The Lake
All I knew at first was that my husband was screaming. I could hear it from the moment I picked up the phone, not angry shouting but a sobbing, moaning, stream-of-consciousness babbling—Lizzieareyouthereohfuckohfuckyouneedtocomerightnowpleasefuckfuckingfuck—that made every hair on my body stand on end, even though I could only pick out my name and one other word. It was the “please” that did it. It wasn’t a word Dwayne used, especially not with me, and especially not like that. The last time I’d heard it, he was screaming in the background, his foot crushed to a pulp, while one of his work buddies yelled into the receiver that I needed to meet them at the hospital.
The “please” is what I remember. It scared the shit out of me.
Maybe that’s why I grabbed the gun.
Sometimes, it felt like my purpose in life was to build little castles, plant little gardens, just so that Dwayne could come clomping through and knock it all down. Not even on purpose or out of meanness; it was just how he was, a clumsy, selfish, idiot animal who couldn’t understand that every action had consequences. Who never considered how one little act of cruelty or kindness could reverberate down the line, bigger, louder, until it broke everything apart. But who am I to judge? I never understood, either. Not until it was much too late. Dwayne didn’t play ball at State because he stayed in Copper Falls and married me. He lost half his foot at that logging job, the job he took because he had a pregnant wife and bills to pay and no college degree. He got hooked on the pills because of the accident. He turned to dope when the pills ran out.
And Adrienne—that rich, entitled, privileged bitch who was so desperate that she’d do anything, even heroin, to escape the terrible boredom of being herself—she knew Dwayne was a guy who could get dope for her, because I told her all about it. I sat there with her, drinking chardonnay, and I blabbed my stupid face off. Everything that happened, the endless saga of deferred dreams, ruined bodies, pills and needles and pain, was like a little mechanical theater, just clicking along. And if you pulled back the curtain, there I was. Every time. All of the times. All the way back, to the very first moment where everything began to go wrong.
It only made sense that I was there at the end. That it was me, not Dwayne, holding the gun. Pulling the strings. Making the choice, like I had so many times, to clean up the mess that my man had made. I’d already lied for him, stolen for him. Maybe it was inevitable that eventually I’d kill for him, too.
I don’t remember pulling the shotgun down from the wall before I left. I don’t remember loading it. But as I pulled up to the lake house, I looked over, and there it was. Sitting on the passenger seat. Just along for the ride. Dwayne was waiting for me outside, pacing, his eyes wild. I felt a flare of anger, then fear: the Richardses’ big, black SUV was parked neatly in the carport. Our guests had arrived. And if Dwayne wasn’t sick or injured, that meant the frantic phone call must have been about something—someone—else.
The gun was in my hands as I stepped out of the car. I don’t remember what I said to him; I do remember that he pointed toward the house and said, “She’s in the bedroom,” and I went running through the open door not knowing what waited for me inside. Knowing only that it must be bad, beyond bad, for my husband to admit that he needed me.
Adrienne was curled up on the edge of the bed with both feet still on the floor, so slow and sleepy that I knew right away she was stoned. An overdose, I thought. Had she found Dwayne’s drugs? Had he given them to her? Why else would he be so panicked—and how could he be so stupid? I put the gun aside and screamed for him, demanding to know how much she’d taken, how much he’d given her, whether he’d called an ambulance. If they got here in time, they could hit her with Narcan. I knelt down, grabbed her by the shoulder, and shook her, hard. She gazed back at me with slack lips, her pupils huge and dark. There was a smudge of dried blood in the pit of her elbow, deep red and perfectly round, and a length of rubber tubing lying on the floor at her feet. Her eyes were glassy.
“Hey!” I yelled in her face. “Stay with me! Stay awake!”
She flinched at that. Her big blue eyes opened wide as she looked over my shoulder, focusing on Dwayne.
“I,” she said, and took a deep breath before letting out the rest of the sentence as a long, slow sigh, “am soooooo fuuuuuuuucked.”
Her eyes flicked in the direction of the deck outside. I stood and turned to look at Dwayne, who was bent at the waist with his hands braced against his knees, breathing hard.
