waiting until he blinks. “That doesn’t mean any of what I’m about to tell you is a lie.”

  “I hope not.”

  I proceed to tell him everything.

  I start with Len’s crimes, using the driver’s licenses and locks of hair pulled from behind the loose board in the basement as proof. They now sit on the coffee table between us. After taking a single glance, Eli told me he didn’t want to look at them anymore, yet his gaze keeps drifting to the pictures of Megan Keene, Toni Burnett, and Sue Ellen Stryker as I recount how I learned what Len had done.

  “Then I killed him,” I say.

  Eli, in the midst of sneaking another glance at the IDs, looks up at me, shocked.

  “He drowned,” he says.

  “Only because I caused it.”

  I hold his rapt attention as I describe the events of that night, detailing every step of my crime.

  “Why are you telling me this now?” Eli asks.

  “Because it helps everything else make sense,” I say.

  The everything else is what’s been going on at Lake Greene. Again, no detail is skipped and not a single bit of my bad behavior is overlooked. I hoped admitting everything would leave me feeling as cleansed as a sinner after confession. Instead, I only feel shame. I’ve committed too many wrongs for the blame to rest solely with Len.

  Eli listens with an open mind. After getting to the part about Len taking possession of Katherine’s body, I say, “You were right. Something was in the lake, waiting. I don’t know if it’s all bodies of water or just Lake Greene or something special about Len. But it’s true, Eli. And it’s happening right now.”

  He says nothing after that. He simply stands, leaves the den, and goes to where Len is being kept. Their voices drift in from the living room, too hushed and urgent to be heard clearly.

  Ten minutes pass.

  Then fifteen.

  Eli ends up speaking with Len for twenty minutes. A fraction of the time I spent talking, but long enough for me to get anxious that he doesn’t believe me. Or, worse, believes whatever lies Len is telling him.

  I hold my breath as Eli finally returns to the den and sits down.

  “I believe you,” he says.

  “I—” I struggle to speak, flustered by both surprise and relief. “Why? I mean, what convinced you?”

  Eli cranes his neck to pass a glance into the distant living room. “She—sorry, he—admitted it.”

  That word—he—tells me Eli’s serious. Knowing that he believes me would typically leave me fainting with relief if not for the last thing I need to tell him.

  My plan for what’s next.

  Again, I go through every step, answering all of Eli’s questions and addressing each of his concerns.

  “It’s the only way,” I tell him when I’m done.

  Eventually, Eli nods. “I suppose it is. When do you plan on doing it?”

  I turn to the window, surprised to realize that while I was talking to Eli and he was talking to Len, the storm had moved on. No more gusts rattle the windows and no more rain thrums against the roof. In their place is the quiet stillness that always follows wild weather, as if the atmosphere, having blustered and bellowed to exhaustion, is now taking a long, restful breath. The sky, once so dark, has now thinned to a medium gray.

  Dawn is on its way.

  “Now,” I say.

  In the living room, Eli and I stand before Len, who’s still trying to pretend he’s bored by all of this. The old Len might have been able to get away with it. The new one, stuck with Katherine’s exquisitely expressive face, can’t. Curiosity peeks through his impatient facade.

  “Tell me where you put those girls,” I say, “and I’ll let you go.”

  Len perks up, his feigned boredom vanishing in a snap. “Just like that? What’s the catch? There has to be one.”

  “No catch. There’s not a whole lot I can do here. I can’t kill you because it would mean killing Katherine, too. And I can’t keep you tied up like this forever. Like Tom Royce, I could try. Chain you up in the basement. Feed you and bathe you. But more people are going to start looking for Katherine, and it’ll only be a matter of time before they find you.”

  “And I can go anywhere?”

  “The farther, the better,” I say. “You can try to live like Katherine Royce for a while, but I suspect that’ll be extremely difficult. She’s pretty famous. Her four million Instagram followers will easily pick you out in a crowd. My advice is to change your appearance and get away as far and as fast as you can.”

  Len thinks it over, no doubt considering the hurdles of starting a new life in a new place in a very recognizable body.

  “And you’re willing to help me?”

  “I’m willing to drop you off at the Royces’ dock,” I say. “After that, you’re on your own. What you do is none of my concern.”

