But then I think about Katherine. And how Tom has lied—blatantly lied—about her whereabouts. And how if I don’t do anything about it now, no one will. Not until it’s too late. If it isn’t too late already.
So I pull the door open a little wider, slip inside, and quickly close it behind me.
Inside the Royce house, the first thing that catches my eye is the view from the wall-sized windows overlooking the lake. Specifically the way my family’s charmingly ramshackle lake house appears from here. It’s so small, so distant. Thanks to the shadows of the trees surrounding it, I can barely make out the row of windows at the master bedroom or anything on the back porch beyond the railing. No rocking chairs. No table between them. Certainly no binoculars. Someone could be sitting there right now, watching me from across the lake, and I’d have no idea.
Yet Katherine knew I was watching. The last night I saw her, right before Tom jerked her away from this very spot, she looked directly at that porch, knowing I was there, watching the whole thing happen. My hope is that it comforted her. My fear is that it left her as unnerved as I feel right now. Like I’m in a fishbowl, my every move exposed. It brings a sense of vulnerability I neither expected nor enjoy.
And guilt. A whole lot of that.
Because today isn’t the first time I’ve entered the Royces’ house.
With my near-constant spying, in a way I’ve been doing it for days.
And although I’m certain, down to my core, that no one would have known Katherine was in trouble without me watching them, shame warms my cheeks harder than the sun slanting through the windows.
My face continues to burn as I decide where to search first. Thanks to that long-ago visit and my recent hours of spying, I’m well acquainted with the layout of the house. The open-plan living room takes up one whole side of the first floor, from front to back. Since it strikes me as the least likely place to find anything incriminating, I cross the dining room and head into the kitchen.
Like the rest of the house, it’s got a mid-century modern/Scandinavian-sparse vibe that’s all the rage on the HGTV shows I sometimes watch when I’m drunk and can’t sleep in the middle of the night. Stainless steel appliances. White everywhere else. Subway tile out the ass.
Unlike on those design shows, the Royce kitchen shows signs of frequent, messy use. Multicolored drops of food spatter the countertops. A tray on the center island holds a bowl and spoon crusted with dried oatmeal. On the stovetop is a pot with soup dregs at the bottom. From the milky film coating it, my guess is cream of mushroom, reheated last night. I assume Katherine was the cook of the marriage and Tom has been reduced to eating like a frat boy. I can’t help but judge him as I peek into the trash can and see boxes that once held microwave Mexican and Lean Cuisines. Even at my drunkest and laziest, I would never resort to frozen burritos.
What I don’t see—in the trash or anywhere else in the kitchen—are signs something bad happened here. No drops of blood among the food spatter. No sharp knife or hacksaw or weapon of any kind drying in the dishwasher. There’s not even a Dear John letter from Katherine, which is what Marnie had predicted.
Satisfied there’s nothing else to see here, I do a quick tour of the rest of the first floor—tasteful sun-room off the kitchen, guest powder room that smells like lavender, entrance foyer—before heading upstairs.
My first stop on the second floor is the only room not visible through the expansive windows at the back of the house—a guest room. It’s luxurious, boasting a king bed, sitting area, and en suite bathroom that looks like something out of a spa. It’s all crisp, clean, and completely boring.
The same goes for the exercise room, although I do examine the rack of free weights for dried blood in case any of them had been used as a weapon. They’re clean, which makes me feel both relieved and slightly troubled that I’d thought to check them in the first place.
After that, it’s on to the master bedroom, where the sight of my own house through the massive windows brings another guilt-inducing reminder that I watched Katherine and Tom in this most private of spaces. It’s made worse by the fact that I’m now inside their inner sanctum, casing it the way a burglar would.
I see nothing immediately amiss in the bedroom itself, other than an unmade bed, a pair of Tom’s boxer shorts discarded on the floor, and an empty rocks glass on his nightstand. I can’t decide which is worse—that my spying has already taught me which side of the bed is Tom’s or that a single sniff of the rocks glass instantly tells me he was drinking whiskey.