“Dwayne?” I said. “I don’t understand, is she—did you—what the fuck is happening?”
Adrienne took another deep breath, exhaled again with a soft whisper.
“He’s outside,” she said. Her breath smelled sour; I wondered if she was going to vomit, or already had.
“Dwayne’s right here,” I said, and both she and Dwayne shook their heads in unison. He stood and gestured at me to follow.
“Not me,” he said. “Him. The husband.”
Adrienne pressed her hands against the bed—already made up with the high thread-count sheets I’d ordered just for her, after she complained that the linens at the lake house were too scratchy—and sat up with a grunt. Her lips peeled back from her teeth as she turned her head to look out the window, grimacing with the effort.
“Ethan,” she said. She blinked, so slowly that it took several seconds for the movement to complete: heavy lashes descending downward, then opening only to half-mast. She pursed her lips, and her tone turned hopeful. “Maybe he’s not dead anymore.”
Ethan Richards was halfway down the long stairs that started at the deck, descending steeply down the wooded coastline to the lake. He’d fallen headfirst, and while there was no blood, the utter stillness of his body against the busy landscape, the movement of the water and the trees gently creaking in the breeze, left no room for doubt. One of his legs was bent unnaturally beneath him, and there was a dark splotch on the front of his pants where his bladder had let go. His head was the worst part: it was hanging over the edge of one step at a hideous angle, dangling, as though his neck bones had shattered so completely that only his skin was still keeping it attached. His eyes were open, unseeing, facing the lake. The last thing he would have seen, if he was still alive when he landed, was the fiery blush of the changing trees on the opposite bank and the bright ripples of sunlight on the cold, dark water.
Even with a dead body sprawled awkwardly in the foreground, it was beautiful. Breathtaking. It was true, what I’d told Adrienne: this was my favorite time of year.
I had a creeping feeling that this was the last time I would ever enjoy it.
“How did it happen?” I said quietly. I was still praying even then that maybe it had been an accident, even though every instinct I had was telling me it was something so much worse. Adrienne was a mess—she would need several hours and a nap before I could expect any answers from her—but Dwayne wasn’t stoned at all, and the expression on his face was pure horror: a grown-up version of the way he’d looked all those years ago, on the day he killed Rags. He kept flicking his eyes toward the bedroom, and it occurred to me that he must have helped Adrienne inject the drugs before preparing his own. Ladies first.
“I fucked up,” he said. His eyes were red, and he kept pushing his hands into his hair, gripping the sides of his skull like he was trying to keep it from coming apart. I stepped forward to peer more closely at Ethan’s body. Even from high above, twenty feet away, I could see a discoloration on the curve of his jaw, the barest beginnings of a bruise. There was a matching one on Dwayne’s cheek.
“He hit me first,” Dwayne said. I whirled to face him.
“So you pushed him down the fucking stairs?”
“No, I—” he began, then shook his head furiously. “I didn’t mean it. I was defending myself. I just wanted him to back off. I didn’t think he’d die.”
“But why? Why were you fighting in the first place?”
Dwayne’s eyes slid sideways, and Adrienne’s syrupy voice answered instead.
“Ethan doesn’t like it when I try new things,” she cooed. She’d managed to get off the bed and was leaning against the frame of the sliding door that opened onto the deck, one bare knee tucked behind the other. “He wasn’t supposed to know. He was supposed to be in the boat. He likes the boat.” She lifted a hand in slow motion, raised a finger to point at Dwayne, the most languid of accusations. “You said he was in the boat.”
“He was,” Dwayne said, and looked at me helplessly. “I was splitting wood when they got here. I let them in like you asked, and he said to bring in the suitcases because he wanted to go out in the kayak right away, while it was still sunny. I saw him putting it in, but I guess . . . he changed his mind, maybe. He walked in right when—but she wanted to. It was her idea!”
Adrienne’s eyelids were drooping again.
“I need to lie down,” she said. “I don’t feel right. It feels different this time. My arms are so heavy.”
I stared at Dwayne. “This time?” I said through gritted teeth. “How many times has she done this?”
“I don’t know. A few.” He was whining now.
“Since when?”
“This summer,” he said. “She asked.”
