When I joked with that editor acquaintance of mine about naming her proposed memoir How to Become Tabloid Fodder in Seven Easy Steps, I should have included one more in the title. A secret step, tucked like a bookmark between Five and Six.

Discover your husband is a serial killer.

Which I did the summer we spent at Lake Greene.

It was by accident, of course. I wasn’t prying into Len’s life, searching for any dark secrets, because I’d foolishly assumed he didn’t have any. Our marriage had felt like an open book. I told him everything and thought he had been doing the same.

Until the night I realized he wasn’t.

It was less than a week after our picnic on the bluff at Lake Greene’s southern tip. Since that afternoon, I’d given a lot of thought to Len’s suggestion that we become like Old Stubborn poking from the water and stay here forever. I’d decided it was a fine idea, and that we should try it for a year and see how it went.

I thought it would be nice to tell him all of this at night as we drank wine outside by the fire. Complicating my plan was the fact that, thanks to a morning drizzle that had soaked the ridiculously long fireplace matches we’d left out overnight, there was no way to start said fire.

“There’s a lighter in my tackle box,” Len said. “I use it to light my cigars.”

I made a gagging noise. He knew I hated the cigars he sometimes smoked while fishing. The stench lingered long after he was done with them.

“Want me to get it?” he said.

Since Len was busy opening a bottle of wine and slicing some cheese to pair with it, I told him I’d go to the basement and fetch the lighter. A split-second decision that changed everything, although I didn’t know it at the time.

To the basement I went. There was no hesitation back then. Just a quick clomping down the stairs followed by a straight shot to the mudroom and the long wall rack filled with our outdoor gear. Above it was the shelf on which Len kept his tackle box. It was a stretch to reach it. Standing on my tiptoes with my arms extended, I grabbed it with both hands. Everything inside the box rattled together as I lowered it to the floor, and when I opened it, I saw a tangle of rubbery lures colored like candy but bearing barbed hooks sharp enough to draw blood.

A warning, I know now. One I instantly ignored.

I found the lighter at the bottom of the tackle box, along with a couple of those blasted cigars. Beneath them, tucked in a back corner, was a red handkerchief folded into a lumpy rectangle.

At first, I thought it was weed. Although I hadn’t used marijuana since my drug-fueled teenage years, I knew Len still occasionally did. I assumed it was something else he smoked while fishing when he wasn’t in the mood for a cigar.

But instead of a baggie full of dried leaves, when I unfolded the handkerchief I found three driver’s licenses. A lock of hair was paper-clipped to each one, colored the same shade as the hair of the woman pictured on it.

I flipped through the licenses a dozen times, the names and faces shuffling like a slide show from hell.

Megan Keene.

Toni Burnett.

Sue Ellen Stryker.

My first thought, born of naïveté and denial, was that they had been placed there by someone else. It didn’t matter that the tackle box belonged to Len and that few people came to the lake house. My mother’s visits had grown less frequent as she got older, and Marnie and my aunt had stopped coming entirely years earlier. Unless there was some renter I didn’t know about, that left Len.

The second thought, once that initial hopefulness had worn off, was that Len had been fucking around. Until then, I’d never given infidelity much thought. I wasn’t a jealous wife. I never questioned my husband’s faithfulness. In a business full of philanderers, he didn’t seem like the cheating kind. And even as I held three strangers’ IDs in my hand, I continued to give Len the benefit of the doubt.

I told myself there had to be a rational explanation. That these licenses, all of which were current, and strands of hair were simply props kept from a film he’d worked on. Or research for a future project. Or that the licenses had been sent to him by crazed fans. As someone who’d once been met at the stage door by a man trying to give me a live chicken he’d named after me, I knew all about weird fan gifts.

But then I took another look at the licenses and realized two of the names were vaguely familiar. Leaning against the mudroom’s ancient sink, I pulled out my phone and Googled them.

Megan Keene, the first familiar name, had gone missing the previous summer and was assumed to be the victim of foul play. I’d heard about her because Eli told us all about the case when Len and I had spent a week at the lake the summer she disappeared.

Sue Ellen Stryker, the other name I recognized, had been all over the news a few weeks earlier. She disappeared and was thought to have drowned in a different lake several miles south of here. As far as I knew, police were still trying to recover her body.

I found nothing on Toni Burnett except a Facebook page started by friends of hers seeking information about where she might be. The last time anyone saw her was two months after Megan Keene vanished.

Instantly, I became ill.

