The House Across the Lake

Resuming a “Then” section, Casey confronts Boone about why he called Katherine, and Boone confesses to her that she doesn’t know the full extent of his and Katherine’s relationship. Earlier that summer, when the Royces were at the lake house for Labor Day, Boone and Katherine had flirted with one another, swimming together at night. Before Katherine left for New York, the flirtation culminated in a kiss. The morning that Casey saved Katherine from drowning, she’d swum over to see Boone and told him he needed to stop calling her, effectively ending their relationship. Later that night, Katherine called Boone and left him a voicemail, which he ignored and deleted. Casey realizes that this must have been the phone call she witnessed that night when spying on the Royces.

However, Boone’s lie creates doubts around everything he has said. Casey asks if he gave Katherine anything to drink that last morning when they were together, and when he answers lemonade, Casey wonders if it was Boone who poisoned Katherine. Feeling unsafe, she grabs a knife and demands he leave and never return to her house again.

Downing several drinks beforehand, Casey sets about locking up her house, which forces her down to the basement she’s been avoiding. While in the basement, she is confronted with unwanted memories of Len. Back upstairs, she does a web search on Boone Conrad and learns that he was probed in the investigation of his wife’s death because of some discrepancies in his testimony, further throwing doubt on his credibility. Remembering finding a search for Boone Conrad on the Royces’ laptop, she decides to call Wilma Anson with the new information, suspecting that he may have been involved. In their conversation, Casey lets slip that she snuck into the Royces’ house. Wilma is irate, reminding her that she could arrest her, and that her interference could damage the case. When Casey says that Boone’s behavior is suspicious, Wilma firmly denies the possibility of his involvement, leaving Casey to realize that Wilma is completely loyal to Boone. Feeling alone now, Casey decides she must take matters into her own hands, outside of the law.

Back on her porch with her bourbon, Casey worries about Tom and Boone. Eli is not home, and when she tries to call him, she reaches voicemail. As she watches the other houses, she sees Tom grab a thermos and a flashlight and hike out toward the supposedly empty Fitzgerald house. When she sees him return, she springs into action, sprinting to her boat and paddling toward the Fitzgerald’s house. Meanwhile, the storm rolls in, the rain and wind making the water choppy and dangerous. Once at the Fitzgerald’s, she breaks in through a window and begins to search. Hearing a noise, she goes down to the basement where amid heaps of junk there is an old bed to which Katherine has been tied. Katherine looks haggard and sick and begs Casey to help her. As Casey tries to untie the knots that bind her, Tom appears and drags Casey away.

Tom tells Casey that he is protecting Katherine from herself. When Casey questions what he means, he says that he believes the story Eli told them about the spirits in the lake was true, and when Katherine almost drowned, someone else possessed her. Casey turns back to Katherine and asks her who she is, and Katherine responds, “It’s me—Len” (246). Confused by this turn of events, Casey thinks the couple may be sharing a delusion and asks to speak to Katherine alone. Even while alone, Katherine insists that she is actually Len, and when Casey asks her to prove it, Katherine/Len states something that only the two of them would know: that Casey murdered Len.

Back in a “Now” section that brings the timeline of the book back into congruence, Casey reveals that the person tied up on the bed isn’t Tom, but Katherine/Len. Casey struggles to distinguish between the two; “She’s now a vessel for someone else. Someone worse. I suppose what’s happening is a lot like demonic possession” (255). Len’s possession of Katherine is horrifying to Casey, and her memories come rushing back unbidden.

During the last summer that Casey and Len spent at the lake house together, they’d been building a fire to enjoy one evening. Casey went to the basement to grab a lighter from Len’s tacklebox and uncovered the driver’s licenses and locks of hair of the three missing girls: Megan Keene, Toni Burnett, and Sue Ellen Stryker. When she searched to see if she could provide an alibi for Len on any of the days the girls went missing, she realized she couldn’t, and confronted the truth: Len was a serial killer.

At first, she intended to run straight to the police and turn him in, but when she returned upstairs, she began to worry about what her life would look like in the aftermath. Afraid of becoming a social pariah and losing her career, Casey decided to try to make Len confess himself, hoping this will make her seem more of an innocent victim to the public. She drugged him with wine and antihistamines, hoping to get him relaxed enough to admit to everything. After Len was intoxicated, Casey convinced him to go out on the water in their boat. There, unable to wait any longer, she confronted him about what she found. Upset at having been caught, Len begged Casey not to go to the police. Casey, brimming with hatred toward Len for the betrayal and the pain he’d inflicted, decided to kill him, “Because someone needed to make Len pay” (267). She pretended to pull Len in for an embrace and then shoved him out of the boat into the dark water.

Back in the present, Casey struggles with what Katherine has just admitted to knowing. She believes there’s no way anyone could have known what she did to Len, making her believe that Katherine is truly possessed. In addition, the way Katherine mimics Len’s speech patterns begins to frighten her. She questions her perception, wondering if she is dreaming or dying. All the memories she’s been suppressing with alcohol return, and she remembers watching Len drown, consciously choosing not to save him.

Although she immediately wanted to call and confess to Marnie, Casey was afraid of what would happen if she was turned in. So, she decided to hide the evidence of her crime, staging the scene of Len’s “accident” and burying the evidence of his crimes she found in his tackle box. These choices later fill her with regret because she knows that she has robbed his victims of closure. Feeling anguish at her actions, she began to drink to avoid confronting the memories of what she discovered and how she responded. Keeping her secret close, Casey only divulged a bit of what she knew by sending the postcard to the police with the tip about the lake.

However, she feels now that she’s been granted a second opportunity to find out what Len did to his victims and turn that information in to the police. Despite not knowing how Katherine is being possessed by Len, she decides to make the most of the situation. Katherine’s mannerisms and speech patterns are so like Len’s that she begins to see him instead of Katherine.

Casey unties Katherine. The two of them fight Tom back and finally trap him in a room, though he entreats Casey not to trust Katherine. Struggling through the storm, Casey keeps Katherine tied up and Katherine cooperates, still acting as Len. When they arrive back at Casey’s lake house, she brings Katherine to her upstairs childhood bedroom and ties her to one of the beds. Feeling terrified of what she must do next, Casey goes downstairs to make some coffee before beginning her interrogation. Just then, Wilma Anson shows up, inquiring if she’s been watching the Royce house. The scene catches up to the opening current day scene, as Wilma informs her that Tom Royce has gone missing.