Night has fully fallen by the time Wilma leaves. I go through the dark house turning on lights before heading to the kitchen to decide what to make for dinner. The glass of bourbon I poured last night still sits on the counter. The sight of it makes me quake with thirst.

I pick it up.

I bring the glass to my lips.

Then, thinking better of it, I take it to the sink and pour the bourbon down the drain.

I do the same with the rest of the bottle.

Then another.

Then all the bottles.

My mood swings like a pendulum as I rid the house of alcohol. There’s the same fury one feels when clearing out a no-good lover’s belongings. There’s I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this laughter. There’s excitement, wild and chaotic, along with catharsis and desperation and pride. And there’s sadness—a surprise. I didn’t expect to be mourning a drinking life that has only brought me trouble. Yet as the contents of bottle after bottle swirl down the drain, I’m overcome with grief.

I’m losing a friend.

A horrible one, yes.

But not always.

Sometimes drinking did indeed bring me great joy, and I’ll miss it.

After an hour, the doors to the liquor cabinet sit wide open, exposing only emptiness within. Filling the counter are all the bottles it had once contained, each one now drained. Some were older than a millennial; others were bought this week.

Now only one remains, a five-thousand-dollar bottle of red on the dining room table that belonged to Tom Royce. Knowing how much it cost, I couldn’t bring myself to pour that one down the drain. Through the dining room window, I see the Royce house blazing in the October night. I’d return the wine now if it weren’t so late and I weren’t so tired.

Emptying all those bottles has left me exhausted. Or maybe that’s just a symptom of withdrawal. Already, I’m dreading the myriad side effects that are surely in store.

A new Casey is on her way.

A strange feeling. I’m me—but also not. Which, come to think of it, is probably how Katherine felt before Len completely took over.

I’m just not myself lately, she told me. I haven’t felt right for days.

The memory arrives with the force of a thunderclap. Loud. Jarring. Charged with electricity.

Because what Katherine told me that day doesn’t track with everything else. When I learned that Len had returned and was controlling her like a marionette, I assumed he was the reason she’d felt so weird, so weak.

He was partly to blame, of course. I learned that myself from the short time he was inside me.

But Len wasn’t the sole reason Katherine felt that way.

I know because when she confessed to not feeling quite herself, it was the morning we had coffee on the porch. One day after I pulled her out of the lake. But according to Katherine, she felt off earlier than that—before Len entered the picture.

It was like my entire body stopped working.

I turn away from the window and look at the bottle of wine sitting on the table.

Then I grab my phone and call Wilma Anson.

The call immediately goes to voicemail. After the beep, I don’t leave my name or number. I simply shout what I need to say and hope Wilma hears it in time.

“That piece of wineglass I made you take? Did a report come back from the lab yet? Because I think I was right, Wilma. I think Tom Royce was—is—trying to murder his wife.”

I end the call, rush out to the porch, and grab the binoculars. It takes me a second to adjust the zoom and the focus. The Royce house blurs and unblurs before becoming crystal clear.

I scan the house, checking each room.

The kitchen is empty.

So is the office directly above it and the master bedroom to the right.

I finally locate Katherine in the living room. She’s on the sofa, propped up by throw pillows and lying under a blanket. On the coffee table beside her sits a large glass of red wine.

Still holding the binoculars to my eyes with one hand, I reach for my phone with the other. It bobbles in my hand as my thumb slides along the screen, scrolling to Katherine’s number.

Across the lake, she reaches for the wine, her hand curling around the glass.

I grip the phone tighter and hit the call button.

Katherine brings the glass to her lips, about to take a sip.

The phone rings once.

She perks up at the sound, the hand holding the glass going still.

Second ring.

Katherine looks around the room, trying to locate her phone.

Third ring.

She spots it sitting on a nearby ottoman and sets the glass back down on the coffee table.

Fourth ring.

Katherine reaches for the phone, the blanket slipping from her lap. She clutches it with one hand while the other stretches for the phone.

Fifth ring.

“Hang up the phone, Casey.”

I lower the binoculars and whirl around as Tom emerges from my house, joining me on the porch. The bottle of wine is in his hand, gripped by the handle like a club. He smacks the blunt end into the open palm of his free hand as he comes closer.

Katherine’s voice squawks from my phone as she finally answers.

“Hello?”

Tom wrenches the phone from my hand, hangs up, and flings it over the porch railing. The phone lands with a crack in the darkness below before bleating out a ring. Katherine calling me back.

“By now, I bet you wish you hadn’t been so nosy,” Tom says. “None of this would be happening if you had just stayed out of it. Katherine would be dead, you’d be here drinking yourself into a stupor, and I’d have enough money to save my company. But you just had to rescue her and then watch us nonstop, like our lives were a fucking reality show. And you ruined everything once you got the police involved. Now I can’t just slowly poison Katherine. Now I need to be extra careful, cover my tracks, make it truly look like an accident. That’s why I kept her tied up in the basement instead of killing her outright. Lucky for me, your husband had a lot of interesting things to say about that.”

I flinch—a reaction I can’t prevent because I’m too focused on the heavy glass of the wine bottle still slapping into Tom’s palm.

“We talked a lot while he was in that basement,” he says. “Chatted for hours. There wasn’t much else to do once your detective friend started breathing down my neck. You want to know the most surprising thing he told me?”

He lifts the bottle, brings it down.

Slap.

“That I killed him,” I say.

“Not just that. It was how you did it that was so fascinating.”

