Page 20 of Stranger in the Lake

My brother, Chet, the only soul on the planet still allowed to call me Charlie. My cell has been lighting up with his messages all morning, and the truth is I’ve been expecting him. My brother is a needy guy, and he doesn’t take well to anybody ignoring him, least of all me.

I swipe my eyes with my sleeves, clear the tears from my throat. “In the kitchen.”

There’s the thump of him kicking the heavy door with a boot, the thuds of his soles echoing in the high atrium of the house as he heads straight for the back window. He presses his face to the glass, looking down the hill to where Micah and the others are trampling what’s left of the summer grass. “What’s going on? Did somebody get arrested or something?”

“No. Somebody died.”

His head whips around, his eyes bulging. “No shit. Likedied, died?”

I nod, flipping on the water and rinsing out my bowl. “She washed up sometime last night.”

He glances back out the window, down the hill to the dock. “Popular spot.”

I don’t want to feel that little niggle of doubt, but it nudges me between the ribs anyway. One body under the dock is a tragedy. Two is a pattern. I tell myself that it is a coincidence, that Paul had nothing to do with either. He was in bed with me all last night, and he loved Katherine. Her death was an accident, one he mourns to this day.

And yet I still hear all Sam’s awful, horrible arguments, the words he said the night before I walked down the aisle to marry Paul. That former competitive swimmers don’t just sink to the bottom of the lake. That drowning is the hardest murder to prove. That one of the reasons Paul is so loaded is because he inherited all her wealth. I don’t know how much, but it’s got to be millions. Her family had even more money than Paul’s, and she got it all when they passed.

“Chet, stop. This is serious. They think she was murdered.”

“Seriously? Why? Who was she?”

“I don’t know. A tourist, I guess.”

He whistles between his teeth. “Talk about a crappy vacation.”

I smile despite myself, a particular talent of Chet’s. The other is the way his eyes, big and green and framed with a thick fringe of lashes, really open up his face, make it seem like he’s paying attention even when he’s not, which is pretty much the only reason he made it through school. His teachers liked him enough to let him squeak by with a C minus.

He steps away from the window, clomping in his boots across the rug and into the kitchen. He doesn’t bother to ask, just moves around the island and flips the switch on the coffee machine. Chet knows his way around Paul’s kitchen, and the two share a taste for strong espresso, which is about the only thing they have in common.

I sink onto a stool at the counter, taking in his grungy jeans and the ring of scruff around his mouth and along his chin. His hair is even shaggier, long and slicked back off his face, curling up where it hits the collar of his coat. I know we live in the Appalachians, but still. He’s taking the mountain man look a little too far.

“What’s up with the hair? Are you interviewing for Hells Angels or something?”

He rears back, frowning down his nose at me. “What’s wrong with my hair? You never complained about it before.”

No need to define what he means bybefore. Before Paul, when my boyfriends looked just like Chet, all denim and leather and hair one week away from shaggy. Sometime in the past year, Paul’s style, short and well clipped, has grown on me.

“Besides, you’re one to talk. You don’t look so great, either.”

Chet doesn’t have to tell me. I saw myself in the hallway mirror earlier, the unwashed hair I worked into a messy braid down one shoulder, the clothes that look dug from the bottom of the laundry basket, my face pale and shiny with sweat. I know I look like hell. I feel like it, too.

“Yeah, well,youwalk up on a dead body in your backyard and let’s see how you look afterward. She was under the dock, Chet, just...bobbing there. She looked like a mannequin or something. Her skin was practically see-through. And then they flipped her over and I saw her face.” I shudder, a chill hijacking my spine at the memory of her one-eyed stare into the sky, at the shock of Paul’s words:No, I don’t know her. “I’m pretty sure my heart stopped.”

Chet frowns. “What, had you seen her around or something?”

I shake my head. “I just meant it freaked me out, is all.”

That’s the thing about lies, that they demand commitment. Once you spout one off, you have to stick to your story, to think before blurting the next words. Even at home, and even with Chet.Especiallywith him. He’s the last person in Lake Crosby capable of keeping a secret.

He brushes it off with a shrug. “Understandable, I guess. Remember all those nightmares I had after Uncle Jerry’s funeral? The way they just laid him out on that refrigerated table, his eyes all sunken in and stuck together with glue. I don’t care what anybody says—he didn’t look asleep. Creeped me way the hell out, too.”

“Exactly.” I steer us to a safer subject. “So what’s the big emergency?”

“Who says there’s an emergency? Can’t a guy drop by to see his favorite sister?” Chet steps to the fridge, sticks his whole head inside. “Hey, you got any of that pumpkin spice creamer? That stuff was the shit.”

“I’m your only sister, and it’s gone.” I don’t mention that Paul dumped it after he spotted it at the very back of the fridge, half-hidden behind a tub of Greek yogurt and some organic orange juice. As long as I’ve known him, Paul’s position has been, if it doesn’t come from a farm or the organic market, it has no business going in the body.

“Palm oil, cane sugar, artificial flavoring,” Paul said, squinting at the back label, “but you know what this stuff doesn’t have? Milk.” He twisted open the top, turned it upside down in the drain. “Imagine that, a coffee creamer without so much as a drop of dairy. You’re going to grow a third ear if you keep drinking this crap.”

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