  “It should be,” Len says. “I could cause a whole lot of trouble out there on my own. Or, for that matter, a whole lot of trouble right here. You know what I’m capable of.”

  If his goal is to get a rise out of me, it doesn’t work. I assumed he would make such a threat. To be honest, I would have been shocked if he hadn’t.

  “It’s a risk I have to take,” I say. “This isn’t an ideal option. It’s the only option. For both of us.”

  Len looks to Eli. “He stays here.”

  “I already told him that.”

  While I would love to have Eli by my side through all of this, I need him to go to the house next door and distract Boone. The last thing I want is for Boone to see me and someone he thinks is Katherine out on the lake.

  He would definitely try to stop me.

  So would Eli if he knew what I really have planned.

  “It’ll just be the two of us,” I tell Len.

  He beams. “Like I always wanted.”

  Before we leave, I fold Megan’s, Toni’s, and Sue Ellen’s driver’s licenses and locks of hair back into the handkerchief and force Eli to take them.

  “If I don’t come back, give these to Detective Wilma Anson,” I say, writing down her name and phone number. “Tell her they’re from me. She’ll know what to do with them. And what they mean.”

  “You do plan on coming back, right?” Eli says.

  I respond with what I hope is a believable “Of course.”

  With Eli’s help, I release Len from the chair. Once he’s standing, we force his wrists in front of him and bind them together, much to his protest.

  “I thought you were letting me go.”

  “I am,” I say. “After you show me exactly where you put those girls. Until then, the ropes stay.”

  Len shuts up after that, remaining mute as we walk him onto the back porch. The blanket from the boat sits heaped in one of the rocking chairs. I pick it up and drape it over Len’s shoulders. While not quite a disguise, it will hopefully make it slightly harder for Boone to see who’s in the boat with me if Eli fails to distract him.

  The three of us march down the porch steps, across the grass, and to the dock. Signs of the recently passed storm are everywhere. The trees have been stripped of their autumn leaves, which now litter the ground in patches of orange and brown. A large branch, snapped by the wind, lies across one of the Adirondack chairs by the firepit.

  The lake itself has swollen past its banks, with water pooling in the grass along the shore and covering the dock in spots. Len splashes through it, a noticeable spring in his step. He has the appearance of a hostage who knows he’s about to freed.

  I look forward to the moment he realizes that’s not going to happen.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come along?” Eli says.

  “No,” I say. “But I am sure I need to do this alone.”

  Eli insists on a hug before letting me get into the boat. An embrace so tight I think he might never let go. As it goes on, I whisper into his ear: “Tell Marnie and my mother anything you want about what happened. Whatever you think will be easiest for them to handle.”

  He pulls back and searches my face, his own features going slack as he realizes I’m not going to follow the plan I laid out for him.

  “Casey, what are you going to do?”

  I can’t tell him. I know he’ll try to talk me out of it—and that he’ll likely succeed. A risk I’m unwilling to take. I’ve avoided paying for my sins long enough. Now it’s time to atone.

  “Tell them I’m sorry for putting them through my bullshit,” I say. “And that I love them and hope they can forgive me.”

  Before Eli can protest, I give him a peck on the cheek, pull away from his embrace, and step into the boat.

  The last thing I do before pushing off the dock and starting the motor is free a length of rope knotted around a cleat on the boat’s rim. Still attached to the other end of the rope is the anchor.

  I’ll need that for later.

  We set off just before sunrise, with a mist rolling over the rain-swollen lake. The fog is so thick it feels like we’re in the clouds and not on the water. Overhead, the predawn gray is beginning to blush. It’s all so beautiful and peaceful that I allow myself to forget what I’m about to do, just for a moment. I tilt my face skyward, feel the chill of a new day on my cheeks, and breathe in the autumn air. When I’m ready, I look at Len, seated in the front of the boat.

  “Where?” I say.

  He points to the southern end of the lake, and I tug the motor to life. I keep it on low—a slow glide over the water that gives me a dizzy feeling of déjà vu. This situation is just like the first time I met Katherine, right down to the blanket over her shoulders. Making it all the more surreal is knowing that nothing, not even Katherine herself, is the same.

  I’ve changed, too.

  I’m sober, for starters.

