Outside, Eli returns to the pickup, this time removing a cardboard box from the back. Provisions for me that I assume he’ll be bringing over sooner rather than later.
I direct the binoculars back to the Royces’。 Katherine’s at the living room window now. A surprise. Her unexpected presence by the glass hits me with a guilty jolt, and for a moment, I wonder if she can see me.
The answer is no.
Not when she’s inside like that, with the lights on. Maybe, if she squinted, she could make out the red plaid of my flannel shirt as I sit tucked back in the shadow of the porch. But there’s no way she can tell I’m watching her.
She stands inches from the glass, staring out at the lake, her face a gorgeous blank page. After a few more seconds at the window, Katherine moves deeper into the living room, heading toward a sideboard bar next to the fireplace. She drops some ice into a glass and fills it halfway with something poured from a crystal decanter.
I raise my own glass in a silent toast and time my sip to hers.
Above her, Tom Royce is out of the bathroom. He sits on the edge of the bed, examining his fingernails.
Boring.
I return to Katherine, who’s back at the window, her drink in one hand, her phone in the other. Before dialing, she tilts her head toward the ceiling, as if listening to hear if her husband is coming.
He’s not. A quick uptilt of the binoculars shows him still preoccupied with his nails, using one to dig a smidge of dirt out from under another.
Below, Katherine correctly assumes the coast is clear, taps her phone, and holds it to her ear.
I let my gaze drift back to the bedroom, where Tom is now standing in the middle of the room, listening for his wife downstairs.
Only Katherine isn’t talking. Holding her phone and tapping one foot, she’s waiting for whoever she just called to answer.
Upstairs, Tom tiptoes across the bedroom and peeks out the open door, of which I can see only a sliver. He disappears through it, leaving the bedroom empty and me moving the binoculars to try to catch his reappearance elsewhere on the second floor. I swing them past the exercise room to the office.
Tom isn’t in either of them.
I return my gaze to the living room, where Katherine is now speaking into the phone. It’s not a conversation, though. She doesn’t pause to let the other person talk, making me think she’s leaving a message. An urgent one, from the looks of it. Katherine’s hunched slightly, a hand cupped to her mouth as she talks, her eyes darting back and forth.
On the other side of the house, movement catches my attention.
Tom.
Now on the first floor.
Moving out of the kitchen and into the dining room.
Slowly.
With caution.
His long, quiet strides make me think it’s an effort not to be heard. With his lips flattened together and his chin jutting forward, his expression is unreadable. He could be curious. He could be concerned.
Tom makes his way to the other side of the dining room and he and Katherine finally appear together in the binoculars’ lenses. She’s still talking, apparently oblivious to her husband watching from the next room. It’s not until Tom takes another step that Katherine becomes aware of his presence. She taps the phone, hides it behind her back, whirls around to face him.
Unlike her husband’s, Katherine’s expression is easily read.
She’s startled.
Especially as Tom comes toward her. Not angry, exactly. It’s different from that. He looks, to use Marnie’s description, intense.
He says something to Katherine. She says something back. She slips the phone into her back pocket before raising her hands—a gesture of innocence.
“Enjoying the view?”
The sound of another person’s voice—at this hour, in this place—startles me so much I almost drop the binoculars for a second time that day. I manage to keep hold of them as I yank them away from my face and, still rattled, look for the source of the voice.
It’s a man unfamiliar to me.
A very good-looking man.
In his mid-thirties, he stands to the right of the porch in a patch of weedy grass that serves as a buffer between the house and rambling forest situated next to it. Appropriate, seeing how he’s dressed like a lumberjack. The pinup-calendar version. Tight jeans, work boots, flannel shirt wrapped around his narrow waist, broad chest pushing against a white T-shirt. The light of magic hour reflecting off the lake gives his skin a golden glow. It’s sexy and preposterous in equal measure.
Making the situation even weirder is that I’m dressed almost exactly the same way. Adidas sneakers instead of boots, and my jeans don’t look painted on. But it’s enough for me to realize how frumpily I always dress when I’m at the lake.