Pretty Things

by Janelle Brown

  Was it possible?

  I dialed my brother’s phone number with numb hands, half-frozen with the cold, my heart thumping so hard I worried that it might jump out of my chest.

  My brother answered on the first ring, his voice breathless and squeaky. “Seriously, Vanessa, what the hell? Nina Ross! Oh my God. What’s she doing there? Did she ask about me? How long has she been back in town?”

  “That’s not Nina Ross,” I said. “It’s my rental guest. She’s a yoga teacher named Ashley and she’s here with her boyfriend, Michael, who’s a writer. She’s from Portland. Her dad was a dentist.” I willed this into truth with the conviction of my voice.

  “Well, maybe she changed her name. It happens. Seriously—ask her!”

  “Look, it’s not her,” I said, my words a little too sharp. “Sorry, Benny. Probably you’re just remembering her wrong. It’s been a long time. Do you really remember what Nina Ross looked like?”

  “Of course I do. I still have photos of her from back then. And I already looked at them to double-check because I knew you were going to say I was crazy. Here, I’ll send you one.” I could hear him fumbling with his phone, the scrape of his sleeve across the microphone, and then a moment later my phone chimed with a text.

  It was a low-res selfie, taken with an early-model camera phone. The shot was grainy, but I immediately felt an uneasy ping of recognition: It had been taken inside the caretaker’s cottage. Benny and a teenage girl lay side by side on the gold brocade couch, their faces pressed up against each other as they made silly faces at the camera. They looked young and unfiltered and pleased with themselves, tangled up in each other like puppies tumbled in a pile.

  The girl had dark brown hair with fading pink tips; her eyes were rimmed with heavy black liner. Her skin was lightly pimpled and there was a softness to her chin although she was certainly not as overweight as I remembered. There was something else underneath all that though: the raw, unformed material from which a harder, more savvy woman would someday be carved.

  Benny was right. The girl lying there was Ashley. (Or: Ashley was Nina?) The years had passed, and she had changed a lot (she was much improved, aesthetically speaking); but it was there in the curve of her smile, in the wide dark eyes against the olive skin, in the self-assured conviction with which she gazed at the camera: Nina Ross.

  And then there was Benny, still a boy as he lay next to her, his eyes unclouded and the purple shadows of madness not yet bruising his skin. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw him so happy, so free of anxiety, so clear.

  Oh Jesus, had he been fixated on that horrible girl for all these years? I thought about his comment on my Instagram photo. It wasn’t Why are you hanging out with Nina Ross? but Why are you hanging out with Nina Ross without me?

  My mind was firing so fast that I felt faint. Why is this woman here? Why is she lying to me about who she is? What does she want from me? What do I say to her? And also: Oh God, if Benny knows Nina Ross is here, what will it do to him? Will he have another episode?

  “OK, I get what you’re seeing, there’s definitely a resemblance,” I said slowly. “But it’s not her, I swear. She said she’d never been here before. Why would she lie about that?”

  “Because she didn’t think you’d be nice to her? Because our family was awful to hers?”

  What I wanted to say: It was the other way around. They blackmailed us, Benny. Nina’s mother drove Maman to suicide and Nina got you hooked on drugs and together they destroyed our family. But how would that help him if he didn’t know this already? If anything, it might set him off. I never knew exactly what would trigger his episodes; but dredging up the horror of that time seemed like a pretty sure bet. “Look,” I said soothingly. “I am ninety-nine percent sure it’s not her. It makes no sense at all. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll ask her.”

  “Will you?” His voice was pleadingly childlike. My heart was breaking for him; I wanted to wrap my baby brother in a bubble and protect him forever against the evils of an unpredictable world.

  The sun was falling behind the mountains to the west, shadows creeping across the patchwork of water below. The wind blasted over the peak so hard that I felt like it might blow me backward over the edge. “Look I’ve got to run, Benny. I’ll call you later, OK?”

  “I’ll be waiting.” I hung up to the echo of his hoarse, excited breath, and I knew he was not going to let this go.

