Page 39 of Darkwater Lane (Stillhouse Lake #7)

GWEN

I agree to meet Madison later that morning for another recording session.

Before I leave, I check on the kids, though there’s really no reason.

Both are still asleep. I should probably institute a schedule akin to normal school hours but given everything they’ve been through, I’m willing to let it slide.

I send a text on the family chat, letting them know where I’ll be, then make sure the alarm is armed before walking up the hill to Madison’s rental. The upside to her being so close is that it will be easy to keep an eye on the house.

Inside, she has a fire going in the old cast-iron stove, which gives the air a tinge of woodsmoke. The room is warm, cheery, and inviting. I follow her into the kitchen, where she has coffee waiting. Her equipment is set up on the kitchen table: her laptop and two large microphones waiting.

While she runs sound checks through her laptop, I stare at the mic in front of me. I try not to think about that morning at The Howie Hamlin Show , staring into that camera lens, a growing sense of anxiety gnawing inside me.

At least this time I’m not being broadcast live. Madison has agreed that I’ll retain all the recordings we make. At the end of each session, I’ll watch while she copies them onto a USB drive for me and deletes the original files.

That may sound like overkill but given that she stole recordings from when she worked with the Lost Angels, I’m not inclined to trust her on this.

Once we’ve run through the sound checks and Madison has the levels where she wants them, she looks at me a little shyly.

“Sorry, this just feels a little surreal,” she says.

“Even back when you were on trial and I was covering it for the school paper, my dream was to interview you. Of course, I couldn’t back then.

But that didn’t stop me from imagining what I would ask.

“So, yeah, I know it sounds super dorky, but I’m still a bit shocked to actually be sitting across from you right now.”

Her earnestness is endearing, but I feel compelled to make sure she understands the terms of our deal. “I’m still not guaranteeing we’ll publish any of this.”

She waves a hand. “Oh, I know. But to finally be able to ask you questions I’ve been wondering about for years? It will be enough.”

She fiddles with her notebook, the one she used to write down questions and notes during our earlier session.

“You said that one of the reasons you agreed to do this podcast was because you felt like your partner, Sam, was being unfairly accused of Leo Varrus’s murder and you want to clear his name. ”

I nod. She gestures to the mic, reminding me that my answers need to be audible.

“Yes. Whoever is doing this has already tried to set Sam up once before. They sprayed Leo’s blood in our house at Stillhouse Lake, making it appear as though he’d been murdered and his body disposed of.

They went to great lengths to fake speed camera footage of Sam’s truck driving down here the night of the supposed murder.

Fortunately, forensics eventually found a preservative in the blood samples and determined that it wasn’t fresh but had been stored for some time.

The prevailing theory is that Varrus spent months collecting blood in order to pull it off. ”

“That sounds like a lot of work. Why do you think someone would go to such lengths?”

“At the time, we assumed Varrus was behind the hoax. It made sense—Leo and Sam had been friends once upon a time. They’d both lost loved ones to Melvin Royal and were both members of the Lost Angels.

Eventually, Leo became convinced that I was Melvin’s accomplice and took it personally when Sam and I started dating. ”

“Personally enough to dedicate his life to ruining Sam’s?”

I shrug. “You would have had to ask him.”

“You felt from the beginning that Sam was innocent.”

“Yes, and I was right. Varrus wasn’t killed at our house in Stillhouse Lake.”

“You know this because he was eventually murdered at your house in Knoxville.”

“Yes.”

“And authorities are calling Sam a person of interest in that case now. Which, to be clear to our listeners, doesn’t make him a suspect. It just means the police are taking a closer look.”

“Yes. But again, he’s being framed. He didn’t kill Leo Varrus.”

“He was set up to look like a murderer and that failed. So now he’s being set up again?”

She makes it sound absurd. She’s right, though, it does sound absurd. But it’s also the truth. That’s what’s so frustrating about all of this.

She takes a sip of coffee and then ponders me over the rim of her mug.

“Do you ever think… or like, does any part of you wonder if he could be involved? I mean, haven’t we all dated people who kept secrets?

I remember this one guy I was with in college—he had an account on Feet Finder.

Which really answered a lot of questions about his constant insistence I wear high heels. ”

She laughs .

I don’t. “No, I’ve never doubted Sam. He’s not a monster.”

She tilts her head to the side, genuinely curious. “Well, to be fair, you didn’t think Melvin was a monster either. What if it’s the same situation here?”

“Sam is nothing like Melvin.” The very thought that they share any similarities at all is horrifying.

“But he’s done some sus things in the past, right? Didn’t he move all the way out to Stillhouse Lake just to spy on you and try to infiltrate your life for his own hidden agenda? What if he’s still following that playbook?”

“He’s not. People change. Everything Sam did back then was borne of grief and rage.”

“So, he’s not still angry and upset that Melvin Royal killed his sister?”

I narrow my eyes at her. It feels a bit like she’s twisting my words, which I don’t appreciate. “Of course he is. But he knows I had nothing to do with it. That’s the difference. He spent time with me. Got to know me and my kids. He figured out the truth.”

She smiles softly. “You really love him, don’t you?”

The question catches me off guard. She’s been going so hard on Sam I wasn’t expecting an easy one. “Yes.”

“What do you love about him?”

I shake my head. “I don’t even know where to begin.

” She says nothing, giving me space to continue.

I try to think of a story that encapsulates how I feel about him.

