the world, we measure ourselves within it, and become more and more entrenched in one position.
We turn into monsters without even realizing it.
That’s how you wake up, twenty-eight years into life, and find yourself looking down at a gun in your hands. And you wonder where the Rewind button might be, the button that might take you back to the very beginning so that you can try it all over again and see if you land somewhere new.
On the other side of the kitchen, Vanessa and Lachlan are frozen in place, just a few feet from each other, their mouths shaped into identical, wordless Os. “She knows,” I say to Lachlan. “She knows all about you.”
Lachlan looks from me to Vanessa to me again. It may be the very first time I’ve ever seen visible surprise on his face. “Where’d you come from?”
“Jail,” I say.
His brows squeeze together in a parody of confusion. “Oh, yeah?”
“Please, show me the courtesy of not pretending to be surprised.”
He hesitates for a moment, then laughs. “Fair play. OK, so how’d you get out, then?”
“Posted bail, of course.”
He’s calculating this, still not quite understanding. “Your mum did?”
“No.” I waggle the gun in Vanessa’s direction, which is more difficult than I’d expected. It must weigh at least five pounds, with all that gold and engraving, and my sweaty hands keep slipping on the grip. “She found me and sprang me out.”
“Eh?” He swivels to look at her. “Well, shite. I really didn’t think you had it in you!”
I’m not sure whether he’s referring to her or me. Probably the both of us, the more I consider it. His Irish accent, now that I know it’s just an affectation, grates on my nerves.
Lachlan—no, Michael, I remind myself—takes an exaggerated step backward from Vanessa. I have to make a choice then—at whom should I point the gun?—and I note the relief on his face as he realizes that I’ve left it trained on her. Our original mark. The privileged princess that we came here, together, to con. I watch his eyes flicker between us, and then settle on me, with a tiny smirk. He’s shifted his alliances back to me, and I am reassured to be back in his graces again. At this point, that’s my only hope.
I look down the barrel at Vanessa and she is trembling as she stares nervously back at me, question marks in her eyes. I summon all those years of Liebling hatred, bring them back up to the surface—Who are you?— and glare steadily at her. She shrinks under my gaze, until she is just two moist, green pools of panic, ready to spread across the floor.
When I turn to look at Michael he is smiling at me, a watching smile, tight and false. He’s waiting for me to show my hand.
“She knows,” I say again. “She knows what we were up to. She knows you’re not who you are pretending to be.”
He doesn’t even look at Vanessa; it’s as if she isn’t even there. “All right. Let’s talk. What’s your game, Nina? Why did you bother coming back here, then? Why didn’t you just fuck off to Mexico while you could?”
“With a felony theft conviction hanging over my head? How far would I get? And about that—I need money, a lot, to pay for a good trial lawyer. Because of you, darling. Thanks for that.”
“No hard feelings, yeah?” He is showing far too many teeth; I can see the strain on his face. “I hope you didn’t take it personally. I just saw a better opportunity. You always thought too small. Always so worried about not taking too much. It wasn’t working for me anymore. You and I— We’d run our course, don’t you think?”
Vanessa has started slowly inching her way backward, one tiny step at a time; her hand groping behind her as if feeling for the handle of the kitchen door. “Go sit down over there,” I bark at her. I wave the gun at the table on the other side of the room.
She goes