Not nauseated.

Feverish.

Sweat formed on my skin even as my body shook with chills.

Still, a part of me refused to believe the worst. This was all some horrible mistake. Or sick joke. Or strange coincidence. It certainly didn’t mean Len had made those three women disappear. He simply wasn’t capable of something like that. Not my sweet, funny, gentle, sensitive Len.

But when I checked the calendar app we both used to keep track of our schedules, I noticed an unnerving trend—on the days each woman went missing, we weren’t together.

Sue Ellen Stryker vanished during a weekend in which I had returned to New York to do voice-over work for a commercial. Len had stayed here at the lake house.

Megan Keene and Toni Burnett both disappeared when Len had been in Los Angeles, working on the superhero script that had bedeviled him for months.

That should have been a relief.

It wasn’t.

Because I had no proof he truly was in LA both of those times. We traveled for work so much—both together and separately—that I never stopped to wonder if Len’s stated destination was where he had actually gone. According to the calendar, those two LA trips were weekenders. Fly out Friday, come back Monday. And even though I was certain Len had called me from the airport each time before taking off and after landing, it dawned on me that he also could have made those calls from a rental car heading to and from Vermont.

On the day Megan Keene disappeared, Len had stayed at the Chateau Marmont. At least, that’s what the calendar app claimed. But when I called the hotel and asked if Leonard Bradley had checked in that weekend, I was told no.

“A reservation was made,” the desk clerk informed me. “But he never showed. Because he didn’t cancel, we had to charge his credit card. I’m assuming that’s what this is about.”

I hung up and called the hotel he’d allegedly stayed at the weekend Toni Burnett had vanished. The answer was the same. Reservation made, room never canceled, Len never arrived, weekend charged to the credit card.

That’s when I knew.

Len—my Len—had done something horrible to those girls. And the locks of hair and the licenses in his tackle box were mementos. Sick souvenirs kept so he could remember his kills.

In the span of minutes, I experienced every terrible emotion you can think of. Fear and sadness and shock and confusion and despair, all colliding in a single, devastating moment.

I cried. Hot tears that, because I was trembling so hard, shook from my cheeks like raindrops off a windblown tree.

I moaned, shoving my fist into my mouth to keep it from being heard by Len upstairs.

The anger, hurt, and betrayal were so overwhelming I honestly thought they would kill me. Not a horrible prospect, all things considered. It certainly would have put me out of my misery, not to mention saved me from facing the dilemma about what to do next. Going to the police was a given. I had to turn Len in. But when? And how?

I decided to tell Len that I couldn’t find his lighter and that I needed to run to the store to buy more matches. Then I’d drive straight to the nearest police department and tell them everything.

I told myself it was possible. I was an actress, after all. For a few minutes, I could fake not being sick and terrified and veering between wanting to kill myself and wanting to kill Len. I shoved the licenses and locks of hair in my pocket and headed upstairs, prepared to lie to Len and run to the police.

He was still in the kitchen, looking as nerdy-sexy as always in his silly Kiss the Cook apron. He had poured two glasses of wine and arranged the cheese on a platter. It was the very picture of domestic contentedness.

Except for the knife in his hand.

Len was using it innocently enough, slicing a salami to join the platter of cheese. But the way he gripped it, with a smile on his face and his hand so tight his knuckles had turned pale, made my own hands shake. I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d killed those three girls with that same knife, using that same tight grip, sporting that same contented grin.

“That took forever,” Len said, oblivious to the fact that everything had changed since we last saw each other. That my entire existence had just turned to ash like I was a character in one of those fucking superhero movies he was supposed to be working on while he was really here, ending the lives of three people.

He continued to slice, the blade thwacking against the cutting board. As I listened to it, all those horrible emotions I’d been feeling went away.

Except for one.

Fury.

It vibrated through me, like I was a water glass struck with a hammer. I felt just as brittle. Just as ready to shatter. And as it coursed through me, I started to come up with reasons why I shouldn’t go to the police. At least, not alone.

The first thing I thought about was my career. God help me, it was. A fact that I still hate myself for. But I knew instantly that this was going to end it. No one would hire me after this. I’d become a pariah. One of those people involved in something so shameful it taints their reputation forever. As soon as word got out that Len was a murderer, people would judge me—and very few would give me the benefit of the doubt. I was certain most people would question how I failed to notice there was a serial killer right under my nose, living in my apartment, sleeping in my bed.

