Vanessa grabs my hand and makes little cooing noises. “Vintage! An heirloom?”
“It belonged to Michael’s grandmother.”
“Alice.” She gently rubs a thumb over the stone.
It takes me a minute to recognize the name. “Right, Alice. And I love it. I mean, it’s gorgeous.” I hold my hand up to admire the sparkle, and the ring knocks against my knuckle. “But see? It’s far too big and it won’t stay on my finger. I’m afraid to wear it until I can get it resized. And even then, between you and me, I’m a little shy about wearing something so ostentatious….” I muster up a blush. “Honestly I’m a pretty understated person. It’s not like I can wear this when I’m teaching. If it were up to me, I’d just donate it and get something smaller.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” She nods, all serious, as if she can relate, although I know from Instagram that there is no rock that would be too big for Vanessa Liebling.
“Anyway, I also hate just leaving it sitting there in the cottage. I guess I’m paranoid, but the cottage feels so exposed….” It seems ludicrous to suggest that robbers will be prowling the snowy lakeshore in the dark, but she frowns, as if seriously considering the possibility. I hope I haven’t just scared her into installing a better alarm system. “Anyway, I was wondering— Do you have a safe here?”
She lets go of my hand. “A safe? Yes, of course.”
“Would you mind, terribly, keeping my ring there, for safekeeping, while we’re staying here?” And I slip the ring off my finger and drop it into her palm before she has a chance to think about it. Her hand instinctively closes around it, like a baby clutching a toy. I cover her fist with mine, and give it a gentle squeeze of appreciation. “It would really make me feel better to know it’s somewhere where I don’t have to worry about it. I’ve never owned anything this nice. And I just feel…” I hesitate. “Well, I feel like I can trust you.”
Her eyes drop down to our two hands, clasped softly together around what she believes is my most precious possession. “I totally understand.” When her eyes rise to meet mine, I’m surprised to see that they are damp with tears. Here we go again. Why is she crying this time?
But then I remember the engagement ring she posted on her V-Life feed, the radiant smile on her face as she peered through her fingers at the camera. Guys: I have news. That ring is gone now; yet another line in the ledger of poor Vanessa’s personal tragedies. What happened? I wonder. Maybe it’s because I’m still playing at Ashley, or maybe it’s because some humanity inside me wants to connect with the humanity inside her despite it all; either way, I feel compelled to ask.
“You were engaged earlier this year, right?” I ask softly.
She looks startled. “How did you know that?”
“Your Instagram.”
Her mouth falls open slightly and her thoughts seem to go inward. It looks like she’s trying to summon up a speech she’s prepared, an inspirational quote that will demonstrate how resilient and introspective she is. But for some reason it won’t come. Her hand unclenches, revealing my ring in her palm; she rolls it back and forth so that it catches the light, an oddly possessive gesture for a ring that doesn’t even belong to her. “He didn’t like my lifestyle very much,” she finally says, watching the ring sparkle. Her voice has changed, flatlined. “He wants to go into politics like his mom and he decided I was a hindrance to his life goals. My ‘optics’ were bad. Unseemly for a public servant to be seen on a private jet, especially in the current environment. Comes off as shallow. So.” She shrugs. “I can’t say I blame him.”
This is not what I had expected to hear. I figured, infidelity, maybe drug problems—something sordid and contemptible. I am surprised, too, to discover that she’s got a modicum of self-awareness. Shallow? I would never have imagined that word coming out of her mouth. “He waited until you were engaged to decide this?”
“He decided to dump me two weeks after my father died.”
I am not so heartless that I can’t feel the barbarism in this. I lean in closer. “Anyone who would do something like that doesn’t deserve your time. Not that it’s any consolation, but it sounds like you dodged a bullet, in the long run.” I mean it, too. “So, that’s why you left New York?”
“That’s why I moved here,” she offers. She looks around the ravaged kitchen. “I needed a change of scenery and up popped Stonehaven, at what seemed like the right moment. Daddy left it to me, and I thought…maybe it would be comforting, to be back here, in our old family home. I thought it was serendipity.” She looks back at me and I see that her eyes have gone as flat and cold as the lake outside. “Turns out, I forgot that I hate this house. Terrible things happened to my family in this house.” The words drop from her mouth like shards of ice. “Stonehaven is just a shrine to the tragedy that is my family: Everything bad that happened to my mother and father and brother started here. You know my brother is schizophrenic? It started here. And my mother committed suicide here.”
I’m startled into silence by this new Vanessa: not the weepy, needy depressive from the library; nor the giddy hostess, out to please; but a new one, cold and angry, bitterly cognizant. And—her mother committed suicide? This is news. “My God. Suicide?”
She stares at me curiously with those flat green eyes, as if seeking something in my face. For once, it’s not really an effort to look empathetic. Then she looks down, and shrugs. “It wasn’t in the papers of course. Daddy made sure of that.”
