“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.