Page 195 of It Happened on the Lake

She thought fleetingly of her own two children. They were out here, too.

Well, no. Not if Bruce’s message was to be believed.

Evan was out with his friends, probably raising hell. Her son was hard to read as a preteen. Even harder to rein in.

As for her daughter? It seemed Harper had been sidetracked from her plans of a party at the Hunt family’s across the lake and then trick or treating with her friend Beth. The sniffles and scratchy throat that had kept her home from school had developed into a cough and fever, again, according to the note she’d been handed.

The lying son of a bitch!

How would her kids feel when they didn’t have a father? What if they figured out their own mother had killed him?

“Stop it!” she said aloud and flipped on the radio again. Melancholy songs were better than her own painful, murderous thoughts.

Elvis was crooning “It’s Now or Never.”

“You got that right,” she said to the empty car as she turned onto Northway and headed home, through the dark, along the shoreline of Lake Twilight. The pills—or was it the booze?—were starting to take root, her bones starting to melt, her brain coated in something warm and fuzzy.

As she neared the drive, she thought she saw someone dive into the bushes. A fleeting shadow that passed quickly.

She stood on the brakes!

Her Thunderbird shuddered, bouncing over a pothole.

Anna’s fingers slipped, the steering wheel sliding through them.

Her car swiped the mailbox, knocking it over and shattering a headlight.

“Shit!”

Metal crumpled.

Jostled, heart in her throat, Anna grabbed the wheel again, then clenched it in a death grip as the Thunderbird finally slid to a stop.

Her heart raced, adrenaline firing her blood.

That was close!

Dear God, she had to be more careful. Driving in this condition was lunacy.

What if she had hit a child?

She let out a long, unsteady breath, her heart still knocking wildly, the one remaining headlamp illuminating the gate to the manor and the gargoyles crouched atop their pillars. “Your night to howl,” she told them.

Then, as if the monstrous stone beasts could hear her, she yelled loudly, “Go! Fly away! Terrorize some of those damned trick-or-treaters.”

Giggling, she fell back on the seat and was surprised at her reaction. Inappropriate. Probably the pills really taking hold. Well, good!

“Get a grip,” she told herself, while noticing that her vision was more than a little blurred, her hands unsteady.

Shoving her hair away from her face, she tried to breathe deeply. She consoled herself with the fact that she hadn’t hit a kid tonight. Thankfully.

Then her thoughts returned to her husband, and she tried to decide whether she’d kill him, as she’d been contemplating, or divorce him. Or could she? Murder was a mortal sin, of course, but the church really, really frowned on divorce. Didn’t recognize it. Could she get an annulment? If she could prove that Bruce was cheating, wouldn’t the church grant one?

And then what?

Her kids would be bastards.

She didn’t like the sound of that.