A boating accident. That was what the newspaper said. I’d never thought to wonder about how a middle-aged woman might die in a boating accident on a yacht. What I want to ask is, Why did she do it? But I know that this isn’t an acceptable question, this isn’t what Ashley would ask. “She must have been very troubled,” I say softly, remembering the brittle, patrician woman on the couch in the library with a pang of sudden doubt. What else didn’t I see that day? “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“Why would you?” She gives her shoulders a violent little shake. “Why would anyone? I’m Vanessa Fucking Liebling. I’m hashtag blessed and don’t you know I know it. I’m not allowed to complain or feel pain, or I’m unappreciative of what I’ve got. I’m supposed to spend my life doing penance for my own good fortune. No matter what I do, even if I give it all away, it will never be enough for some people. They’ll always find a reason to hate me.” She stares at the ring in her hands, turning it to catch the light. “And maybe they’re right. Maybe I am fatally flawed; maybe I am somehow less worthy of empathy.”
Despite myself, despite everything, I feel a prick of genuine pity for her. Is it possible that I’ve been too judgmental? That my distaste for her is misplaced, and Lachlan and I have picked an undeserving target this time? After all, she wasn’t the Liebling who dragged me naked out of bed that day; she wasn’t the Liebling who drove my mother and me out of town. She barely even knew I existed. Maybe it’s unfair of me to blame the sins of the parents on the child.
She’s looking at me expectantly, as if waiting for me to offer up soothing words, an Ashley-like prescription for serenity in the face of tragedy. But I can’t make myself do it. “Give it all up,” I say instead. My voice sounds different, harsher; and I realize, it’s because it’s me. “This place is toxic to you? You’re tired of judgment? Then get out, leave it all behind. You don’t need this place. Give up Stonehaven and go start over somewhere where you have no baggage. Turn off the cameras and live in peace. But Jesus, you have to pull it together. And stop asking other people to tell you that you’re worthy. Why do you care what they think, anyway? Fuck them all.”
“Fuck them all?” I see hope cross her face, possibility dawning in her eyes. And then they slide up to meet mine. “You’re kidding, right?”
I realize that I’m perilously close to blowing my cover. What am I trying to prove? “I’m kidding.” I reach for an anodyne platitude, something Ashley might say. “Look, it so
unds like you’ve had a really challenging year. You should consider self-care. I can give you some mindfulness exercises, if you like.”
“Mindfulness exercises.” She stares at me, as if astonished by the suggestion. “What is that?”
“It’s like, spiritual cleansing.” I know it sounds pathetic; I would hate this advice if it was given to me. “You know, being present.”
She pulls her hand from mine, and I can see that she regrets having spoken at all. “I am present,” she says flatly. She pushes back abruptly from the table. “Anyway. I’ll put this ring in the safe now. Is there a box?”
“A box?” I realize my mistake—of course, it would have come in a velvet box. “Shoot, I left it in the cottage.”
“That’s OK,” she says. “Wait here.”
She vanishes from the kitchen and I hear her move through the house. I listen carefully for her footsteps, but the house swallows the sounds of her movements. I can’t even tell if she’s gone upstairs. I sit there at the kitchen table, heart racing, and hope that we dropped the cameras in the right locations. There are forty-two rooms in this house, and only a dozen cameras.
She returns a few minutes later and stands over me. “Done,” she says. She seems to have recovered herself while she was gone; her hairline is damp, as if she’s splashed water on her face.
I stand. “I can’t thank you enough, really.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. The least I could do for a friend.” Her voice has returned to that breathy, patrician lilt. “Just let me know when you need it back.”
I want to drag the other Vanessa back, the darkly bruised cynic that I just glimpsed underneath this shallow, featherlight phony. I reach out and take her hand in mine. “Seriously,” I say. “I’m sorry that you’re not happy here. You really should think about leaving.”
She blinks at me, then slips her hand out of my grip. “Oh, I think you took my words the wrong way. I’m sure I’m back here for a reason. In fact,” she says, showing twenty-two of her perfect white teeth, “I know I am.”
* * *
—
When I get back to the cottage, shaking snow out of my hair, I find Lachlan sitting at the dining table. The laptop is propped open in front of him, live video feeds streaming across his desktop. When he sees me at the door, he kicks his legs up onto the chair next to him and leans back, grinning.
“Bingo,” he says. “The safe is behind a painting in the office.”
22.
THREE ADULTS—A BLOND WOMAN, a dark couple—sit in the dining room of a mountain mansion, a lonely trio anchoring one end of a table built for twenty.
The table is set for a formal multicourse meal. Bone china plates edged in gold filigree are stacked like Russian nesting dolls, each layer awaiting its course. Monogrammed silver cutlery marches up one side of the china and down the other. Cut crystal stemware reflects prisms in the light of the overhead chandelier. The room smells of woodsmoke and the roses in the arrangements on the sideboard.
The blonde, their hostess, has pulled out all the stops.
She is wearing a green chiffon Gucci dress likely intended to bring out the color of her eyes, but the couple, uncomfortably, are in casual denim. They had not anticipated a meal this grand. They had not anticipated the caterers scurrying about the kitchen, the uniformed woman pouring the wine, the housekeeper waiting to sweep up their crumbs and crusts. Something has changed over the last forty-eight hours since a meal was previously on offer here, but neither of them knows why the blonde suddenly feels the need to impress.
