Chapter 33 #2
Imogen and Marta stood back to let Bernie do her work.
She moved with surgical efficiency, drawing an X across Celeste’s abdomen then inserting the blade once on either side of her rib cage to puncture each lung.
There was surprisingly little blood, but of course Celeste’s heart hadn’t been pumping for quite some time.
When Bernie finished, she dipped the knife in the lake to rinse it off.
“This is going back in the kitchen. If it ever gets to the point where luminol is involved, we’re all fucked anyways. ” Then it was time to cocoon the body.
Marta felt she must be dissociating, because how could she possibly be enjoying the feeling of teamwork when this was what they were doing?
She felt her eyes pulled to Celeste, magnetized to the awful mark that encircled her neck, and she realized that Celeste wasn’t wearing her heart locket.
That was unusual—Marta didn’t think she’d ever seen Celeste without it.
She made a mental note to find it in the cottage and make sure that Milly got to keep her mom’s favourite piece of jewellery.
Manoeuvring Celeste’s rigid body was difficult, and there was no hope of repositioning the arm that was raised permanently above her head.
They ended up leaving that hand poking out the top of the macabre package.
It took all three of them to lift Celeste—Marta at the top, Bernie at the bottom, and Imogen in the middle.
They had to stop once on their way down to the dock so that Imogen could readjust her grip, so they lowered Celeste gently to the ground.
It crossed Marta’s mind that they could have just dropped her, and the fact that they didn’t was a good thing; it showed they were still clinging to their humanity.
When their funeral procession reached the dock, the women carefully placed Celeste in the back of the paddleboat.
Marta covered the body with the tarp they’d used earlier, tucking the edges for secure coverage.
While it was unlikely they would run into anyone out on the lake so late, especially in this weather, there was no need to take unnecessary risks.
“Are we all good?” asked Marta. She shone her flashlight (also retrieved from the boathouse) over the group, casting their features into shadows.
“Ready,” said Imogen.
“Let’s get it done,” said Bernie.
Imogen and Bernie clambered into the front of the paddleboat.
Marta gave their boat a push to get it going, then stashed the flashlight under a chair on the dock.
She strapped on a life jacket, got into the kayak (almost capsizing herself in the process), then glided out onto the water.
The lake was lit only by the meagre light of the moon, which was struggling to shoulder its way through the clouds.
Rain whipped Marta’s face as the lake became increasingly rough.
Her hands were freezing, fingers cramping from gripping the paddle, and her legs below the knees were soaking wet.
As shitty as she felt, she preferred to focus her energy on the physical discomfort rather than the raw horror of disposing of a corpse.
Even though they weren’t going all that far, it took them almost an hour to reach the part of the lake that (according to the depth map) was the deepest, at almost two hundred metres.
Bernie had memorized the arrangement of islands nearby, and was confident they had the right place.
Imogen turned around to remove the tarp covering Celeste, while Marta pulled her kayak up behind the paddleboat.
All three women looked at the netted bundle.
“Goodbye, Cee,” whispered Imogen.
“Rest in peace,” said Bernie.
Marta wanted to say something, but the words balled up in her throat and she felt like she was choking. She met Bernie’s eyes, then Imogen’s—who did this?—then gave a slight nod. Bernie slid both hands under Celeste’s body and tipped her into the water. She slipped out of sight in an instant.
With no warning, the pasta Marta had eaten earlier in the evening came boiling up out of her, tomato sauce in the back of her nose.
She vomited over the side of her kayak, away from where they’d dropped Celeste.
Once, twice, until there was nothing left.
She scooped up a mouthful of lake water to rinse out her mouth.
“I’m fine.” She wiped her face. “Let’s go.”
They’d agreed that they should release the kayak as far from the body as possible, and so they turned back for shore.
They proceeded without speaking—the whir-whir-whir of the paddleboat foot pedals harmonizing with the slapping splashes of Marta’s increasingly sloppy strokes—until they could see the cottage clearly and the current felt notably stronger. Bernie held up an arm and said, “Here.”
Marta manoeuvred her kayak so that it was in a T-formation with the back of the paddleboat, then tossed her own paddle into the water away from the kayak.
Bernie and Imogen helped her awkwardly transfer out of the kayak and onto the back of the paddleboat.
Then Marta gripped the nose of the empty kayak and flipped it over.