away? “So,” I heard myself ask. “Have you and Ashley been together a long time?”
He looked sideways at me, surprise on his face. And I was sure I could read his thoughts: Why are you bringing her up now, of all times? “A long time? No. About, oh, six months? Eight?”
“How well do you know her?”
“That’s an odd question. How well do I know my girlfriend?” He frowned, and kept tracing his finger across the grain of the door. “Where is this coming from?”
“Just curious.” And I was! I was curious despite myself. I ran through all the things I wanted to know about Ashley/Nina. Where had she been all these years? When did she adopt the Ashley Smith persona, and why? Was she a scam artist like her mother? And what about her mother? Was Lily Ross still around? Did the law ever catch up with her? Oh, I wanted Lily Ross to have suffered. But maybe she had? There was that sob story Ashley had told me in the library, about her “ailing” mom. Was that another lie? Somehow, I didn’t think it was. Something about the way she said it—those tears, they’d felt authentic. (But then, I’d been so gullible!)
“Do you know her family? Because Ashley said her mom is sick, and I wondered: What’s wrong with her?”
“She told you that?” Michael frowned. “Hmmm. Honestly, I’m not exactly sure, something chronic.”
So it was true; that, or she was lying to him, too. “You’ve never met her?”
He was still staring at the door as he shook his head. “No. She lives far away and we haven’t made the trip together in the time that Ashley and I have been together. We were planning to go at Christmas.” He put his hand on the doorknob and raised an eyebrow. “Can we go in now?”
He pushed open the door then, and stopped short. The bedroom was cavernous, the pulsing red velvet heart of the house. The walls were covered with mahogany paneling, decorated with the same coat of arms; the fireplace sat in a stone hearth that stretched taller than my head; and the pièce de résistance was a massive carved bed with a velvet canopy fit for royalty. A wall of windows overlooked the lake. It usually offered a spectacular view, but at that moment all that was visible was the pouring rain and the darkness beyond.
Michael laughed. “This is your room?”
“What did you imagine?”
He shook his head. “Something more modern and feminine. More like…you. Silly, I suppose.”
He’s been imagining me in my bedroom! A delicious realization. “Not in this house. There’s nothing modern here, anywhere.”
I watched as Michael wandered around the room, examining the trinkets on the bookshelves and the painting of Venus and Hephaistos over the mantel, opening the doors of the walnut-inlaid armoire that hulked against one wall. He walked over to the moving boxes stacked against the wall, and tilted his head to read the labels. “You haven’t unpacked?”
“Why? I don’t need any of that here, anyway. There never seemed to be much of a point in taking it out.”
“You’re still looking for a reason to leave.” He tossed back the last of his glass of wine. “Or to stay.”
“Maybe you’re right.” And then, feeling bold (or maybe I was just a little bit drunk?): “Can you give me one?”
“To what? Leave, or stay? It would depend.” He turned and took in the bed, in all its monstrous glory. I wondered if he was imagining us in it, naked, swaddled in velvet. (I was!) Outside, the rain had turned to hail. It battered the roof overhead; a wind-tossed tree branch raked against the window as if trying to make its way to the warmth inside. Michael closed his eyes, and recited a few lines of poetry, so softly that I had to crane my head to hear his words.