From the other side of the porch, Eli gives me another look. He’s noticed the tension between them, too. It’s impossible to miss. Tom and Katherine seem so at odds that it sucks all energy from the area, making the porch seem stuffy and crowded. Or maybe it’s just me, overheated by inebriation. Either way, I feel the need to be out in the open.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I say. “Let’s have our wine by a fire.”

  Eli rubs his hands together and says, “An excellent suggestion.”

  We leave the porch, descending the steps to ground level and the small courtyard nestled between the lakeshore and the inward corner of the house. In the center is a firepit surrounded by Adirondack chairs where I’d spent many a childhood summer night. Eli, no stranger to this area, collects a few logs from the woodpile stacked against the house and starts building the fire.

  Armed with the corkscrew, I reach for the wine bottles that are still in Tom’s grip.

  “Allow me, please,” he says.

  “I think Casey knows how to open a bottle of wine,” Katherine says.

  “Not a five-thousand-dollar bottle.”

  Katherine shakes her head, gives me another apologetic look, and says, “See? Status.”

  “I don’t mind,” I say, no longer wanting the bottles now that I know how crazy expensive they are. “Or we could open one of mine. You should keep those for a special occasion.”

  “You saved my wife’s life,” Tom says. “To me, that makes this a very special occasion.”

  He moves to the porch steps, using them as a makeshift bar. With his back toward us, he says, “You have to pour it just so. Allow it to breathe.”

  Behind us, Eli has gotten a fire going. Small flames crawl across the logs before leaping into bigger ones. Soon the wood is emitting that satisfying campfire crackle as sparks swirl into the night sky. It all brings a rush of memory. Me and Len the night before he died. Drinking wine by the fire and talking about the future, not realizing there was no future.

  Not for us.

  Definitely not for Len.

  “Casey?”

  It’s Tom, handing me a glass of five-thousand-dollar wine. Under normal circumstances, I’d be nervous about taking a single sip. But gripped by a sorrowful memory, I gulp down half the glass.

  “You have to sniff it first,” Tom says, sounding both annoyed and insulted. “Swirl it around in the glass, get your nose in close, then sniff. Smelling it prepares your brain for what you’re about to taste.”

  I do as I’m told, holding the glass to my nose and inhaling deeply.

  It smells like every other glass of wine I’ve had. Nothing special.

  Tom hands a glass to Katherine and instructs us both to take a small sip and savor it. I give it a try, assuming the wine’s taste will live up to its price tag. It’s good, but not five-thousand-dollars good.

  Rather than sniff and savor, Katherine brings the glass to her lips and empties it in a single swallow.

  “Oops,” she says. “I guess I need to start over.”

  Tom considers saying something in response, thinks better of it, takes her glass. Through clenched teeth, he says, “Of course, darling.”

  He returns to the steps, his back toward us, one elbow flexing as he tilts the bottle, his other hand digging into his pocket. He brings Katherine a generous pour, swirling the wine in the glass so she doesn’t have to.

  “Savor, remember,” he tells her. “In other words, pace yourself.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Your tilt says otherwise.”

  I look at Katherine, who is indeed listing slightly to the left.

  “Tell me more about what happened today in the lake,” Eli says.

  Katherine sighs and lowers herself into an Adirondack chair, her legs curled beneath her. “I’m still not sure. I know the water is cold this time of year, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. And I know I can swim across the lake and back because I did it all summer. But today, halfway across, everything just froze. It was like my entire body stopped working.”

  “Was it a cramp?”

  “Maybe? All I know is that I would have drowned out there if Casey hadn’t spotted me. Like that girl that vanished in Lake Morey last summer. What was her name again?”

  “Sue Ellen,” Eli says solemnly. “Sue Ellen Stryker.”

  “Tom and I were renting a place there that summer,” Katherine says. “It was all so awful. Did they ever find her?”

  Eli shakes his head. “No.”

  I take a sip of wine and close my eyes as it flows down my throat, listening as Katherine once again says, “So awful.”

  “Only swim at night,” Eli intones. “That’s what my mother told me.”

  And it’s what Eli told me and Marnie every summer when we were kids. Advice we ignored as we splashed and swam for hours under the full weight of the sun. It was only after the sun set that the lake frightened us, its black depths made even darker by the shroud of night.

  “She heard it from her own mother,” Eli continues. “My grandmother was a very superstitious woman. She grew up in Eastern Europe. Believed in ghosts and curses. The dead terrified her.”

  I slide into the chair next to him, feeling light-headed from both the wine and the topic of conversation. “Eli, please. After what happened to Katherine today, I’m not sure anyone wants to hear about that right now.”

  “I don’t mind,” Katherine says. “I actually like telling ghost stories around the fire. It reminds me of summer camp. I was a Camp Nightingale girl.”

  “And I’m curious why swimming at night is better than daytime,” Tom says.

  Eli jerks his head toward the lake. “At night, you can’t see your reflection on the water. Centuries ago, before people knew any better, it was a common belief that reflective surfaces could trap the souls of the dead.”

