Who Sank Beneath The Water

Ever since I found out my husband was having an affair, I wanted nothing more than to kill him.

Until one rainy night.

He was meeting that woman again down by Crescent Lake.

I saw his hand resting on her waist, tilting his head to kiss her.

A few moments later, the woman headed back to her car to answer a phone call.

Leaving him standing alone in his yellow raincoat, right at the edge of the wet stone steps.

I couldn't control myself anymore.

I rushed forward and, with every ounce of strength I had, shoved him into the dark, freezing waters.

He thrashed wildly a few times before sinking beneath the surface, completely swallowed by the lake.

Back home, I stripped off my soaked clothes. An eerie, unprecedented peace settled over me.

But the next morning, the doorbell rang.

I took a deep breath, steeling myself to play the part of the grieving widow.

Yet when I opened the door, it wasn't the police standing there. It was my husband.

My heart leaped into my throat. He was alive and well.

If he was standing here, then who the hell did I push into the lake last night?

He was dripping wet, but there wasn't a scratch on him. He didn't look like someone who had just drowned.

How was this possible?

I had personally pushed him into the depths.

I forced myself to breathe, desperately trying to project a calm facade.

"Where on earth have you been? You could have at least told me you were going out in the middle of the night."

He gave a careless grin, setting down an empty bucket on the entryway floor.

"Just out fishing."

Fishing. Always fishing.

Chad was obsessed with night fishing, constantly slipping away to Crescent Lake. But I knew the truth. Fishing was nothing but a pathetic excuse. He was sneaking out to meet Sylvia.

Sylvia was his secretary. At the office, they kept a professional distance, but the moment they clocked out, they were practically glued to each other. They thought they were being incredibly clever, but I had known for months.

His messages were synced to our home computer. Sylvia had been pressuring him to leave me, demanding he make things official. Chad had been putting her off, but last night, his tone shifted. He told her he needed to deal with me first to clear the way for her. That was the final straw. Blinded by rage, I followed him to the lake. My plan was to push him in and frame Sylvia, but somehow, something went horribly wrong.

Wait.

If the person who drowned wasn't Chad, could it have been Sylvia?

It was pouring last night. Maybe he gave her his raincoat, and in the pitch-black storm, I mistook her silhouette for his.

I set the breakfast plates on the table, trying to sound casual.

"Heavy rain last night. Everything okay out there?"

He shook his head, taking a bite of his food. "Fine. Why wouldn't it be? It's not like anyone threw themselves into the lake."

My heart skipped a beat.

Did he know something? Why would he say something so specific out of nowhere?

I lowered my head and took a sip of my coffee, trying to steady my breathing. No, if Sylvia had drowned, he wouldn't be sitting here so calmly.

Right then, his phone buzzed on the table. He glanced at the screen, his face turning slightly pale. He grabbed the phone and walked out onto the balcony.

I caught a glimpse of the screen. It was Sylvia.

Sylvia was alive.

My stomach dropped. If it wasn't Chad, and it wasn't Sylvia, who did I push into the abyss?

A name suddenly flashed in my mind. Blake?

Blake lived just a street over. He was in his fifties, an incredibly kind-hearted man. He was a regular at Crescent Lake, always taking a stroll along the water after dinner. If I had accidentally killed him, the guilt would crush me. He had practically watched me grow up. When my parents divorced, I sat on the curb crying my eyes out, and he was the one who took me in. His wife, Maureen, made me a warm bowl of soup to comfort me. How could I have done this to him?

"What are you daydreaming about?"

Chad's voice shattered my thoughts. He was standing right in front of me, back from the balcony.

"Nothing," I murmured, quickly gathering the dishes.

He hesitated, his face unusually grave. "Fiona, do you have a minute? We need to talk."

I glanced at his phone, already guessing it was about Sylvia. But my mind was entirely consumed by Blake. I had no patience for Chad's lies.

I threw on my coat. "I don't have time right now. We'll talk when I get back."

I practically ran to Blake's house. The front door was locked tight.

My chest tightened. At this hour, Blake and Maureen usually loved setting up a folding table on the porch to play cards with Mrs. Higgins and Mr. Fletcher, laughing and bickering until dusk. But today, the porch was empty.