  * * *

  —

  I hiked back down the trail in a cloud of confusion, still trying to convince myself that it was all a mistake. Maybe Ashley was just a doppelgänger, her presence here some sort of strange coincidence. Or she was Nina’s long-lost twin! (Ridiculous, I knew, but possible?) Or, if it was Nina, maybe there was a legitimate reason why she was pretending to be a stranger to Stonehaven.

  But I knew. I moved blindly, seeing nothing but the smug face of the girl in the photo, ready to tear our world apart. What gall could possibly bring Nina fucking Ross back here? I stumbled over the rocks and tree roots that I had leapt over so neatly just an hour ago, my equilibrium lost. And then: I came around a stand of pines and saw Michael and Ashley in the clearing just ahead.

  They hadn’t heard my approach, not at all. Instead, they were wrapped in a tight embrace, kissing each other hard, as if on the verge of tearing each other’s clothes off right there on the trail.

  I stopped short, hidden behind the trees.

  I watched as Michael ran his lips down the side of Ashley’s neck, bending to bite the exposed flesh of her clavicle. She gripped his neck and pulled him closer, her other hand clawing at his sweat-drenched shirt, and something churned inside me. Was it—envy? The ghost of Michael’s body, his finger testing my pulse, that left me feeling naked and needy? (Of course it was; but it was also so much more.)

  Unexpectedly, Ashley opened her eyes and looked straight at me over Michael’s shoulder. And that was when I knew for sure. Because she didn’t blush with embarrassment, didn’t demurely pull away like the Ashley I knew would have. Instead, she coolly maintained eye contact with me even as her boyfriend slid a hand under her shirt. She wants me to see how desired she is, I realized. She wants to make me uncomfortable, make me jealous. I saw it then, the cruel darkness flashing across her eyes as she locked her gaze on mine, a sharp flicker of the real person hiding underneath that copacetic yogic poise.

  Michael was cupping her breasts now, and she was still looking at me; I could barely breathe. Her lips moved, almost imperceptibly, into a tiny smirk: I see you. Now that I was looking for it, it was unmistakable. This woman was no stranger to Tahoe, haplessly landing at my front door. She was Nina Ross and she knew exactly who I was.

  She knew exactly who I was, and she hated me—quite possibly as much as I hated her.

  Why was she here?

  Liquid anger lit me up. I thought of my mother’s diary entry: I want to kill them both, mother and daughter. The two of them are single-handedly RUINING US. The woman across the way from me was responsible for our family’s demise. I had to do something about that, for Maman’s sake, for Benny’s, for the sake of all the Lieblings they’d connived to destroy.

  I found myself running through all the ways I might confront her, the righteousness with which I could expose her. Wasn’t she going to be shocked—Mortified! Frightened, even!—to realize that I knew who she really was? I took a breath, ready to call her by her real name: Nina Ross you BITCH!

  But then she closed her eyes again, and the moment passed. On and on they kept kissing. She knew I was watching, it was so brazen. I moved closer, impatient. There was a stick on the ground; I put my boot on it, and snapped it, hard. Michael’s eyes flew open and met mine. He jumped back, pressing Ashley (Nina!) away with a palm.

  She blinked. She gave her wet mouth a quick swipe with the back of her hand and then she smiled at me, that familiar mask settling
back across her features. “Oh, there you are!” she chirped, all sweetness and light. Ashley had returned, but now I could detect the mockery in her voice. That smile, so wide I could see her crooked incisors—how could I ever have been convinced it was genuine?

  She was babbling an apology now—her leg had cramped up! Different muscle groups than yoga! So sorry. And I thought to myself, You liar. You’re probably not even a yoga teacher at all. Who the hell are you? What do you want from me?

  I couldn’t figure it out. Had she come back here looking for Benny? But then, why the disguise? Was there something here that she’d left behind? The more likely scenario, I thought, was that she’d come here to finish the job that her mother had started: She wanted money. Maybe she thought I could somehow be blackmailed, too?