  I stare into my glass and see that Eli’s wrong. Even though it’s night, my reflection is clearly visible, wobbling on the wine’s surface. To make it go away, I empty the glass. Savoring be damned.

  Tom doesn’t notice, too intrigued by what Eli just said. “I read about that. In the Victorian era, people used to cover all the mirrors after someone died.”

  “They did,” Eli says. “But it wasn’t just mirrors they were worried about. Any reflective surface was capable of capturing a soul.”

  “Like a lake?” Katherine says, a smile in her voice.

  Eli touches the tip of his nose. “Exactly.”

  I think about Len and get a full-body shudder. Suddenly restless, I stand, go to the wine bottle on the porch steps, and pour myself another glass.

  I empty it in three gulps.

  “And it wasn’t just the Victorians and their superstitious relatives in Eastern Europe who thought this way,” Eli says.

  I reach for the bottle again. It’s empty, the last few dregs of wine falling into my glass like drops of blood.

  Behind me, Eli keeps talking. “The tribes that lived in this area long before any European settlers arrived—”

  I grab the second bottle of wine, still uncorked, which annoys me almost as much as what Eli’s saying.

  “—believed that those trapped souls could overtake the souls of the living—”

  Instead of asking Tom to do it, I pick up the corkscrew, prepared to jam it into a five-thousand-dollar bottle of wine I have no business touching.

  “—and that if you saw your own reflection in this very lake after someone had recently died in it—”

  The corkscrew falls from my grip, slipping between steps into a patch of weeds behind the staircase.

  “—it meant you were allowing yourself to be possessed.”

  I slam the bottle down and the porch steps rattle. “Will you shut the fuck up about the lake?”

  I don’t mean to sound so angry. In fact, I don’t mean to speak at all. The words simply roar out of me, fueled by a fiery blend of alcohol and unease. In their wake, everyone else is silent. All I can hear are the steady crackle of the fire and an owl hooting in the trees somewhere along the lakeshore.

  “I’m sorry,” Eli says gently, aware of his rare lack of tact. “You were right. No one is interested in this nonsense.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just—”

  I stop talking, unsure of what it is I’m trying to say.

  It dawns on me that I’m drunk. Drunk drunk. Tipsy is now just a memory. I’ve started to tilt like Katherine, the lake going sideways. I try to stop it with a too-tight grip on the porch steps.

  “I don’t feel too good.”

  At first, I think I’m the one who says it. Another unprompted outburst, even though I’m not conscious of my mouth opening, my lips moving, my tongue curling.

  But then more words arrive—“Not good at all”—and I realize they’re coming not from me but from Katherine.

  “What’s wrong?” Tom says.

  “I’m dizzy.”

  Katherine stands, swaying like a wind-bent pine.

  “So dizzy.”

  She stumbles away from the firepit, toward the lake.

  The wineglass falls from her hand and hits the ground, shattering.

  “Oh,” she says absently.

  Then, suddenly and without warning, she collapses into the grass.

  Midnight.

  I’m alone on the porch, wrapped in the same blanket Katherine had returned earlier. I’m mostly sober, which is why there’s a beer in my hand. I need something to ease me into sleep; otherwise it’ll never happen. Even with a few drinks, I rarely sleep a full night.

  Not here.

  Not since Len died.

  Boone was right when he said the lake was too quiet. It is. Especially at this hour, when the only things breaking the steady nighttime silence are the occasional loon call or a nocturnal animal scurrying through the underbrush along the shore.

  Caught in that quiet, I stare at the lake.

  I take a sip of beer.

  I try not to think about my dead husband, although that’s difficult after what happened earlier.

  It’s been hours since everyone left, the party breaking up immediately after Katherine passed out in the grass. The Royces were the first to go, Tom mumbling apologies as he led a woozy Katherine down the dock. Even though she regained consciousness after only a few seconds, I was still concerned. I suggested letting her rest and giving her some coffee, but Tom insisted on taking Katherine home immediately.

  “This time you’ve really embarrassed yourself,” he hissed at her before starting the powerboat and zipping away.

  Hearing that side comment made me feel sorry for Katherine, who’d clearly been more drunk than I thought. I then felt guilty for feeling sorry, because it meant I was pitying her, which is a by-product of judging someone. And I had no right to judge Katherine Royce for drinking a little too much.

  On the bright side, Tom left in such a rush that he forgot his other five-thousand-dollar bottle of wine. I found it on the porch steps and put it in the liquor cabinet. Finders keepers, I guess.

  Eli lingered a little longer, dousing the fire and plucking shards of broken wineglass out of the grass.

  “Just leave it,” I told him. “I’ll get the rest tomorrow when the sun’s out.”

  “Are you going to be okay?” Eli asked as I walked him around the house to his truck.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’m doing a lot better than Katherine right now.”

  “I meant about the other stuff.” He paused, looking at the gravel driveway under his feet. “I’m sorry for talking about the lake like that. I was just trying to entertain them. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  I gave Eli a hug. “You did, but it was only temporary.”

  I believed it then. Not so much now, as thoughts of Len glide through my head as smoothly as the loons out on the lake. When my mother banished me here, I didn’t protest. She was right. I do need to lie low for a few weeks. Besides, I thought I’d be able to handle it. I’d spent more than a year living in the apartment I’d shared with Len. I didn’t think the lake house could be any worse.

