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.