  I realized that I had an advantage now: I knew who she was, but she didn’t know that I knew. I had time to figure out what I was going to do about it.

  Meanwhile, Michael was looking from her to me and back again, his brow furrowing with concern. Surely he could sense that something had just shifted between us all?

  “Sorry to cut this short, but I’m knackered,” he said. “Let’s get off the mountain before we freeze.”

  “Too late,” Ashley said, and pasted herself to Michael’s side. “Brrr.” She tucked herself underneath his arm, preening for my benefit. He looked over her head at me, and I could see in his eyes how uncomfortable he was with her little possessive display. Sorry, he mouthed at me. But I was the one who felt bad for him: He didn’t know.

  I wondered, with a little flip of my stomach, what past she had manufactured for Michael’s sake. If she was lying to me, she was surely lying to him, too. And what was she trying to get from him? But then, it was obvious, wasn’t it? He was rich. She was after his money.

  Like mother, like daughter. I might be her short con, but he was her long con, and she’d dragged him along for the ride.

  My heart flew out to Michael. Maybe I should have been frightened for myself, but I felt strangely calm instead. Stonehaven was mine; I could send her away anytime. I had so little left to lose, so little that I really loved. But what about him? Sensitive, thoughtful, intellectual Michael: He had no clue how dangerous she was. I needed to warn him.

  But—how? A confrontation might backfire. I had no proof to shove in her face, other than an out-of-focus picture from twelve years back. She would deny everything, and then she’d leave Stonehaven in a huff with Michael by her side, having lost nothing at all. And I’d be alone again, licking my wounds.

  What I wanted instead was to take from this woman everything that she and her mother had taken from me: family, security, happiness, sanity.

  Love.

  And suddenly, I knew what I was going to do. I was going to save Michael from her. And in the process, I was going to make him mine.

  * * *

  —

  Anger is a magnificently blinding force. Once you step inside its scalding beam, it’s impossible to see past that light. Reason vanishes into the darkness beyond. Anything you do in fury’s service feels justifiable; no matter how petty, how small, how nasty or cruel.

  The thing is, the anger made me feel so giddily alive.

  That night, back at Stonehaven, I went around the house locking every door. I drew every curtain on the ground floor (shaking out a pound of dust, an army of dead spiders.). And then I retrieved one of the pistols from its mount on the wall in the games room, loaded it with ammunition that I found locked in a drawer, and tucked it under my pillow.

  Yes, I was angry, not frightened; but I also wasn’t about to be stupid.

  26.

  AND SO: A DINNER PARTY. Time to play the part of elegant hostess.

  With each whack of my butcher knife against the chicken, I imagined that her neck was on the cutting board and my knife was a guillotine. I pared potatoes, imagining the peels as her flayed skin. When I fired up the burners on the behemoth of a stove, I thought of what it would feel like to shove her hand into the flames. I cooked all day, my anger simmering and bubbling along with the stew on the stove.

  By five, darkness had settled on Stonehaven. The wind had died away and everything was still out on the lake outside. I could hear the migrating geese down at the water’s edge, honking in protest as they prepared to flee the coming storm.

  From my father’s bar, I prepared three martinis, ice-cold gin with a generous splash of vermouth and an even bigger slosh of olive brine: not a perfect martini, but sloppy by design. The brine and booze would serve to disguise the presence of an additional ingredient I’d put in one of the coupes: the contents of a bottle of Visine.

  The coq au vin was almost done, a simple salad was cooling in the fridge. I polished off my martini as I waited for the potatoes to boil, and then mixed myself another. The rain announced itself with an artillery spray of drops hitting the windows. I looked up, startled, and spied Ashley and Michael running up the path from the cottage, their jackets held over their heads.

  I went to greet them at the back door with a cocktail in each hand and a smile on my face, and they flew through the door in a sodden flurry. Already, I was thankful for that second martini. The gin had loosened me, it pleasantly blurred the whole surreal endeavor so that I didn’t have to look past this moment—the martinis, the chattering guests, and the surprised pucker of Ashley’s brow as she took the first sip of her cocktail: “Wow, you pour a stiff drink.”