  But it is.

  Because this is the place where Len died.

  It’s where I became a widow, and everything about it—the house, the lake, the damn moose head in the den—reminds me of that fact. And it will continue to do so for as long as I’m alive.

  Or sober.

  I take another sip of beer and scan the shoreline on the other side of the lake. From the Fitzgerald place to the Royces’ to Eli’s house, all is dark. A thick mist rises from the lake itself, rolling languidly toward land in billowy waves. Each one skims onto shore and surrounds the support beams below the porch in a swirl of fog like seafoam crashing against the pylons of a pier.

  I’m watching the mist, hypnotized, when a sound breaks the night’s silence.

  A door creaking open, followed by footsteps on wood.

  They’re coming from my right, which means the Mitchell place.

  After a few more seconds, Boone Conrad appears—a slim silhouette making its way toward the end of the Mitchells’ dock.

  The binoculars still sit on the table next to my chair. I lift them to my eyes and get a closer view of Boone. He’s reached the edge of the dock and stands there in nothing but a towel, confirming my first impression of him.

  Boone Conrad is fit as hell.

  Even though Eli suggested I keep clear of Boone, which I completely understand, he said nothing about not being allowed to look at him. Which I do, feeling only a twinge of guilt as I keep watching him through the binoculars.

  That twinge becomes a pang—and something more—when Boone loosens the towel and lets it fall to the dock, revealing that he’s not wearing anything underneath.

  I lower the binoculars.

  I raise them again.

  I consider the morality of watching someone without his knowledge or consent. Especially someone naked.

  This is wrong, I think as I continue to stare. So very wrong.

  Boone remains on the dock, basking in the moonlight, which makes his pale body look like it’s glowing. He then glances over his shoulder, almost as if he’s checking to see if I’m watching. I still am, but he can’t know that. He’s too far away and all the lights are off here, leaving me hidden in darkness. Yet a smirk crosses Boone’s lips anyway, one that’s arousing and shame inducing in equal measure.

  Then, satisfied that whoever might be watching got a good show, he dives into the water. Although freezing, the lake probably feels like bathwater compared with the cold night air. Even if it doesn’t, Boone pays it no mind. His head pops out of the water about ten feet from the dock. He shakes it, flinging water from his shaggy hair, and begins to swim. Not with purpose, like I imagine Katherine was doing when she ran out of steam in the middle of the lake. Boone swims the way I used to do when I was a kid. Playful. Moving willy-nilly through the water. He ducks under again and emerges floating on his back, eyes on the starlit sky.

  He looks, if not happy, then at least at peace.

  Lucky him, I think as I lift the beer bottle to my lips and take a big swallow.

  In the water, something catches Boone’s attention. His head snaps to the opposite shore, where a light has flicked on in the Royce house.

  First floor.

  The kitchen.

  I swing the binoculars away from Boone in time to see Katherine dressed in satin pajamas and staggering into the kitchen like she has no idea where she is.

  I know the feeling well.

  Hands running along walls, floors spinning, reaching for chairs that are only two feet away but feel like twenty.

  Watching Katherine throw open kitchen cupboards, searching for something, I’m overwhelmed by a sense of familiarity. This is me on many, many nights. Different person. Different kitchen. Same drunken reeling.

  Katherine finds what she’s looking for—a glass tumbler—and drifts to the sink. I nod, pleased to see she also knows the importance of hydration after a night of drinking.

  She fills the glass, barely taking a sip before her attention drifts to the window at the sink. Katherine stares straight ahead, and for a sliver of a second, I think she’s looking right at me, even though that’s impossible. Like Boone, she can’t see me. Not from the other side of the lake.

  Yet Katherine keeps her gaze fixed in my direction. It’s not until she touches her face, sliding her fingers from cheek to chin, that I understand.

  She’s not looking at me.

  She’s examining her reflection in the window.

  Katherine stays that way a moment, drunkenly fascinated by what she sees, before returning to the glass of water. Tipping it back, she empties the glass and refills it. After a few more thirsty gulps, she sets the glass down and leaves the kitchen, her gait noticeably more assured.

  The kitchen light goes out.

  I turn once more to the Mitchells’ dock, hoping for another glimpse of Boone. To my disappointment, he’s no longer there. While I was busy watching Katherine, he got out of the water, grabbed his towel, and went back inside.

  Bummer.

  Now it’s just me and the darkness and the bad thoughts rolling like the mist off the lake.

  I tighten the blanket around my shoulders, finish my beer, and get up to fetch another one.

  The worst part about drinking too much—other than, you know, drinking too much—is the morning after, when everything you gulped down the night before comes back to haunt you.

  The steady drumbeat of a headache.

  The churning stomach.

  The bladder close to bursting.

  I wake with all three, plus a sensitivity to sunlight that borders on the vampiric. It doesn’t matter that the long row of bedroom windows faces west, ignored by the sun until early afternoon. The brightness pouring through them is still enough to make me wince the second I open my eyes.