I knew because I was asking those very same things. How did I not suspect anything? How did I miss the signs? How did I not know?

Even worse would be the people who assumed I did know about it. There’d be plenty of speculation, wondering if I was a killer myself. Or at least an accomplice.

No, the only way I could do this and keep my reputation and career intact was if Len went with me. If he confessed—to me, then to the police—then maybe I’d emerge from the situation unscathed. An innocent victim.

“Sorry,” I said, shocked I was able to speak at all. “Marnie texted me about something.”

Len stopped slicing, the knife hovering over the cutting board. “Texted? I thought I heard you talking to someone.”

“I ended up calling her. You know how much she likes to chat.”

“What about the lighter?”

I gulped, uneasy. “What about it?”

“Did you find it?”

“Yes.”

With that one word, I started to prepare for what would surely be the worst night of my life. I handed Len the lighter and asked if he could start the fire while I went upstairs to change clothes. In the bedroom, I shoved the licenses in the back of a dresser drawer before slipping into a pair of jeans and a floral blouse Len always said made me look extra sexy. In the bathroom, I grabbed several tablets of the antihistamine he used to ward off allergies. In the kitchen, I dropped one of them into a glass of wine and took it outside to Len. My goal was twofold—get him relaxed enough to confess while also keeping him drunk and drugged enough so that he wouldn’t become violent or dangerous.

Len drank the wine quickly. When he was finished, I brought the glass inside, added another antihistamine, filled it up.

Then I did it a third time.

For the rest of the night, I smiled and chatted and laughed and sighed contentedly and pretended to be perfectly happy.

It was the greatest performance I ever gave.

“Let’s go out on the water,” I said as midnight drew near.

“In the boat?” Len said, his voice already a slurred murmur. The pills were working.

“Yes, in the boat.”

He stood, swayed, dropped like a sack back into his chair. “Whoa. I’m really tired.”

“You’re just drunk,” I said.

“Which is why I don’t want to take the boat out.”

“But the water’s calm and the moon is so bright.” I leaned in close, pressing my breasts against him and bringing my lips to his ear. “It’ll be romantic.”

Len’s expression brightened the way it always did when he thought he was about to get laid. Seeing it then made me wonder if he looked exactly like this while he killed Megan, Toni, and Sue Ellen. That horrible thought stuck with me as I led him into the boat.

“No motor?” he said when I pushed off from the dock.

“I don’t want to wake the neighbors.”

I rowed to the center of the lake and dropped the anchor into the water. By this time, Len was as high as the moon.

Now was the time.

“I found them,” I said. “The driver’s licenses in your tackle box. The locks of hair. I found it all.”

Len made a little noise. A low half chuckle of realization. “Oh,” he said.

“You killed those women, didn’t you?”

Len said nothing.

“Answer me. Tell me you killed them.”

“What are you going to do if I say yes?”

“Call the police,” I said. “Then I’m going to make sure you go to jail and never, ever get out.”

Len suddenly began to cry. Not out of guilt or remorse. These were selfish tears, bursting forth because he’d been caught and now had to face his punishment. Bawling like a child, he leaned toward me, arms outstretched, as if seeking comfort.

“Please don’t tell on me, Cee,” he said. “Please. I couldn’t control myself. I tried. I really did. But I’ll be better. I swear.”

Something overcame me as I watched my husband cry for mercy after showing none for others. An internal realignment that left me feeling as hollow and ablaze as a jack-o’-lantern.

It was hatred.

The seething, unquenchable kind.

I hated Len—for what he’d done, for deceiving me so thoroughly.

I hated him for destroying the life we had built together, erasing five wonderful years and replacing them with this moment of him weeping and begging and grasping for me even as I recoiled.

I hated him for hurting me.

But I wasn’t the only victim. Three others suffered far worse than me. Knowing this made me hope they had at least tried to fight back and, in the process, brought Len some amount of pain. And if they hadn’t, well, I was now able to do it on their behalf.

Because someone needed to make Len pay.

As his angry, deceived, now-ruined wife, I was suddenly in a position to do just that.

“I’m so sorry, Cee,” Len said. “Please, please forgive me. Please don’t turn me in.”

Finally, I relented and pulled him into an embrace. Len seemed to melt as I wrapped my arms around him. He put his head to my chest, still sobbing, as a thousand memories of our marriage passed through my thoughts.

“I love you so much,” Len said. “Do you love me?”

“Not anymore,” I said.

Then I pushed him over the side of the boat and watched him vanish into the dark water.