  “Should I have made something else for you? Matcha tea? Green juice?” I could pretend, too. My lips stretched unnaturally over my teeth: You fake.

  She looked a little alarmed at this. “Oh, no. It’s delicious.”

  I wanted to slap her.

  Michael wandered to the stove, lifted a lid, and sniffed at the contents. “Smells amazing, Vanessa. And here we are, empty-handed.”

  He followed me around the kitchen as I finished the meal, asking questions about my cooking technique, casually flipping through the stained cookbooks on the counter. He was more interested in me than the girlfriend who sat impatiently at the table. She raked her damp hair back into a ponytail and gazed around the kitchen, tipping back her martini quickly. I had set the kitchen table with the everyday plates (none of the monogrammed Liebling china for her), and she surveyed the settings, straightened a fork.

  “We’re not eating in the dining room tonight?” she asked.

  “Too formal,” I offered.

  “Of course. It’s cozier in here, right? But is there any chance we could get the grand tour of Stonehaven?” Her eyes darted to the kitchen door and the dark hall beyond. “I’d really love to see the rest of the house.”

  I bet you do, I thought. I imagined her hands greedily fingering the surfaces of my family heirlooms, and I wanted to shudder. Was she planning to slip the silver into her pockets when I wasn’t looking? I would never let that happen. “Maybe after dinner? I’m almost done cooking.”

  I took my time about it, though, watching her from the corner of my eye as I mashed the potatoes, stirred salt into the coq au vin. By the time I put the food on the table, she was tipping back the last of her martini.

  We sat, and I poured the wine—a dusty bottle of Domaine Leroy that I’d found in the cellar. A challenging wine, all smoke and leather, the kind of thing only someone with a refined palette (and presumably not the daughter of a casino cocktail waitress) might appreciate. Michael lifted his glass and tipped it toward mine: “To new friendships.” He caught my gaze over the rim and held it for so long that it felt inevitable that Ashley would notice.

  But Ashley seemed oblivious. She leaned across the table and clinked her glass against mine so hard that I thought it might shatter. “Sometimes the universe brings you together with someone that you just feel like you were meant to know,” she said, faux sincerity dripping off her tongue. I wanted to spit in her face; instead, I smiled sweetly.
She took a tiny sip of her wine and grimaced. Plebeian.

  The table went quiet as we dug into the food. Ashley managed only a few bites before her face went white; she grabbed a napkin and pressed it to her lips. I watched coolly as she lurched out of her chair.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” she asked.

  I pointed to the door. “There’s a powder room down the hall, third door on your right.”

  She rushed out of the room, stumbling as she doubled over, her hand pressed against her stomach.

  I plastered the appropriate look of concern on my face and turned back to Michael: “I hope she’s OK. I hope it wasn’t the food.” I examined my own forkful of stew with scientific opprobrium.

  Michael was gazing after her with a look of mild confusion. “I can’t imagine that’s the case. I feel fine. I’ll be right back.” He stood and disappeared into the hallway.

  I drank another glass of wine; and then I reached over and picked up Ashley’s glass, tipping its contents into my own. Why waste a fine wine? She wasn’t going to drink it now. A few minutes later, the two of them reappeared in the doorway; Ashley was pale and trembling, sweat glistening on her brow. “I think I have to go back to the cottage and lie down,” she gasped.

  “What’s the matter?” My voice was as smooth and sweet as the dulce de leche ice cream I had stashed in the freezer for dessert with Michael. I studied her, wondering: There were seven side effects she could be experiencing, according to the Internet. Clearly, she already had vomited. What about the drowsiness, diarrhea, lowered heart rate, difficulty breathing? I had given her just enough Visine to make her ill, to get her out of my house, but not enough to send her into a coma. I made sure of that. (Although, yes, I did consider the alternative.)

  Michael was at her side, his arm draped over her back as she doubled over with another round of cramps. He whispered something in her ear and she shook her head. He turned back to me. “I’m so sorry but I think we have to cut this short.”