Kate's Lake: Chapter 1

FREE Excerpt: Chapter 1 from my new novel, Kate’s Lake.

Scheduled for release June 25th, 2020. Now available for pre-order here!

Chapter 1

I blame my wife for what happened.

That’s a bullshit thing to say, I know. I hate myself for even thinking it. But it’s true.

The day I left for Harry’s funeral, Amy leaned against the kitchen counter and glared at me with narrowed eyes and lips pursed to a thin, red line. Our daughters were still at school. Thank god for that little circumstance.

“You’re not even going to talk to me about it?” She drummed her fingers on the countertop.

“No.” I stood my ground. I’d made this decision. “I’m going.”

A bitter smile crossed her face. “That’s great. Real nice.” Her voice hitched. Difficult conversations weren’t easy for her.

She flipped a hand at me in a gesture that always made me feel wrong. Despite the facts or my reasons why, when she did that, I felt like a complete horse’s ass.

I scraped my tongue against the back of my teeth and said, “This is crap. How can you expect me to miss his funeral? It’s Harry.”

Her fists clenched, but the anger never touched her eyes. The crack in her armor. She’d known Harry. She knew what he’d meant to me. “I get that it’s Harry. But how long’s it been, Mick, since you spoke to him? Three years? Four?”

“Four,” I said. I couldn’t believe it’d been so long.

“Four years.” She strolled across the kitchen to a drawer at the far end of the counter, pulled out something small, and then marched right up to me. She slapped a coin onto the table and I flinched. “You didn’t have that four years ago, did you?”

My eyes crawled down to my sobriety coin gleaming silver on the table. Three years. She’d made her point. She’d stuck with me through the bad years.

“Look.” I locked onto her glare. “It’s two days. I probably won’t even talk to anyone. Hell, I don’t know anyone. I sure as hell ain’t planning to drink anything. Harry’s gone, sweetheart. It’ll just be me.”

Her eyes darted down and she shook her head. She didn’t trust me and I understood. But three years was a long time. Surely that meant something. The ghost of a life I’d left behind years ago whispered faintly in my ear like drifting images of nightmares struggling to stay alive.

I placed my hands gently on her shoulders. “His dad called and asked me to come. His dad, sweetie. And you know how we were, Harry and me.” “Oh yeah,” a deep chuckle. I loved it when she chuckled like that. “I know.”

“I don’t mean the partying. He was my best friend.” Those words echoed in my brain as they rolled off my tongue. My best friend. So many firsts we’d experienced together. The thought of him dead still didn’t resonate, like watching the news about a shooting death in a faraway city.

Amy reached up and delicately grasped my forearms. She gazed into my eyes and I anticipated her warm kiss. Instead, she pulled my hands off of her and twisted away. “Go then,” she said as she trudged out of the kitchen. She stopped in the archway and looked back at me. Her expression bore betrayal, one of relenting to the inevitable. “Don’t do anything stupid, Mick. Promise me that, please?”

“Of course.” She had no faith in me whatsoever. “What the hell am I gonna do out there, babe? Seriously?”

Her eyes found mine and a sad smile curled the corners of her mouth. “I know it’s Harry. I know you have to go. But I can’t go through it again, Mick. I won’t.”

I opened my mouth to say Give me a break, here; it’s been three years. But she was gone. I hurt for her, I really did. I understood. But at some point, we needed to move on. She needed to move on. The past was the past. We’d both changed so much in the last few years. We’d grown stronger. We were totally devoted to our daughters. We even went to church sometimes.

I had a fleeting urge to go after her right then. Give up on this whole notion of attending Harry’s funeral. I lived in Denver. Indiana sat halfway across the country. Harry would understand. Wouldn’t you, Harry?

Of course he would.

If he were standing right here and I said, hey man, I can’t risk things with Amy and the girls. He’d smile and say, I get it. Don’t risk a good thing, dipshit.

Darn right, he would. He knew me. He knew my demons. He knew what haunted me. He knew that I’d be dead now if it weren’t for him. No one else tried to save me when I needed it most.

I couldn’t skip his funeral. We’d been brothers. We’d been to war. I’d have to fix this thing with Amy when I got back. Two days from now, when I come strolling back through that front door, and she learns that there’d been nothing to worry about, it’ll all be good.

Amy and I were stronger than that. Because Harry made us stronger than that.

Harry Darnell. Semper Fi, brother.

***

My flight to Indianapolis departed that afternoon. The argument with Amy lingered with me the entire drive to the airport. I even re-enacted it in the car, talking aloud, and of course, in these solo conversations, my points were always profound and inarguable. By the time I parked the car and started my long stroll to the ticket counter with my bag slung over my shoulder, I felt better. I felt right.

During the flight, my thoughts shifted from Amy to Harry. My dead friend. My brother in the Corps. After everything, he was no more. His dad said he’d died in a car accident. Even sitting in that airplane, the reality hadn’t completely sunk in. People like Harry didn’t just up and die.

But of course, I knew that wasn’t true. I’d seen it happen too many times in a shit-hole country a million miles from here. A small flutter rippled my chest at the thought of him no longer existing in this world. I plugged my earbuds into my ears and let the music consume me.

It didn’t take long to find the rental car lot after we landed. Thank goodness, the Indianapolis Airport was nothing like Denver. I drove straight to Harry’s house from the airport. His dad mentioned on the phone that’s where everyone planned to gather today. I drummed my fingers nervously on the steering wheel as I followed my phone’s navigation. Would his mom recognize me? I’d met her twice and neither time for very long. I hoped it wouldn’t be too awkward.