As I stood there debating whether to knock, hurried footsteps echoed behind me.

"Fiona!"

I spun around. It was Maureen, looking pale and frantic.

"Aunt Maureen? What's wrong?"

"Have you seen Blake? He went out last night and never came back. I've tried calling him a dozen times, but it goes straight to voicemail. He never does this. I'm so worried."

I swallowed hard, a cold sweat breaking out on my neck. "He likes to walk around Crescent Lake. Have you checked down there?"

"I did, but there's no sign of him. Oh god, Fiona, what if something terrible happened to him?"

My heart felt like it was being squeezed by a vice. I forced my voice to remain steady. "Don't panic, Aunt Maureen. I'll go look for him. You stay here in case he comes back."

Without waiting for a reply, I turned and rushed away, tears hot against my cold cheeks.

When I reached Crescent Lake, I walked straight to the stone steps. Standing at the edge, I stared down. The water was perfectly still, offering no secrets.

I walked the entire perimeter of the lake, searching every shadow, but found nothing. Desperate and exhausted, I slid down onto the damp grass, on the verge of a breakdown.

Suddenly, my phone vibrated. It was Maureen.

"Fiona, don't worry anymore! Blake is home!"

A massive wave of relief washed over me.

"That stubborn old fool crashed his e-bike last night. Hurt himself pretty badly and someone helped him to the hospital. He was too embarrassed to call me and spent the night in the ward. I'm going to kill him when he gets his strength back."

Maureen kept rambling, but my mind went entirely blank.

I hung up and slowly stood up. Blake was safe. He was alive.

I stared back at the glassy surface of the lake.

If it wasn't him, then who was at the bottom of that water?

When I got home, Chad had already prepared dinner. I was stunned. In our five years of marriage, he had never once touched a frying pan.

I sat down, watching him. "You said this morning you wanted to talk. What is it?"

He carefully put a roasted pork chop onto my plate, lingering for a moment before speaking.

"Fiona, there have been some nasty rumors going around the office lately about me and one of the secretaries. If you hear anything, please don't believe it."

I stared at him. "Which secretary?"

"Sylvia. You know her. But I swear, there's absolutely nothing between us. We're strictly professional."

His expression was so earnest, so painfully sincere. It was almost funny. If I hadn't read their messages with my own eyes, I might have actually believed him.

I took a small bite of my food. "Right. Why bring this up so suddenly?"

He gave a sheepish, defensive laugh. "Just didn't want you getting the wrong idea, that's all."

I nodded, remaining silent. Someone at his company must have caught wind of their affair, and he was trying to run damage control before I found out.

I set my fork down and looked him dead in the eye. "Then tell me, what exactly were you doing last night?"

He stiffened slightly. "Fiona, I told you. I was fishing. I didn't go anywhere else."

He said it with such absolute conviction. The man was a pathological liar. Looking at his face made my stomach churn.

And then my thoughts drifted back to the shadow I had pushed into the lake. I still had no idea who it was. An innocent stranger had lost their life because of my reckless rage.

I stood up. "I'm going out for a walk."

I wandered the streets aimlessly, my mind a chaotic mess of guilt. Maybe I should confess. No matter who it was, it was my fault.

But what if they didn't die? What if they swam out?

But if they had, wouldn't they have called the police? Wouldn't they be looking for me? Even if I went to the police now, there wasn't even a body.

Just then, I noticed a crowd gathering up ahead near the park entrance.

Muffled voices drifted over.

"Someone's dead."

"They found a body in the water."

My legs began to tremble violently. Step by agonizing step, I forced myself toward the crowd.

I squeezed through the onlookers and saw the figure lying on the grass. The body was bloated and pale, the facial features unrecognizable from water damage.

My knees felt like lead. It was all my fault. I had killed an innocent person. I deserved to rot.

Up until now, I had clung to the desperate hope that whoever it was had survived. But looking at the cold corpse in front of me, there was no denying it.

The only right thing to do was to turn myself in.

A couple of police officers and a forensic examiner pushed past the crowd. The medical examiner did a quick, preliminary check on the spot.

