the listing reads. Lakefront 2 Bedroom, Short- or Long-Term Rental.
“Click on it,” I command him. He raises an eyebrow at me but he obeys, and takes the laptop.
The listing has six pictures. The first is of a tiny living room anchored by a stone fireplace and a faded brocade couch, artwork tiled along the walls and antiques crowding the corners. The furniture is all slightly too large for the cottage, almost hodgepodge, as if someone had emptied the contents of a different house here and then thrown up their hands and walked away. The second photo shows a vintage kitchen dominated by a classic enamel O’Keefe & Merritt stove, the wood cabinetry hand-painted with stencils. There’s a photo of a pristine lake view and another of a modest bathroom and yet another of a bedroom with twin sleigh beds nestled up against each other under the eaves.
Lachlan squints at the photos. “This is your area of expertise, not mine, but that dresser…isn’t it Louis XIV?”
I ignore this, reaching over him to click forward to the last photo in the series. It shows a bedroom with a four-poster bed, positioned alongside a picture window framed in gauzy curtains. There’s a white lace coverlet draped across the bed, and a painting of a farmhouse perched over a cascading river. The glass in the picture window is thick and warped with age, but through it you can glimpse the blue of the lake beyond.
I know that bed. I know that painting. I know that view.
“That’s the bed I lost my virginity in,” I hear myself say.
Lachlan jerks around to stare at me, and at the serious expression on my face he starts to laugh. “Seriously? This very same bed.”
“It’s a different bedspread,” I say. “But everything else is the same. And the dresser is rococo, not Louis XIV.”
He’s rocking back and forth with laughter. “My God, no wonder you have a thing for antiques. You got deflowered on bloody rococo.”
“That’s the dresser. Don’t know what the bed is, but it’s not rococo,” I murmur. “Don’t think the bed’s that valuable, actually.”
“What the fuck is this place? Who puts eighteenth-century French furniture in a crumbling old cottage like that?” He scrolls down the listing and reads the summary. I peer over his shoulder.
Enjoy a magical stay at the Caretaker’s Cottage, part of a classic estate on the West Shore of Lake Tahoe! So much charm packed into two cozy bedrooms: Vintage kitchen, beautiful antiques, a working stone fireplace! Lake views, nearby hiking, and just steps away from a private beach. A perfect sojourn for a couple or an artist seeking inspiration!
He turns to look at me, quizzical. “Classic estate?”
“Stonehaven.” That name in my mouth conjures up a strange stew of emotions: remorse and nostalgia and loss and a hot blast of rage. I enlarge the photo of the bedroom and examine it closely. I feel disembodied, my present and past selves split between these two beds, neither of them mine. “It’s a huge lakeside mansion that’s belonged to the Lieblings for over a hundred years.”
“These Lieblings. Am I supposed to know who they are?”
“Founders of the Liebling Group, a real estate investment firm based in San Francisco. They used to be Fortune 500, though I think they fell off a while back. Old money, though. West Coast royalty.”
“And you know them.” He is studying me with an expression on his face that suggests I’ve betrayed him in some way by keeping this valuable connection to myself until now.
Fragments of memories are surfacing from someplace deep within me: The darkness of that cottage, even with the setting sun cutting sideways through the glass windows. The way the coverlet—blue wool back then, I recall it was woven with some sort of crest—scraped against the backs of my bare thighs. The frothy cascade of the river in the painting, water descending to the edge of the painting as if ready to spill over and anoint me. The tender red curls of a boy who smelled like marijuana and spearmint chewing gum. Vulnerability, loss, the sensation that something precious inside me had been dragged out and