But the conversation is friendly and animated, steering clear of topics that might be sensitive (politics, family, money). Instead, they talk about zeitgeisty subjects with which they are all familiar: the latest critically acclaimed television shows, celebrity divorces, the merits of the Whole30 diet. The wine flows, the soup arrives; the wine flows some more, and here comes the salad. They are all getting tipsy, although if you pay attention you might notice that the couple are sipping their wine much more slowly than the blonde. Occasionally, the couple’s eyes meet across the table, and then skitter quickly away.
The main course—a winter-citrus salmon dish—has just been set on the table when the meal is interrupted by the sound of a ringing telephone. The dark-haired woman scrabbles in the pocket of her jeans, fishes out her cellphone, and studies its screen with a frown. Conversation briefly stops as the woman answers the call. She mouths a word to her dinner-mates—Mom—and they nod, understanding. As she stands up from the table she gives a helpless shrug of apology, and then she steps out of the room, talking to the person on the other end of the line.
The two people remaining at the table smile awkwardly at each other. The blonde looks down at the perfectly plated dish—Should they wait?—but the man tears into the food as if he’s starving to death and so eventually the woman relaxes, too, and picks up her fork. The brunette’s salmon cools and congeals on her plate.
Meanwhile, she walks quickly through the mansion, through cold, dark rooms that feel even darker the farther she gets from the sound and activity in the dining room. She keeps chatting loudly on her phone until she is a safe distance away, and then she abruptly drops the pretense. The call was a fake, of course. There are apps for that.
The woman finds herself in the mansion’s front parlor, where disapproving dead plutocrats peer down from their portraits, then she cuts through the drawing room and into the office. The office is at the base of the round turret that anchors the center of the mansion, and so the room is circular, with curving walls of inlaid wooden bookshelves. Each shelf nook lovingly displays a singular object: a celadon urn, a porcelain cow, a globe lamp, a curlicue boudoir clock. The desk, a lake of polished mahogany, is bare except for an old-fashioned pen-and-ink set and a framed silver photo of a mother and two young children, taken some decades earlier.
The woman walks to the desk, and turns in a slow circle, studying the room. She focuses in on a painting on the wall across from the desk: an oil depicting a British hunting scene, a pack of dogs chasing a fox through the heather. She moves closer to examine it. The painting juts out from the wall by a telling hair, and the gilt of its frame has worn slightly thin in one spot. The woman pulls a pair of latex gloves out of her pocket and slips them on before grasping the frame in the same place. When she gives it a gentle tug, the painting swings away from the plaster, revealing the safe behind it.
The woman pauses, carefully listening, but the house is quiet except for the occasional peal of laughter, like a needle piercing the silence. She studies the safe. It’s the size of a television, as big as the painting that covered it, and fairly modern, with an electronic keypad. Although not too modern; nothing that’s been recently updated.
With gloved hands, the woman carefully punches in a birth date, one that she recently looked up in an online database of birth certificates: 062889. She waits, listening for the click and release of the lock. Nothing happens. She tries again, three more variations on the same date, in quick succession—061989, 280689, 198906—but still nothing happens. She presses an ear to the safe’s metal surface to listen, like a safecracker in an old-fashioned heist movie, but even if there was something to hear she wouldn’t know what to listen for. Her fingers stab at the keypad, growing frustrated. She has read enough about safes to know that she will get only five tries before the safe detects foul play and cuts off any further attempts.
She collects herself, shakes her hands, tries one more time: 892806.
The safe lets out an electronic whine of complaint. The bolts release with a metallic clunk. The door goes slack under the woman’s hands, and she pulls it open and peeks into its dark interior.
* * *
—
It’s empty. The safe is empty.
I peer inside in disbelief. There’s the fake Art Deco engagement ring, right at the front of the safe. Vanessa has
put it in a small silver bowl for safekeeping, and in the dim light it looks like a sad bauble that’s been forgotten in a soap dish. Behind it, there’s nothing. No bundled stacks of cash, no velvet-lined jewelry boxes, no coins in precious metals.
I feel faint. It was all for nothing.
But no—that’s not true, the safe isn’t quite empty. Tucked in the back of the vault is a sheaf of papers and a stack of expandable file folders. I gently lift out the latter and pry them open to peek inside. But it’s just documents, many of them yellow with age. I shuffle through them—stacks of business papers, house deeds, government bonds, birth certificates, assorted legal ephemera that I don’t have the time or interest to parse through. Probably these pages contain an interesting historical document of Stonehaven and its inhabitants, but there’s nothing of value to me.
I place the file folders back the way they were, and then carefully slide the stack of loose papers to the front of the safe. Again, there’s nothing there of value. It’s just old letters.
Still, I quickly riffle through them, just to be sure; and as I do, one of the letters catches my eye. It’s a handwritten note on lined three-hole paper, the kind you find in children’s binders across America. The handwriting is a woman’s, carefully penned in ballpoint ink.
Something inside me stops. I know that paper. I know that hand.
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