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.”
Oh. That was not the plan: She was supposed to leave without him. “But there’s all this food….Michael, maybe you could come back for it later?”
But Ashley was shaking him off. She managed to stand upright and gather her coat from the hook by the door. “No, Michael, you stay and eat. It would be a shame for all of Vanessa’s cooking to go to waste. I’m just going to lie down and sleep anyway.”
Michael looked at her and then at me. “Well. If you insist. I won’t stay long.”
Ashley’s skin had taken on a greenish cast. She didn’t even bother to acknowledge Michael’s response, she just flung the door open and raced out into the night. We watched her through the window, careening down the path toward the cottage in the rain. Just before she vanished out of sight, I saw her double over and vomit into a stand of dormant azaleas. I flinched, wondering whether Michael would go to her then; but maybe he didn’t see her, because he didn’t move.
Or: Maybe he did see, and he just didn’t care.
And then we were alone, Michael and me. I turned to smile at him, suddenly feeling almost shy. I reached for another bottle of wine and grabbed the corkscrew.
“So,” I said. “You wanted the grand tour?”
* * *
—
Michael followed me through the rooms of the mansion, wine in hand, as I maintained a giddy patter about the history of Stonehaven, all the family legends passed down to the Liebling heirs. “So, the house was built in 1901, story was that my great-great-grandfather had a crew of two hundred working on it so that it could be finished within a year. This was the biggest house on the lake back then, the family came up only in the summers but kept a full-time staff of eleven to maintain it year-round.” I flipped on the lights in each room that we passed through, hoping to make the house seem cheery and inviting, but the dim old sconces couldn’t illuminate the shadowy corners. I hadn’t even been in many of these rooms since I arrived, and it looked like the housekeeper hadn’t, either. Dust lay thick on the sideboards, a musty smell lingered in the old nursery, dark stains bloomed in the draperies in one of the guest bedrooms.
But Michael didn’t seem bothered by Stonehaven’s state of neglect. Instead, he seemed fascinated by—even knowledgeable about—everything he saw; because of his family’s heritage, presumably. He sipped at his wine as we wandered through the halls, asking me about specific pieces and their provenances—my grandmother’s hand-painted Louis XVI chairs, the old master still life in the stairway, the gold-and-alabaster clock in the study. He lingered in each room, going up close to paintings, touching the panels on the walls, peering behind doors and inside closets. Sometimes, I’d turn around mid-sentence and discover that he was still in the room that I’d already left, studying the antiques.
I didn’t want to be talking about antiques.
I saved my bedroom for last. I led Michael to the big wooden doors: “See that? The coat of arms with the boar’s head and the scythe? It was passed down from my family’s ancestors back in Germany.” Or so Grandmother Katherine had told me. I’d always suspected that this wasn’t quite true, but myths are so easily burnished into truths through the power of self-regard.
Michael reached out to trace the carvings with a finger. “A lot of history in this house.”
We stood side by side, admiring the door. Lingering there, the moment so magnificently fraught with tension (Entering the boudoir! The bed lies beyond!), as I wondered, a little dizzily: Do I tell him now, or later? How do I reveal my history with his girlfriend without driving him