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 sounds 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