I parked along the street and gazed at the house. Cars stuffed the driveway. Two little kids chased each other around in the yard. The sun drifted low and I wished it was dark. Not sure why, other than the night made it easier to be inconspicuous. I remembered this house. I’d stayed here with Harry when Amy and I separated. Good times, we’d had.

Going in there now didn’t excite me.

I considered driving to my motel first. Check in, relax a little, and call Amy to see if her mood had lightened.

Stop it. Suck it up and get in there.

I pursed my lips, opened the door, and got out.

***

The house smelled like flowers and food. People loitered throughout and I didn’t know any of them. I stopped and asked a younger guy if he knew where I might find Mrs. Darnell. He pointed me to the dining room. Mrs. Darnell recognized me, but speaking to her was a fiasco about as comfortable as swearing in church. My palms sweat, my heart thudded, and she told me that Harry never stopped talking about me.

She told me that Harry’s older sister, Arlene, was there somewhere and that I should find her. I smiled sympathetically, patted her hand, and told her I’d go find her right away.

I lied. I wanted out of that house.

Outside on the back patio, while standing with my hands shoved in my pockets and gazing at the sunset, I met a guy I didn’t recognize; old with deep lines in his face and thinning gray hair. He looked tired. He asked me if Harry had mentioned anything about what he’d been up to lately. I had no idea what up to meant, and I’m not sure I cared at the time.

Looking back, there were a lot of things I should’ve paid more attention to, this old man being one of them.

He asked if I’d spoken to Harry recently.

“No,” I said. We lingered in the back yard, off by ourselves, away from where Harry’s family and friends congregated on the back patio. “I haven’t talked to him in...” I shrugged, “a while.” Four years slipping by embarrassed me. Time gets away.

“Never mentioned anything about the lake or the Bottoms?” The old guy asked. I detected something in the way he asked it. Surprise. Confusion.

“Lake? Why would he mention a lake? You mean the reservoir?” I knew Harry liked to fish out there sometimes, I remembered him talking about it when we were in the Marine Corps. We talked about so many things then.

“No.” The old man frowned, as if about to say something else, then didn’t.

He nodded and then left with a quick goodbye. Apparently, he’d only stopped by to ask me that one, strange question. Weirdo. .....

I hung around uncomfortably for about another half hour before bailing out. I stopped at a little bar in Harry’s hometown called the Golden Nugget. We’d gone here many times back in the day. I toasted to my late, great friend with a Coca-Cola (years ago, it would have been a Jim Beam and Coke) and then headed to my motel out on highway 41, close to the interstate.

I checked in and dropped my bag on the end of the bed. Blessed quiet. Not a single person on earth to bug me. I fumbled through my bag and found my boarding pass for the next day. It felt good to touch it, to know it was there. My plane was scheduled to depart from Indianapolis at 5 PM, shortly after the funeral. No way I’d risk that.

I crawled into bed knowing that I should call Amy, but I had no idea what kind of mood she’d be in. Plus, I’d bet she was busy getting the girls to bed. I’d call her in the morning. The room’s air conditioner hummed and it soothed me to sleep.

The day had taken its toll. .....

***

I awoke late to the rattle of the doorknob wiggling back and forth. My eyes snapped open. Still nighttime. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. 3:13 in the morning. What the shit? Goose bumps pebbled my arms. I propped myself up on one elbow and gawked at the door.

Darkness shrouded the room except for the light of an outside streetlamp fighting through the slats of the closed blinds. I pictured Harry’s corpse standing out there, drooping with sagging skin and wet clothes. God knows where that image came from.

I held my breath for fear that the lurid thing might hear me and that somehow me being awake would cause it to do something horrible. I laid there hoping it would go away.

“Mr. Smith?” A voice called.

The voice sounded familiar. As I swung my legs off the bed, a shiver raced over my skin. I wondered, why was his corpse soaking wet?

My phone lay on the nightstand next to me. I plucked it up and considered calling 911. The guy tried to break into my room for Christ’s sake.

I slipped over to the door and peeked through the eyehole. Holy shit. There stood that strange, old guy who I’d met briefly in Harry’s backyard. He had one hand shoved deep in his pocket while the other touched the doorknob. Jesus, didn’t he know how to knock?

I yelled, “Just a sec.” I must be crazy to even consider talking to this old coot. I pulled on a pair of jeans, squirmed into a T-shirt, and opened the door. The guy stood there and stared at me. His eyes were piercing, almost crystalline.

“Need to talk to ya,” he said.

“Why didn’t you knock?”

“Figured you was sleepin’,” he answered, as if any fool should have known that.

An awkward pause fell between us. Finally, I asked, “So what do you want?” If the guy so much as looked at me wrong, I’d drop him. I didn’t care how old he was.

“Told ya, I need to talk. Mind goin’ across the road and gettin’ some coffee?”

He’d asked about a lake earlier and if I knew what Harry was up to. This old man knew things. I rubbed a hand through my hair and glanced at the clock one more time. Was I seriously going to do this? I looked back at the old man clenching his jaw and shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot. I shook my head and said, “Sure. Let me get my shoes on.”

Humidity hung heavy in the night air, not like the crisp evenings back home. It had an oily smell which I blamed on a gas station perched next to the motel. As we strolled across the deserted highway to a 24-hour Denny’s restaurant, I thought, I can’t believe I’m out here at 3 in the morning talking to this weirdo. Yet something gnawed at me, like knowing someone’s about to tell you a juicy secret, and the gnawing compelled me to talk to him, that I needed to talk to him.

Our shoes scraping asphalt disrupted the night’s stillness as we meandered across the road. Thank goodness for the streetlights.

In hindsight, this is where it all started.