The House Across the Lake

In the opening pages of The House Across the Lake, the structure is established as alternating between “Before” (presented in brief sections) and “Now” (which make up the bulk of the narrative), framing the events that led to the narrator kidnapping and tying someone to her bed. The first section introduces the reader to Lake Greene, the mysterious, dark-watered lake in Vermont surrounded by five lake houses, one of which belongs to Casey Fletcher. Having grown up playing in its water, Casey does not fear the lake, but still holds onto memories and superstitions she heard about it as a child.

The first “Now” scene finds a storm raging outside Casey’s lake house while she talks to detective Wilma Anson, who confronts her about her missing neighbor, Tom Royce. Detective Anson entreats Casey not to interfere with the investigation of Tom Royce’s wife, Katherine, anymore. However, as soon as Detective Anson has left, Casey makes her way upstairs to a spare room where she has someone tied to the bed and gagged. Removing the gag, she demands a confession from him.

Switching to “Before,” the next section explores how Casey and Katherine first became acquainted. Not long after arriving at her family’s lake house, Casey is spending her morning drinking and sitting on her porch watching the water when she spies movement near the middle of the lake. After grabbing a pair of binoculars from the house, she sees a hand in the water and realizes someone is drowning. Memories flood Casey of her husband’s death the previous summer, and she feels compelled to act. She drives her boat to the middle of the lake and jumps in, swimming toward the body. Floating face down, at first the woman appears to be dead, but as Casey hauls her back to the boat the woman awakens, coughing up water.

Overcome with gratitude, the woman thanks Casey for saving her life. Casey recognizes her as Katherine Royce, a former supermodel currently married to the CEO of a social media company. Casey knows that she and her husband have just moved into the house across the lake from her. Because of her own successful career, Casey assumes Katherine recognizes her in return, and she is proven correct when Katherine expresses sympathy for the hardships Casey has suffered. Despite giving her time to catch her breath, Casey notices that Katherine continues coughing as they talk and decides to bring her home. She drives the boat to Katherine Royce’s house, the front of which has a glass wall that reflects the lake when the house is dark and reveals the interior like a dollhouse when lit from within.

After dropping Katherine safely home, Casey returns to her own house where she immediately receives two back-to-back calls. The first is from her cousin, Marnie. After listening to Casey talk about rescuing Katherine, Marnie urges her to continue laying low and focusing on herself. Next, Casey’s mother, Lolly Fletcher, calls for her daily check-in on Casey.

Casey paints a picture of her mother as a captivating Broadway star who came from humble origins and completely dedicated herself to building a better life. Because of her commitment to her career, she expected Casey to demonstrate a similar work ethic and passion. But after the loss of her father in her teens, Casey rebelled against these expectations and began a lifestyle of drugs and parties. However, eventually, Casey found her way to the stage and, discovering a love and talent for acting, began to build a career.

Next, Casey reflects on her marriage to Leonard Bradley, a screenwriter whom she met through her work on sets. Leonard was a loving and attentive husband, and the two spent five blissful years together until one summer at the lake house. One morning, Casey woke to find her husband gone and their boat mysteriously adrift in the lake. Eli Williams, her neighbor and friend on the lake, called the police, formed a search party, and finally found Len’s body in the water. The autopsy found alcohol and antihistamine in his system, but ultimately ascribed Len’s death to a drowning accident.

Only 35 and widowed, Casey once more turned to substances to self-medicate her grief. Her mother encouraged her to go back to work, so she returned to the theatre to finish a play, Shred of Doubt, which she’d begun before going to Vermont with Len that summer. Her alcohol addiction worsened until one day she attempted to perform while intoxicated and fell into a heap in front of the audience. Afterward, Casey was fired, and Lolly Fletcher sent a driver to pick her up and take her to the lake house where she was meant to sober up and stay out of the media. But Casey bribed both the driver and Eli, her neighbor, to keep her stocked with alcohol so that she could continue drinking throughout each day.

After the phone call, Casey refreshes her bourbon and picks the binoculars back up, using them to spy on Tom and Katherine. Through the glass wall of their home and the aid of the light, she can see most of their movements without them being able to see her: “But at night, when all the rooms are lit up, it takes on the appearance of a dollhouse. Each room is visible” (23). She watches Katherine place a phone call in secret, which is intercepted by Tom, leading to a brief, quiet confrontation that stirs her curiosity. But before she can watch further, she is interrupted by Boone Conrad, her neighbor who is working as a handyman on the house next door to hers while the owners are gone. Casey invites him in for a drink, but he tells her he is in Alcoholics Anonymous, and invites her to his place for cocoa and board games before he leaves.

When Eli drops by later with an alcohol delivery, he confesses to Casey that he knew about Boone Conrad next door and didn’t say anything, hoping to keep the two of them away from one another. Boone is also a widower who is newly sober, and Eli worries Casey might be a bad influence. Eli and Casey also discuss two other girls who have gone missing from nearby Lake Morey and make dinner together.

During an after-dinner coffee, the pair are interrupted by the arrival of Tom and Katherine Royce in their expensive speedboat. With them, Tom has brought two expensive bottles of wine to celebrate his wife’s rescue, and he insists on carefully pouring glasses for everyone. While they sit around a backyard fire drinking the wine, Eli tells the group some superstitions about the lake, saying some believe that spirits are trapped inside of its reflective surface. Feeling pressured by unwanted memories and short-fused because of her constant drinking, Casey has a drunken outburst at Eli for sharing superstitions about the dead. Just as she realizes how drunk she is, Katherine stands up and complains that she doesn’t feel well, then walks a few steps before collapsing.

The next morning, Casey invites Katherine over for coffee, and she arrives in her usual fashionable style, but with sunglasses covering her bloodshot eyes. During their brief conversation, Katherine reveals that their luxurious and expensive lifestyle is fully paid for by her career, not Tom’s, and jokes that, “He’d kill me before letting me leave” (80). But when she spots Tom looking for her, she speeds off back to her home.

That night, Casey once more uses the binoculars to watch the house, despite knowing what a privacy violation she is committing. This time, she witnesses Katherine doing some late-night research on a laptop, which intrigues Casey when she sees Katherine’s jaw drop at something she has discovered. However, when Tom creeps up behind her, Katherine quickly shuts the laptop and returns to bed. Later that night, Casey wakes to witness another altercation between Tom and Katherine. This time, Katherine is fully clothed while Tom yells at her in the kitchen. Afterward, Katherine stands at the glass wall facing Casey and Casey thinks she sees fear in Katherine’s eyes. Tom tries to grab her, but she pulls free and punches him in the jaw. When Casey can see Katherine is alone in her room, Casey calls her to check if everything is alright. Katherine replies that things are fine.

The next morning Casey awakens again from a loud noise across the lake. She is so ill from her hangover that after throwing up she can barely crawl up to the bedroom. Once making it to bed, she registers that the noise that woke her up had been a scream.

Back in a “Now” section, Casey threatens the individual tied to her bed with a knife, demanding that he give up Katherine’s location. The person tied to the bed laughs, showing no sign of fear, and tells Casey that she’s in over her head and that she will never find Katherine.