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.”