possessed just a sliver. Benny and I couldn’t sell them even if we wanted to.
What we did have left after Daddy died: our house in Pacific Heights, the Stonehaven estate, and everything inside their walls. Benny inherited the former—which we immediately put on the market; the proceeds to cover Benny’s living expenses—and I (as you know) inherited the latter. This was no small thing; it was still a fortune on paper, albeit a far more modest one than I once imagined.
That, however, didn’t take into account the staggering cost of maintaining Stonehaven—the reality of which I discovered upon my arrival in Lake Tahoe last spring. The cleaning alone was really a full-time job; and then there was the general maintenance, the landscaping, snow removal in winter. The old stone boathouse needed to be repaired. The roof required replacing. The exterior wood paneling was rotting. The gas and electric and water bills were astronomical. And then property taxes! Altogether, upkeep of Stonehaven threatened to cost me in the high six figures annually.
And, with my V-Life sponsors fleeing in droves, I had no consistent income, either.
I could have sold off Stonehaven’s art and antiques—I knew it was what I should do!—but every time I started to put together an inventory list to send to Sotheby’s, I faltered. Those things, that house—they were my legacy, and Benny’s, too (as well as all of those Liebling uncles and aunts and cousins to whom I rarely spoke but still felt some sense of duty). If I auctioned them off, or even sold off the house, was I eradicating my own history?
And if I eradicated that, what did I have left?
So instead, I rented out the caretaker’s cottage, solving two problems in one blow—isolation and income—and thereby setting in motion the string of events that had landed me there, in Stonehaven’s kitchen, looking at Nina Ross’s engagement ring and seething.
* * *
—
In any case—the safe, of course I’d checked it, first thing after moving into Stonehaven, and the stacks of cash that I remembered were no longer there. Why would they be? In reality the go-cash was probably just my father’s gambling stash; he likely blew it all on high-stakes poker at the casinos across the border, where Lily Ross served him cocktails with a side of blackmail. All that he’d left us in the safe was a stack of old files and the deeds to the house; plus a few last pieces of my mother’s jewelry, which I promptly shipped off to the auction house where I’d already sold the rest.
Did this woman somehow think there were treasures to be found in our safe? Was that what she was after here? If so, she was going to be sorely disappointed. I would have laughed out loud, if I wasn’t already fighting tears.
Something heavy was in my hand: I looked down to see that Ashley had taken the ring off and dropped it in my palm. Surprised, my fingers closed around it. “Please?” she said. “I trust you to take care of it for me.”
I looked down at my fist and then back at her, feeling exhausted and overwhelmed and confused. And then—Oh God, no, not again!—I was crying. Crying about my father, who did his best for us but still fucked it all up; and crying about everything that had been lost; but most of all, crying at the unfairness that she of all people was getting married to him, and I was not.
When I looked up, Ashley was staring at me. Was that stricken expression one of genuine concern? Or was she just marinating in my unhappiness, getting some sick vicarious thrill from it? I saw her hesitate, considering something, and then she reached out and put a hand over mine. “You were engaged earlier this year, right?” Her voice was low and soft. “What happened?”
She thought I was crying about Victor. I almost laughed. “How did you know about my fiancé?”
“Your Instagram. It was pretty easy to figure out.”
“Oh. Right.” I tugged my hand free of hers and wiped my face dry. She’d made a mistake: She already told me she didn’t “do” social media. Obviously,