“Early in our relationship, Sam took me up flying. He was still working construction at the time, but he had a buddy with an old plane he let Sam borrow—the kind that’s kept in a barn with an old field for a runway.

Had it been anyone but Sam, I would have absolutely refused to climb aboard.

“But it was Sam, and I trusted him. He understood that me being a mother was the most important thing in the world to me, and that I guarded my kids’ lives with my own.

He knew that if something happened during that flight, if we crashed or didn’t make it back safely, it would mean orphaning my kids. ”

I turn my mug in my hands, remembering that afternoon. The way the sun beat down on the grass in the old field, turning the air muggy and thick. The way Sam studied the plane through his pre-flight checks, so thorough and focused. The exhilaration of that first moment we lifted off from the ground.

“He recognized that it wasn’t my life he held in his hands, but theirs.

And when we finally made it up and were soaring through the clouds, he told me that it used to be that never in his life had he felt closer to heaven than he did while in the air.

Then he met me. Being my partner, caring for my kids, that was his new heaven. ”

I belatedly realize how sappy that sounds, so I add, “Also he makes a mean pancake. The way to my heart may be through my kids, but there’s a shortcut through my stomach.

” It’s not like me to be so open about my relationship with Sam, but if the goal is to exonerate him in the public’s eye, then I need to humanize him.

I need everyone to see the Sam that I know and love.

Madison laughs. Then considers me for a moment. She hesitates before asking her next question. “I think what that story proves, though, is that Sam is your greatest protector.”

“Well, I like to believe I can protect myself, but yes, he feels strongly about keeping our family safe.”

“You murdered Melvin Royal.”

The abrupt shift causes whiplash. “Yes.”

“Why?”

I can’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the question. “Because he was trying to rape, torture, and murder me on a livestream to paying customers. Because he tried to kidnap my kids. Twice. He was poison that was never going to stop infecting our lives.”

“Do you regret killing him?”

“Never.” It’s an easy answer .

“Your lives are better off—safer—with him dead.”

I nod. “Absolutely.”

“Did you love Melvin Royal?”

My stomach twists at the question, the taste of coffee and bile burning the back of my throat. “No.”

She frowns. “Really? Not even on your wedding day? Then why marry him?”

How to explain that, back then, I saw no other options? There was only one path for my life to take: meet a man, get married, have kids. It’s how I was raised. How my friends were raised. It’s the life my mom lived—and all my friends’ moms too. I didn’t know any different.

“I didn’t know who the real Melvin Royal was. The man I loved was just a mirage. He didn’t exist.”

“Were you scared of him?”

I think about that question for a moment. “I don’t know how to answer that. If I was, I never allowed myself to acknowledge it. I thought I’d won the lottery. He gave me the life I wanted: two amazing kids and the ability to stay home with them. He was a good father. The kids felt loved by him.”

She raises her eyebrows. “That’s an interesting way of phrasing it, that the kids felt loved by him.”

“Melvin Royal was incapable of love.” I don’t try to hide the bitterness in my voice.

“As I’m sure you know, there’s a large contingent of people out there who think you were complicit in Melvin’s crimes.”

“Oh?” I ask sarcastically.

She smiles. “Their argument is that you were married to Melvin for over a decade. You had two kids with him. You lived with him. A lot of people don’t understand how you couldn’t have known what kind of man he was. They argue that you were being willfully blind. What do you say to that?”

“I was na?ve. I was raised to defer to my husband. To see the husband as the man of the house: he went to work, provided for us, and deserved downtime to himself. I was taught not to ask a lot of questions. To anticipate his needs and to make life comfortable for him. I was raised to be a good wife . That’s what I tried to be. ”

“Do you regret not asking more questions? Did you ever even consider what might be behind the locked door in the garage?”

I let out a long, painful breath. “You have no idea how much I regret. Absolutely, I wish I’d seen the truth about Melvin before it was too late for all those girls.

I wish I could have saved them. I hate how many lives he has destroyed—not just with the women he murdered but also their families. My family too.”

Madison stares down at her notes for a long moment and chews the bottom of her lip. She’s clearly torn about something.

“What is it?”

She hesitates for a moment longer before saying. “There’s something I want to ask you, but I’m worried I’ll offend you. It’s just... I think listeners will be curious, and if I don’t ask you, they’ll think I’m pulling punches, and they’ll lose faith in me as a narrator.”

“Okay,” I tell her hesitantly.

She blows out a breath and clears her throat, sitting a little straighter. “You don’t think Sam is a murderer.”

“No.” I say it as emphatically as possible.

“Do you consider yourself a murderer?”

“No.”

“Even though you killed Melvin Royal.”

“Like I said, that was in self-defense.”

“Because he threatened your family.”

“Right.”

“You lived with Melvin Royal for more than a decade. You built a life with him, had kids together, shared a bed, and you had no idea he was a monster. ”

“Yes, he was that good an actor. No one suspected him. It wasn’t only me. Neighbors had no idea, our priest, his coworkers.”

“So, he had you fooled.”

“He did, unfortunately.”

“How do you know Sam doesn’t have you fooled as well?”

I’m on my feet before I realize it. “We’re done here.” There’s a tremor to my voice. My heart thunders in my ears as adrenaline surges through my body as though I’d been physically attacked.

I rip off my headphones and drop them onto the table.

“Gwen, wait.”

I’ve already started for the door.

She calls after me. “You’re angry because you know I’m right.”

My lips twist bitterly. That’s rich coming from her. “Fuck off, Madison. We’re done.”