His use of the past tense sends a streak of fear down my back. I’m certain that was his intent.
“That doesn’t matter,” I say. “Tell me where she is.”
“A place where you’ll never find her.”
The fear remains. Joining it is something new: anger. It bubbles in my chest, as hot and turbulent as boiling water. I leave the room and march downstairs as the lights perform another unnerving flicker.
In the kitchen, I go to the knife block on the counter and grab the biggest blade. Then it’s back upstairs, back into the room, back to the bed where I’d slept as a child. It’s hard to fathom that that little girl is the same person now buzzed on bourbon and wielding a knife. If I hadn’t personally experienced the years between those two points, I wouldn’t believe it myself.
With trembling hands, I touch the knife’s tip to his side. A poke of warning.
“Tell me where she is.”
Rather than cower in fear, he laughs. An actual, honest-to-God laugh. It scares me even more that he finds this situation so amusing.
“You have absolutely no idea what you’re doing,” he says.
I say nothing.
Because he’s right.
I don’t.
But that’s not going to stop me from doing it anyway.
BEFORE
I wake again just after nine, my head still pounding but the spinning and nausea blessedly gone. Still, I feel like death. Smell like it, too. And I’m certain I look like it.
My mother would be appalled.
I am appalled.
As I sit up in a tangle of blankets, the first thing I notice is the muted rush of running water coming from downstairs.
The sink in the powder room.
I never turned it off.
I leap out of bed, hobble down the steps, find the tap still running at full blast. Two-thirds of the basin is filled with water, and I suspect excellent plumbing is the only thing that prevented it from overflowing. I cut the water as memories of last night come back in stark flashes.
The whiskey.
The binoculars.
The fight and the phone call and Katherine’s wave at the window.
And the scream.
The last thing I remember but the most important. And the most suspect. Did I really hear a scream at the break of dawn? Or was it just part of a drunken dream I had while passed out on the porch?
While I hope it was the latter, I suspect it was the former. I assume that in a dream, I would have heard a scream more clearly. A vivid cry filling my skull. But what I heard this morning was something else.
The aftermath of a scream.
A sound both vague and elusive.
But if the scream did happen—which is the theory working its way through my hungover brain—it sounded like Katherine. Well, it sounded like a woman. And as far as I know, she’s the only other woman staying at the lake right now.
I spend the next few minutes hunting my phone, eventually finding it still on the porch, sitting on the table next to the binoculars. After an entire night spent outside, there’s only a wisp of battery life left. Before taking it inside to charge, I check to see if I got any calls or texts from Katherine.
I didn’t.
I decide to text her, carefully wording my message while a strong mug of coffee zaps me to life and the charger does the same to my phone.
I just made coffee. Come over if you want some. I think we should talk about last night.
I hit send before I can even consider deleting it.
While waiting for a response, I sip my coffee and think about the scream.
If that’s what it really was.
I’ve spent half my life on this lake. I know it could have been something else. Many animals arrive at night to prowl the lakeshore or even the water itself. Screeching owls and loud waterfowl. Once, when Marnie and I were kids, a fox somewhere along the shore, defending its turf from another animal, screamed for the better part of the night. Literally screamed. Hearing its cries echo over the water was bone-chilling, even after Eli explained to us in detail what was happening.
But I’m used to those noises, and am able to sleep right through them. Especially after a night spent drinking. This was something different enough to startle me awake, even with most of a bottle of whiskey under my belt.
Right now, I’m seventy-five percent sure that what I heard was a woman screaming. While that’s far from certain, it’s enough to keep concern humming through me as I check my phone again.
Still nothing from Katherine.
Rather than continue to wait for a return text, I decide to call her. The phone rings three times before going to voicemail.
“Hi, you’ve reached Katherine. I’m not available to take your call right now. Or maybe I’m just ignoring you. If you leave your name and number, you’ll find out which one it is if I call you back.”