“She asks for lots of things,” I hissed.
Adrienne made a croaking noise, somewhere between a retch and a belch. I turned just in time to see her cheeks bulge, then hollow out as she swallowed her own vomit. She grimaced and took a few tentative steps out, bracing two hands against the railing to gaze down at the body on the stairs below. The trees creaked. The lake glimmered. Ethan Richards stayed dead.
“You killed him,” she said, in the same slow, sleepy voice. And then, almost as an afterthought: “Wow.”
It was the “wow” that did it. I crammed my own fist into my mouth to stifle the shriek of hysterical laughter. My father had built those stairs with his bare hands. Now Ethan Richards was sprawled out on them with a broken neck, and his wife was too stoned to do anything but barf in her own mouth and say “wow.”
Adrienne stumbled back inside.
“We need to call the police,” I said.
Dwayne blanched. “But—”
“We have to. Right now. It already looks bad that you didn’t call them right away, and when she comes down, she’s going to figure that out. If she’s not calling them herself—”
“She was already nodding off when it happened,” he interrupted. “You saw her. She’s gonna be in and out like that for another hour at least. And anyway, I unplugged the phone after I called you. Just in case.”
I stared at him in disbelief. He sounded almost proud of himself, but the worse part was the expression on his face: haunted, scared, and guilty, yes, but also hopeful. My husband had called me and then unplugged the phone, knowing that I would come running, so sure that I’d fix what couldn’t be undone. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to scream. Why had he had to bring his addiction here—to Adrienne, to the lake, to the house that I’d actually thought could be a path to a better life? The house my father had deeded to me, to me alone, so that no matter what else happened, I would have at least one thing, one place, that was mine.
It wouldn’t be mine anymore. Not when this was all over. Dwayne had made sure of that. I had read the fine print on the rental agreements, the ones that outlined what you could and couldn’t be sued for if someone got hurt on your property. Accidents were covered. Your junkie husband pushing a billionaire down the stairs was not. He would probably go to prison, probably for a long time, but I’d be handed my own life sentence. Everything I’d worked for, the life and the future I’d finally started to build here in a place where both were so hard to come by, was about to go up in flames.
I sat down heavily in one of the deck chairs, and put my head in my hands. Dwayne squatted beside me.
“We just have to get our story straight,” he said. “So they understand it was an accident.”
“An accident?” I snapped. “You pushed him down the stairs and he broke his neck. How is that an accident?!”
Dwayne grabbed my hand and peered urgently into my face. “But it wasn’t like that! I didn’t push him down the stairs. I hit him, and he kind of reeled backward, and then he fell down the stairs. Doesn’t that mean it was an accident? Like, legally?”
“No,” I said. “Jesus Christ. Legally, you fucking killed someone. And what about the drugs? Are we going to tell the cops how that was just an accident, too? You were running through the house with a syringe full of dope and you tripped and fell on top of Adrienne and whoopsie, the needle went in?”
“That’s not funny, Lizzie.”
“I’m not laughing, Dwayne. What did you think would happen when I got here?”
“I don’t know! I thought you’d have an idea! You’re so fucking smart, right? You always act like it, like you’re so much smarter than me!” He was shouting now, flecks of spittle flying off his lips and landing in his beard. He stood, started pacing, and his voice grew hoarse. “I’m not a bad person. I’m not a bad person! I just made a mistake! They can’t put me in jail for one mistake!”
“Oh, DJ,” I said, and my voice broke. It had been years since I’d called him by the nickname. “Of course they can. And you know what’s great? You called me, and now I’m involved. That’s what it looks like now, like I was part of it. So probably, we both go to prison. You’ve fucked me over, too.”
Dwayne sucked his teeth, sighed, and eased into the deck chair beside me.
“I guess that’s how it is, huh?” he said matter-of-factly. He looked over at me, a funny little smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “I fuck you over. You fuck me over. And on and on. That’s just our whole fucking life, isn’t it? That’s just what we do.” He sighed. “So fine. You want to call the cops?”