  A refreshing surprise.

  Then there’s the fact that I’m no longer afraid. Gone is the woman so terrified of having her dark secret exposed that she couldn’t sleep without a drink or three.

  Or four.

  The freedom of confession I’d so wanted back in the house finally arrives. With it comes a sense of inevitability.

  I know what’s going to happen next.

  I’m ready for it.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t asked me yet,” Len says, raising his voice to be heard over the motor’s bubbling hum.

  “Asked you what?”

  “The question that I know has been on your mind. This entire time you’ve been wondering if I ever intended to kill you when I was alive. And the answer is no, Cee. I loved you too much to even consider it.”

  I believe him.

  Which sickens me.

  I hate knowing that a man like Len—a man capable of killing three women without remorse and then dumping them into the lake we now float on—loved me. Still worse is the fact that I had loved him in return. A foolish, hopeful, naive love that I refuse to subject myself to again.

  “If you loved me at all,” I say, “you would have killed yourself before killing someone else.”

  Instead, he was a coward. In many ways, he still is, using Katherine Royce as both shield and bargaining chip. He knows me well enough to assume I’ll refuse to sacrifice her in order to get to him.

  The reality is that he has no idea how much I’m willing to sacrifice.

  As we get closer to the southern tip of the lake, Len raises his hand. “We’re here,” he calls.

  I cut the motor and everything goes silent. The only sound I hear is lake water, whipped into waves from the boat, lapping against the hull as it settles, calms, quiets. In front of us, emerging from the mist like the mast of a ghost ship, is a dead tree poking out of Lake Greene.

  Old Stubborn.

  “This is it,” Len says.

  Of course he would choose this spot. It’s one of the few places on the lake not visible from any of the houses on shore. Now the sun-bleached log juts from the surface like a tombstone, marking three women’s watery graves.

  “All of them are down there?” I say.

  “Yes.”

  I lean over the side of the boat and peer into the water, naively hoping I’ll be able to look beyond the surface. Instead, all I see is my own reflection staring back at me with eyes widened by fearful curiosity. I reach out and run my hand through the water, scattering my reflection, as if that will somehow chase it away for good. Before my reflection collects itself again, my ghostly features sliding into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, I get a glimpse of the dark depths just beyond it.

  They’re down there.

  Megan and Toni and Sue Ellen.

  “Happy now?” Len says.

  I shake my head and wipe away a tear. I’m nowhere near happy. What I am is relieved, now that I know the three of them aren’t lost forever and that their loved ones will finally be able to properly mourn and move forward.

  I pull out my phone, take a picture of Old Stubborn stretching out of the water, and send it to Eli.

  He’s expecting my text.

  The last part of the plan he’s aware of.

  What’s next is known only to me.

  First, I drop my phone into a Ziploc bag I snagged from the kitchen and seal it shut. The bag goes on my vacated seat, where hopefully it will be discovered if my text to Eli doesn’t go through. I then stand, sending the boat rocking slightly. It’s an effort to keep my balance as I move toward Len.

  “I did what you asked,” he says. “Now you have to let me go.”

  “Of course.” I pause. “Can I get a kiss first?”

  I rush forward, pull him close, force my lips upon his. At first, the difference is jarring. I’d expected it to feel like kissing Len. But Katherine’s lips are thinner, more feminine, delicate. This small relief makes it easier to keep kissing the man I once loved but who now repulses me.

  If Len senses that repulsion, he doesn’t show it.

  Instead, he kisses me back.

  Softly at first, then brutal in its intensity.

  Burning air pushes from his mouth into mine, and I know what he’s doing.

  It’s what I want him to do.

  “Keep going,” I whisper against his lips. “Don’t stop. Leave her and take me instead.”

  I push myself into him, my arms coiling around him, holding him tight. A moan escapes Len’s mouth, slides into mine, joins whatever else is pouring into me like bourbon from a bottle.

  It’s silky. Exactly how Len described it. Like air and water combined. Weightless and yet so heavy.

  The more of it that enters me, the more sluggish I feel. Soon I’m dizzy. Then weak. Then breathless. Then—oh, God—drowning in a scary mix of water and air and Len himself, his essence filling my lungs until I’m blind and choking and dropping to the boat’s floor.