Everyone thought I had accepted the situation. Everyone thought the drama was finished. My calmness should have frightened them far more than it seemed to.
At 6:15 the next morning, the house was still asleep. The lake outside sat glassy and pale, mist rising off the surface in slow white layers. I took Derek’s keys from the entry table where he’d left them the night before. I walked outside into the cool dawn air. I will not pretend I was confused about what I was doing. I will not pretend it was an accident. I made a choice. A bad choice, perhaps. A costly one, certainly. But in that particular moment it felt less like revenge and more like translation. They had taught me the language the day before. I was simply speaking it back to them.
A short time later, the sound echoed across the lake. Water erupted, then silence, then a steady rise of bubbles.
Derek walked out onto the deck in his pajamas, coffee mug in hand, and saw me standing near the ramp. He saw the water. He saw the empty space where his Mercedes had been parked. The mug slipped from his fingers and shattered against the deck boards, coffee spreading between the planks. Then he screamed, and the sound woke the entire house.