I looked out at the lake. The sun was dipping lower, casting long, deep shadows across the water. Somewhere on the opposite bank, a loon began its loopy call, laughing hysterically all alone. We sat, listening, and then both jumped when another, closer bird suddenly screamed in response. Calling across the water to its mate. They shrieked together as the breeze grew stronger, as the trees creaked and groaned above. From the bedroom behind us came the light rattle of Adrienne, snoring. I wondered briefly if I could somehow pin the entire thing on her. That we’d shown up to welcome them to the house and found them just like this: one stoned and sleeping, one stone dead. The police might believe that, I thought . . . for five seconds, until Adrienne woke up and spilled her guts.
I sighed.
“Shut up and let me think,” I said.
He did.
It was two hours later, close to sunset, when Adrienne woke up. I stood in the doorway, watching her. She struggled to a seated position, but there was no grogginess or confusion in her expression as she gazed back at me. I shifted uneasily. Her eyes narrowed, and she cleared her throat.
“I thought the police would be here by now,” she said. “My husband is dead, isn’t he? I know he is. Dwayne killed him. I saw it. Why aren’t they here?”
I stepped into the room. “We were waiting for you to wake up. We need to talk.”
“Talk about what?” she spat back, rubbing her eyes. “Jesus, what time is it? And where’s Ethan? Has he been just . . . just lying out there? You just left him there?!”
“That’s what we want to talk to you about,” I said, and looked over my shoulder at the hallway behind me. This was Dwayne’s cue: I beckoned and he stepped into the room, taking a few steps toward Adrienne before he seemed to think better of it and came to an awkward, hovering stop, halfway between us. He looked from me to her and back again.
“Listen,” he said. “We’re all in this together now.”
Adrienne blinked at him. “Excuse me?”
I took a step toward her, too, and said, “What Dwayne means is, we need to figure out what to tell the police. Given the situation. I know you asked him to hook you up with heroin—”
“Oh, is that what you told her?” she said, looking at Dwayne with a smirk. Her tone had changed, that Southern drawl creeping in around the edges of her words.
I held up my hands. “I’m saying, it makes this complicated. For all of us. If you hadn’t been shooting up, none of this would have happened.”
Adrienne cocked her head, folded her arms, and pressed her lips together. Long seconds ticked by while I waited for her to reply. Dwayne was pushing his hands into his hair again.
“So,” she said finally. “Blackmail. Is that what you think we’re doing? I pretend Ethan pushed himself down the stairs, and you won’t tell them that I was experimenting with illicit substances. Do I have that right?”
“Nobody said anything about blackmail,” I said hurriedly, even as a sardonic inner voice added the subtext: Not out loud, anyway. “I’m just saying, there were . . . extenuating circumstances. A lot happened here.”
The smirk played on her lips again. “Extenuating. You don’t know the half of it.”
“So help me understand, then,” I said. “When I got here, you were—”
“I was high on the dope your husband pushed on me,” she said, glaring at Dwayne, whose mouth dropped open.
“Because you asked for it!” he said. “As soon as Ethan walked away, you asked if I had any!”
“Did I?” Adrienne said. “I’m not sure I remember it that way.”
“Adrienne, please,” I said, desperation creeping into my voice. “We need to think clearly about this. It’s not just about Dwayne. If the police think you were involved, you’ll be in just as much trouble as any of us.”
In fact, I had no idea if this was true. But Ethan’s body had been there for hours now, the telltale bruise from Dwayne’s fist discoloring its jaw, and Adrienne had been here when it happened. This was the best I could come up with, the plan that hours of sitting and thinking had yielded: to talk to Adrienne and try to convince her that it was in all of our best interests to say that Ethan’s death had been an accident. I thought she might take some convincing, some coaxing, but this—the strange little smile, the narrowed eyes, the teasing tone, and the way she kept looking at Dwayne—was unsettling and not at all what I’d expected. I wondered, briefly, fleetingly, if there was something she wasn’t telling me. Something everyone else in the room knew that I didn’t.
I should have wondered harder. I should have asked.
But I didn’t.
Because that was when Adrienne stood up, jabbing a finger at me, and said, “Let me explain this to you, Lizzie. Both of you. I’m the victim. I’m the survivor. You think the police are going to believe you over me? Your redneck junkie husband shot me up with dope and murdered Ethan, and you—for all I know, you were in on it. You probably planned it! Was I even supposed to wake up?”
