Page 82 of Stranger in the Lake

In the end, we all reap what we sow.

38

Two days later, on a crisp Monday afternoon, Diana summons me to her house, a sprawling cottage of stone and shingle on the outskirts of town. She doesn’t tell me what for, or ask if I’ve been to see her son, languishing in the jail cell next to Jax’s. “I’ll explain once you get here” was all she would say, so here I am—too curious for my own good.

The door pops open, and I look back at Chet, watching with one hand draped over the steering wheel of the still-running Jeep, his fingers tapping against the dash. Chet thinks I should wash my hands of the Kellers, let them sort out their own drama.

But like I told him before he dropped me off, I’m not here for Diana or for Paul. I’m not even here for myself.

I’m here for another Keller, the one it is my duty to protect.

“Charlotte, thanks for coming.” The caramel-colored Pomeranian on her arm barks like we’ve never met before, and she gives him a little jiggle. “Dolly, hush. She’ll settle down once you’re inside. Can I get you something to drink?”

I give her the best smile I can muster. “I go by Charlie now.”

Diana seats me on an overstuffed chair in the sun porch, a glass-walled, terra-cotta-tiled room at the back of the house. Paul once told me this is why he became an architect, because of these cramped, low-ceilinged spaces connected by narrow hallways, every inch of it crammed with fussy antiques and complicated decor. It made him yearn for open spaces and clean lines, and I can see why. Even without the sun beating through the windows and Diana a few feet away in the kitchen, gathering refreshments, the room feels stuffy and oppressive.

“I just want to start by saying I’m sorry.” She settles a tray onto the table between us. Peppermint tea and raw honey and a porcelain plate piled with cookies she’ll never touch. “About Micah, I mean. What he did to you and Katherine. I had no idea he was that evil.”

She passes me a steaming cup, but I leave it on the table. “Like father, like son, I guess.”

“I suppose.” She sinks into her chair, scooping up the dog at her feet and settling it on her lap like a fuzzy pillow. “Still. I always thought those crazy stunts of Micah’s were some kind of...I don’t know...misguided attempt to prove his worth to his father—that man hasneverbeen nice, and you can quote me on that.” She strokes her dog with a hand, raking the fur with her fingernails. “It’s funny when you think about it. Micah spent his whole life trying to act so brave, when really he was a big ole scaredy-cat. Scared his daddy wouldn’t love him, scared of what people would think if they knew what he did. And in the end, scared to face up to his own sins. He took the coward’s way out. Of all the awful things he did, that one’s the worst.”

I don’t really know what to say to that, so I say nothing at all. I could point out her son lied, too, that he sat on secrets so monumental it cost him two wives, but Diana already knows these things. I press my lips together and wait for whatever it is she brought me here to say.

“Paul says you haven’t been to see him yet.”

“I’m not ready to talk to him.” I lift one shoulder. “Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.”

“I see.” She pauses to twist some honey around a polished silver spoon, then drops it into her tea. “You should know that these past twenty years have been torture for Paul. I know my son. I saw how he suffered after Katherine. He was convinced her death was the universe’s way of punishing him for what happened to Bobby. Paul didn’t want to lie to you, but he’d already lost one wife because he told her the truth. He couldn’t go through that again.”

Resentment swells, both at her words and her puffed-up tone. Something didn’t justhappento Bobby. Three drunken idiots drove him into a lake and left him for dead, and Paul’s suffering can’t wipe away his guilt. But Diana has always been her son’s greatest defender. She’s always had blinders on where he and Jax are concerned.

My eyes, however, are wide open.

“But Pauldidlie. He swore he wasn’t keeping any secrets from me, when really he was sitting on a big one. And now four people are dead. And okay, so maybe Paul didn’t technically kill them, but he had a hand in their deaths. He should have come clean after Bobby, but instead he doubled down. He should have confessed that very night.”

I believe this with everything I am. Murder and you are a murderer. Lie and you are a liar. This is how the world works. Loyalty to an old friend, even one you love like a brother, can’t wipe away the fact you were accessory to a crime.

Diana shakes her head. “But it wasn’t just anyone he was keeping quiet for, dear. It was Jax. The boy who risked his life to pull Paul from a sinking car. With the facts he was working with at the time, it felt like a fair trade. Paul’s life for his silence.”

“What about loyalty to me? I mean, granted, I didn’t think to include the word in our wedding vows, but I kind of thoughtloveandhonorandcherishcovered all the bases. Isn’t loyalty implied?”

“Yes, Charlotte, but—”

“I already told you. It’s Charlie.”

Diana sighs, a quick burst of impatient air. “Charlie. But please try to think about it from Paul’s point of view. Jax chose Paul. He let another man die so Paul could live. There is nothing Paul wouldn’t do for Jax. Nothing I wouldn’t do for him. Jax is family.”

Emphasis on the family, as if that explains everything. And for Diana, I suppose it does. All that time I spent feeling like an outsider proves that I need more than a marriage certificate to crack that Keller nut. I need something I don’t have, something I’ll never have, especially since I am no longer willing to try. This person I tried so hard to become, this dream I worked so hard to attain, it doesn’t fit me anymore.

She looks out the window, to the trees and the lake and the rolling hills on the other side, and her forehead crumples with new lines. “I mean, honestly. The second I heard that woman’s jewelry went missing, I knew that it couldn’t have been Jax. What would he want with some cheap costume pieces, anyway? He has no need for money, and he’s not that conniving. Jax is a good man.”

“He managed to keep a skeleton buried for twenty years. Clearly, he’s no saint.”

Her gaze, still defensive and hard, whips to mine. “Yes, and you can see what that did to him. Jax has paid deeply for his hand in Bobby’s death, and so has Paul. Both of them have lost so much.”

The image of Paul’s face flashes, fierce and proud and happy as he watched me make my way down the aisle, and my heart pinches with the memory. My whole life stretched out before me that day. The life I wanted. The life I thought I deserved with a handsome husband, a pretty home, a bank account overflowing with cash. If only I had looked more closely at the man behind the offer.

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