Hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Didn’t you ever think about why your family sold their castle?”
He is staring at me. “You’re kidding. Haha, right? Funny joke, getting a rise out of me, right?”
“Not kidding. I should have told you before, but the moment was never quite right. I’m sorry.”
“Well that explains…” His voice dwindles off, leaving me wondering what it explains. He dances the end of the poker on the floor as he thinks, little jabs that leave divots in the wood. Every time it lands, I flinch. “OK. But the house. And all the stuff in this house. It’s got to be worth, what, millions? Tens of millions?”
“Probably.”
“Then sell it.”
Is he really suggesting that I sell the house to pay for a vendetta against Nina Ross? “Maybe someday. But not yet. Not for this.” I hesitate, thinking, and then—oh, it feels devious, but I can’t help myself—I hold out my hand. “I could sell the ring,” I say carefully. “How much do you think it’s worth? Six figures, surely?”
I watch his face, but if he knows, he’s hiding it well. Instead, he scowls. “We’re not selling my grandmother’s ring. It’s an heirloom.”
“Well, we’re not selling my great-great-grandfather’s house, either. Also an heirloom.”
“You don’t even like this place!”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
He weighs the heavy poker in his hand and I feel a familiar little ping of fear. I wonder what’s running through his mind. “Well, we’re going to need to get cash somewhere, Vanessa. Now or later.”
“I thought you had all that money in a trust in Ireland,” I say pointedly. “Now would be the time to retrieve it, it seems.”
He drops the poker on the hearth and walks to the doorway. “I need to get out of this fucking house. I’m going for a drive,” he says darkly. He stalks out of the room and, in a minute, I hear the front door slam. I wonder if he’ll bother to bring me back chicken noodle soup from the market. I have a feeling he won’t.
I pick up the tea and take another sip. My stomach twists when the liquid hits it, and I feel the bile rising. I have just enough time to lurch to the garbage can on the other side of the room before my body starts ejecting the tea. The trash can is made from embossed leather, and the thin brown liquid that I regurgitate immediately sinks into the calfskin and ruins it. I’ll have to throw the can away, I think feverishly, before I vomit again.
I lie there on the floor, my face pressed against the cold boards. Pull it together, that familiar voice whispers to me. I find myself thinking again of the Visine that I squeezed into Nina’s martini, of how helpless and confused she must have felt when she was throwing up in the bushes; and it’s no longer satisfying. Instead I wonder if what goes around comes around; if Nina and I have somehow been caught in an endless cycle, chasing each other in circles, snapping at each other’s tails.
I can’t help but wonder if we’ve both been chasing the wrong person.
* * *
—
A day passes, and then two, and the subject of money doesn’t come up again. I hope that Michael’s just given up the vendetta against Nina and moved on. But I find myself watching him more, noticing the way he walks around the house, touching objects with a casual possessiveness. He studies the furnishings with an attentiveness that I once ascribed to curiosity; now I wonder if he’s doing inventory.
Once, I come across him standing in front of a Louis XIV commode in the parlor with his cellphone in his hand and I could swear that he had just snapped a photo of it. And when I open the armoire one day to look in the box where I keep the last of my mother’s jewels (nothing particularly valuable, just the baubles with sentimental value, like her favorite diamond eardrops and a tennis bracelet that’s missing a stone): Am I paranoid, or did it move three inches to the left?