It was my turn to stare. “Excuse me?” I said. Even then, I was already unwittingly starting to mimic her, using the same words Adrienne herself had used only moments ago.
Adrienne whirled, facing Dwayne. “That needle. It felt different this time. Didn’t I say that? What did you give me?”
He gaped at her. “Nothing. I mean, nothing different.” He looked at me with wide eyes. “Honestly. I swear. I wouldn’t—”
“What?” Adrienne shrieked. “You wouldn’t what? Kill someone? Should we ask my husband what he thinks about that?”
I took a deep breath. My ears felt like they were on fire, and a rapid pulse was pounding behind my eyes. I could still fix this, couldn’t I? I had to.
“Adrienne, that was an accident. Nobody tried to kill you,” I said.
“I don’t believe you!” she screamed. She looked wildly from me to Dwayne, and then, suddenly, she let loose a short bark of laughter. Shaking her head, she said, “Oh God, and it doesn’t even matter. Look at the two of you. Look at me, and look at you. You’re a pair of fucking trash bags. When I tell people what you did, nobody will believe you when you say you didn’t. If I say that you lured us out here to the middle of nowhere so that you could kill us and rape us and rob us, they’ll believe me.” She was talking faster now, her hands fluttering, her voice creeping up in pitch. “The police, the press. Holy shit, what a story. People will go crazy for it. I’ll probably get a book deal. I mean. I mean, Lizzie. Just look. Look at me, and look at you.”
Adrienne was breathing hard, and so was I. I could hear Dwayne babbling in the background, but I ignored him. I focused. Because something important was happening: I was doing what Adrienne wanted.
I was looking at her. I was looking at her very carefully.
Her hair was a mess, her makeup smeared. She was wearing her favorite outfit, the red bikini and the striped slub tee, clothes I’d bought for myself but given to her before I ever got to wear them, because there was so much dirt and tar at the lake and she was worried about staining her dry-clean-only wardrobe. Her skin was splotchy. Her lips were cracked. She even had a bruise on one knee.
We looked more alike than ever.
Adrienne smiled triumphantly.
I reached for the gun.
When I was a little girl, and Pop was first teaching me how to shoot a rifle, he told me that the most important thing about hunting was waiting for the right moment. After the buck wandered into your sights, but before he caught your scent and bolted. He taught me that being a good shot wasn’t worth shit unless you could also be patient. He told me that pulling the trigger was mostly about not pulling the trigger. You had to wait. You had to know. You had to see when the time was right—but then, you couldn’t hesitate. When the moment came, you got one breath to do what had to be done.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Squeeze.
And you had to be ready. Not just for the crack of the bullet and the jolt of the kickback, but for what came after. The dying gasp. The final twitch. The creature that had been moving a moment ago, gone forever and irretrievably still.
He told me that taking a life, even an animal’s life, is something you can never take back. But if you have the patience, if you have the strength, if you choose your moment: you can do what has to be done. And you can know, in your heart, that you made the right choice.
I was making the right choice. Even Adrienne was always telling me I deserved a better life. I don’t think she really meant it. I don’t think she thought about me much at all. But I guess, somewhere along the way, I must have started to believe her.
Adrienne was standing very still, staring at the shotgun.
“Dwayne,” I said. “Step back.”
“What are you doing?” he said, sounding bewildered. But for once, he did what I asked. He stepped back.
I racked a bullet.
Adrienne lifted one hand, her index finger extended. I’ll never know what she meant to do, accuse me or ask for time.
“You crazy bitch,” she said, and then swiveled her head to look at my husband. “Dwayne,” she said, through gritted teeth. “Dwayne! Tell her to stop! Do something!”
I took a breath. The light in the room shifted from golden to pink, as the sun dipped behind the treeline. Inhale. Exhale.
“I don’t know why you’re looking at him,” I said. Already, my voice didn’t sound like my own.
Squeeze.
The shotgun kicked against my shoulder.
Outside, a loon screamed on the empty lake.
Next to me, my husband whispered another woman’s name.
There was so much blood.