she’d been tracking me from afar: For how long? And to what purpose? I imagined her carefully clicking through my photo stream, entertaining herself with the details of my life, and felt ill. It’s too easy to forget about the invisible people out there on social media, the ones who observe in silence, the ones who never alert you to their presence. Not the followers, the watchers. You can never really know who is in your audience, or what their motives are for looking at you.
“So, is that why you moved here? Because of your broken engagement?”
“That’s why I moved here,” I began. Don’t tell her anything, I thought to myself. Don’t let yourself be vulnerable. But I was feeling so…off-balance. The words tumbled out regardless. “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. Turns out, I forgot that I hate this house. Terrible things happened to my family in this house, things we didn’t deserve.” I was getting overly emotional now; I was getting too honest, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I couldn’t control it, this exhausting compulsion to be seen and understood, even by (especially by!) my enemy.
But more than that: I wanted her to know what she and her mother did. I wanted her to know exactly how they’d destroyed my family. I wanted her to feel sorry for me; and in doing so, to hate herself.
“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. Did I mention that my brother is schizophrenic now? It all began here. And my mother committed suicide right out there.” I pointed out the window toward the lake.
Ashley’s face went pale. “My God. I had no idea.”
Oh yes you did, I thought. (But was it possible she didn’t?)
And still I went on, and on, I couldn’t stop myself. Years of pain and insecurity and self-doubt pouring out; why was I telling her of all people? But it felt good, so good, to tear off the facade and expose the truth of being me. “I’m Vanessa Fucking Liebling,” I heard myself say. “Maybe I am fatally flawed; maybe I am somehow less worthy of empathy.”
When I looked over, Ashley had fallen from the face of the woman sitting in front of me. Nina was there instead, coiled up tight, her eyes dark and watching. I expected her lips to curl up in disgust, or cold calculation. Instead, she leaned in, and spoke in a voice I hadn’t heard before. “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.”
Her words were like a bucket of ice water, shocking me silent. No one talked to me that way, not even Benny. Did she really mean it? (And was she right?) “Fuck them all?” I repeated, dully.
She shifted in her seat, looked down at the ring in my palm, and seemed to do some mental calculation. When she looked back up at me, Nina was gone again, and Ashley was back; with her little smile and her faux empathy and her goop-like prescriptions for serenity. She started nattering on about the need for mindfulness and self-care and suddenly I couldn’t stand it anymore. How dare she tell me how to be centered and peaceful?
I stood up abruptly. “Here. I’ll go put the ring in the safe,” I said, if only to remind myself that I shouldn’t throw it in her face.
The safe was behind a painting in my father’s study, a murky English hunting scene with grim aristocrats in wigs and plumed hats, their dogs lunging at a terrified fox. I pried the painting back, punched my brother’s birth date into the keypad, and opened the lock.
The engagement ring was warm from my palm. I held it up and turned it, but the light from the sconces was too dim to draw a sparkle from the stones. I placed