Lachlan has scattered books and papers around the room in case Vanessa shows up at the door, but mostly he sits at his laptop, binge-watching true-crime TV shows with an absorbed expression on his face. I’ve brought a pile of novels—I’m working my way through the Victorian era, starting with George Eliot—but there are only so many hours in the day that one can read before one starts to feel like one’s mind is literally melting inside one’s skull. The minutes drip past like a slowly leaking faucet and I wonder how long we’re going to have to stay cloistered inside the manufactured heat of these three rooms.
On the fifth day of our stay, I drive into Tahoe City to stock up on groceries at the Save Mart. Afterward, I linger in town, where the bustle and activity is an antidote to the deathly stillness of Stonehaven. I go to Syd’s for a bagel, even though I’m not hungry, and find that little has changed in the last dozen years. The fairy lights that hang over the hand-chalked menu have been replaced with fluttering flags, and the flyers pinned to the bulletin board advertise a fresh round of teenage babysitters and lost dogs. But the ponytailed manager is still there, his hair gray now, his belly soft. He doesn’t recognize me, which is to be expected, but is also unsettling, as if I was always invisible but I only just discovered it.
I order a coffee and then walk down to the picnic bench on the beach where I used to sit with Benny. I think about the turns of the last twelve years until it’s unbearable, and then I pack up my trash and drive back to Stonehaven.
When I return to the cottage, I find it empty and cold. There’s no sign of Lachlan; his coat and sneakers are missing. I go and stand outside on the lawn, looking up at the lights of the mansion, wondering if I should knock on the door. But something holds me back. Instead, I sit by myself in the gloomy cottage, my mood brooding and sour.
Lachlan blows back through the door a few minutes later, electric with excitement. “Jaysus.” He exhales. “She’s a bit of a mental case, that one.”
“I thought you said we should let her come to us.” There’s a petulant note in my voice; I realize that I do not like having been left out. Or is it that I’m jealous that he got back inside Stonehaven when I did not? Or even—a curious thought—that I’m eager to slip back into Ashley’s skin, so simple and good and free of inner turmoil?
“Ran into her when I was taking a walk, didn’t I? She invited me in.” He shrugs off his jacket and flings it at the couch. “I got one more camera hidden, but she was on me like a hawk, so that was it.”
“Where?”
“The games room.”
I didn’t even know there was a games room in Stonehaven—though of course there would be, a mansion like Stonehaven would always have been intended as a monument to leisure. When Lachlan loads up the camera, it shows a billiards table, a wooden bar with upholstered chairs and dusty decanters of Scotch, and a wall of old golf trophies. The far wall is hung with antique swords, at least three dozen of them, framing a pair of ornately engraved pistols hung in a position of pride above the fireplace.
“It’s not a games room, it’s an armory. Jesus. What the hell were you doing in there? Playing checkers?”
Lachlan frowns. “You’re in a mood.”
“What’d you two talk about?”
“Just some mild flirtation. Discussion about my family’s castle and so on. She likes me.”
“She likes both of us,” I say. “But I’m not sure that’s helping much. At this rate, we’ll be here all year.”
“I set the bait,” he assures me. “Just sit tight. She’ll take it.”
* * *
—
And he’s right. Early the next afternoon, there’s a clatter outside the door to the cottage. Lachlan and I freeze, and stare at each other. He shuts down the video he’s watching, and I gather myself, take a breath, turn myself