"Crescent Lake isn't the primary crime scene," the examiner called out to an officer. "The victim was poisoned first, then dumped in the lake. Time of death is roughly two to three days ago."

My brain went completely numb.

Poisoned?

And the time of death didn't match at all.

It wasn't my victim.

My knees buckled, and I nearly collapsed.

I didn't kill them. I didn't kill them.

I took a deep, trembling breath and slowly backed out of the crowd. The police were already cordoning off the area, and the body was zipped into a black bag. As the onlookers began to disperse, I stood by the curb, my racing heart slowly returning to a normal rhythm.

But the terrifying question returned, louder than ever.

If this wasn't the person I pushed, who did I plunge into the dark water?

If I kept spinning in circles, I was going to lose my mind. Instead of waiting for doom, I needed to take control.

There had to be some detail I was overlooking. I walked back to the stone steps by the lake. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But just as I turned to leave, something caught my eye.

Directly above the pathway, a small security camera blinked with a steady red light.

My heart seized.

How could I have been so blind? After a couple of near-drownings the previous year, the neighborhood association had installed security cameras around Crescent Lake.

Everything that happened last night was on tape.

The world seemed to tilt beneath my feet. If the police reviewed the footage, they would see me shoving someone into the water. I would be locked away for murder. But if they had the footage, why hadn't they knocked on my door yet?

I decided to pay a visit to the property management office.

The young man working the desk looked up as I walked in. "Can I help you?"

"I lost my wedding ring near the lake path last night," I lied, my voice tight. "I was hoping I could look at the security footage to see if I can spot where it slipped off."

He stared at me for a long moment, his eyes lingering a bit too long. "Sure. Go ahead."

He led me into the tiny surveillance room and pointed to the screen. "Knock yourself out. I'm going to step out for a smoke."

I sat in front of the monitor, my hands shaking so badly I could barely grip the mouse. I scrolled back to last night's timestamp.

11:00 PM: Nothing. Just a blank screen.

1:00 AM: Still nothing.

The feed didn't resume until 8:00 AM this morning.

I dragged the slider back and forth, confirming there was absolutely no footage from the night before. It wasn't deleted; there was simply no recording at all.

I stood up and walked out. The attendant was just finishing his cigarette.

"Any luck?"

I shook my head. "No. But why is the footage from last night completely missing?"

He gave me a strange, knowing smile. "Oh, that. The camera got waterlogged during the storm and short-circuited. We only got it fixed this morning."

I thanked him and hurried out into the cool night air.

A great weight lifted from my chest. The camera had been broken. No one knew what I had done.

The person I pushed must have been a strong swimmer. They probably scrambled out of the lake on their own. If they hadn't gone to the police, it meant they didn't want any trouble either.

I hadn't killed anyone.

With that realization, the suffocating anxiety that had plagued me all day finally evaporated.

When I got home, Chad was stretched out on the sofa, scrolling through his phone. He frowned when he saw me.

"Fiona, what is up with you lately? It's finally the weekend, and you're constantly running out."

"Just felt a bit cooped up. Needed some air," I replied dismissively.

Watching him lie there so peacefully made a bitter resentment flare up inside me. I had spent the entire day living in a waking nightmare, convinced I was a murderer, while the man who caused all of this didn't have a care in the world.

If he hadn't cheated on me, I would never have been pushed to such a dark edge. I was tired of the suspicion, tired of the fear, tired of letting this toxic marriage eat away at my soul.

I looked at him, my voice cold and clear. "Chad, I want a divorce."

He sat up instantly, staring at me in disbelief. "Are you insane? Why would you suddenly want a divorce? Did someone say something to you? Is this about Sylvia? I told you, she and I are strictly"

The sharp ring of the doorbell cut him off.

I opened the door to find two police officers standing under the porch light.

"Good evening. We're with the local precinct. A body was recovered from Crescent Lake today, and security footage shows you visited the lakefront three times today. We need you to come with us to answer a few questions."

My mind went entirely blank. Before I could even process their words, the second officer pulled a photograph from his folder.

"Do you recognize this person?"

I stared at the picture, the breath leaving my lungs in a sharp gasp.

Every baffling piece of the puzzle suddenly fell into place with terrifying clarity.