Slap.

“A perfect murder,” Tom says. “Far better than what was in that play of yours. That’s where I first got the idea, but you already know that. Poisoning my wife little by little so she dies of something else and I inherit everything.”

Slap.

“But your husband—good old talkative Len—gave me a much better idea. Antihistamine in some wine. Make her good and drowsy. Drop her into the water and let her sink. The police around these parts never seem to suspect foul play when a person drowns. As you well know.”

Slap.

Somewhere below, my phone stops ringing as Katherine gives up.

“She’s probably taking a sip right now.” Tom gestures to the binoculars still clutched in my hands. “Go ahead and watch. I know you enjoy doing that.”

I raise the binoculars, needing both hands to keep them from shaking. The Royce house jitters anyway, as if an earthquake is taking place. Through the shimmying lenses, I see that Katherine has moved to the living room window. She stares outside, the glass of wine back in her hand.

She brings it to her lips and drinks.

“Katherine, no!”

I don’t know if Katherine hears my scream flying across the lake because Tom is upon me in an instant. I swing the binoculars at his head. He blocks them with his arm before slamming the bottle against mine.

I drop the binoculars as pain shoots through my arm.

I cry out, stumble backwards against a rocking chair, and collapse onto the porch.

“Now you know how it feels,” Tom says.

He swings the bottle again. It whooshes past my face, mere inches away.

I scramble backwards along the porch, my right arm throbbing as Tom continues to swing the bottle, slicing the air, bringing it closer.

And closer.

And closer.

“I know how to make you disappear,” Tom says. “Len told me that, too. All it takes is some rope, some rocks, some deep, deep water. You’ll vanish, just like those girls he killed. No one will ever know what happened to you.”

He swings the bottle again, and I scoot out of the way, edging onto the top of the porch steps.

Tom swings again and I duck, trying to keep my balance. A moment of weightlessness follows—cruel in its deception that I might be able to resist the pull of gravity. It ends with a thud onto the next step.

Then I tumble, backflipping down the steps, the edge of each one feeling like a punch.

To my hip.

To my back.

To my face.

When it’s over, I’m flat-backed on the ground, clanging with pain and woozy from the fall. My vision blurs. Tom drifts in and out of focus as he follows me down the steps.

Slowly.

One at a time.

The bottle again smacking into his hand.

Slap.

I try to scream, but nothing comes out. I’m too hurt, too out of breath, too scared. All I can do is try to stand, stumble toward the water, hope someone will see me.

Tom catches up to me at the lake’s edge. I’m sloshing into the water when he snags my shirt, tugs me toward him, swings the bottle.

I lurch to the left, and the bottle crashes down onto my right shoulder.

More screaming pain.

The blow knocks me to my knees. I splash deeper into the lake, the water now at my hips, cold as ice. The chill zaps me with just enough energy so I can twist toward Tom, wrap my arms around his knees, and pull him down with me.

We submerge as one—a seething, writhing mass of tangled arms and kicking legs. The wine bottle slips from Tom’s hand, vanishing into the water just as he drags me out of it. He wraps his hands around my neck and, squeezing, dunks me back under.

I run out of air instantly. The lake is so cold and Tom’s hands are so tight around my neck and I can’t see anything in the dark water. Shoved to the bottom of the lake, I kick and writhe and thrash as my chest gets tighter and tighter. So tight I fear it’s going to explode.

Yet all I can think about is Len.

In this very same lake.

Waiting for me to die in the dark water so he can take over once more.

I can’t let that happen.

I fucking refuse.

I run a hand along the lake bed, seeking out a rock I can use to hit Tom. Maybe it’ll be enough to make him stop pressing against my throat. Maybe he’ll let go entirely. Maybe I’ll be able to escape.

Instead of a rock, my fingernails brush glass.

The wine bottle.

I reach for it, grab it by the neck, swing.

The bottle bursts from the surface, slicing through the air before slamming into the side of Tom’s skull.

His hands fall away from my neck as he grunts, sways, topples over. I rise from the water. Tom splats into it, facedown and motionless.

On the other side of the lake, police cars have started to gather in the Royces’ driveway. Their lights reflect off the water in spinning streaks of red, white, and blue as officers swarm the back patio and rush inside.

Wilma got my message.

Thank God.

I try to stand, but am only able to bring myself into a kneeling position. When I attempt to yell to the cops, my cries come out a muted croak. My throat’s too battered.

Next to me, Tom remains facedown in the water. Just above his left ear is a small crater where the bottle connected with his skull. Blood pours from it, mixing with the water and forming a black cloud that blooms and spreads.

I know he’s dead the moment I flip him over. His eyes are as dull as old nickels and his body eerily still. I touch his neck, finding no pulse. Meanwhile, the blood continues to ooze from the dent in his head.

I finally stand, bending my legs to my will. The wine bottle, still intact, remains gripped in my hand. I take it to shore, placing it in a strip of rocks between lake and land.

Behind me, Tom jerks back to life with a watery gasp.

Not a shock.

Not in this lake.

I march back into the water and grab his arms. I try not to look at him, but it can’t be avoided as I drag him ashore, making sure no part of his body is still touching the lake. He catches my eye and smiles.

“We need to stop meeting like this,” he says before hissing the nickname I’m both dreading and expecting. “Cee.”

“We will,” I say.

I grab the bottle, smash it against the rocks, and, with a stab and a twist, drive the jagged edge into his throat until I’m certain he’ll never be able to speak again.