So much that felt so vital then that I have since managed to forget.
I am disoriented, feeling as if I’ve tumbled back a dozen years and landed in the body of the chubby, lost teenager I once was. “I knew them. Just a little. A long time ago. I lived in Lake Tahoe for a year, back when I was a sophomore in high school. I was friendly with their son.” I shrug. “It’s all a bit of a blur, frankly. I was a kid.”
“Sounds like you knew them more than a little.” He clicks back through the photos in the listing, studying them. “So wait. Will this woman—”
“Vanessa.”
“Vanessa. Will she remember you?”
I shake my head. “She’d already gone off to college when I was living there. I mostly knew her brother. I met her only once, briefly, twelve years ago. So she’d never recognize me now—I look nothing like I did then. I was overweight and had pink hair. The one time we crossed paths she barely even looked at me.” I remember it clearly, too—the way her eyes skidded across me, as if I was so insignificant that she couldn’t be bothered to register my presence. The way my face burned hot underneath the thick makeup I’d so carefully applied to hide my adolescent acne, my rampant insecurity.
Benny, though: He’d recognize me now. But I know where he is these days, and it’s not Stonehaven.
I’m not ready to think about him. I push him from my mind and pull up Vanessa’s Instagram feed for Lachlan to peruse.
Lachlan clicks through the photos, pausing to examine a photo of Vanessa on a gondola in Venice, the hem of her Valentino dress trailing behind her in a soft breeze. I can see him registering her practiced prettiness, the way she casually ignores the gondolier, the complacent expression on her face suggesting that the picturesque canal and sweating old man exist for her pleasure alone. “Still, I don’t get it. If she’s so rich, why is she renting out her caretaker’s cottage?”
“My guess is she’s lonely. Her father died, she just broke up with her fiancé and moved from New York. Stonehaven is pretty isolated. She probably wants company.”
“And we will be that company.” As he scrolls through Vanessa’s photos, I can see his mind running through its calculations. He is already starting to map our way in: the gentle persuasion we will use to convince her to invite us into her world, the vulnerabilities we will discover and exploit. “So, what are we shooting for here? The antiques? Family jewels? All those handbags she’s been collecting?”
“Not the antiques this time,” I say. I realize that I’m trembling a little, maybe because I can’t believe I’m finally opening this door after all these years. I feel a warm rush of vindictive anticipation, underlined by a whisper of disbelief that this is where the last decade has taken me: from that idyllic lakeside cottage to this cheap hotel, where I’m conspiring with a con man. I realize, with a twinge of self-awareness, that I am about to break two of my own rules: Don’t get greedy. Take only what won’t be missed.
“There’s a safe hidden somewhere inside Stonehaven itself,” I say. “Inside that safe should be a million dollars in cash. And get this—I already know the combination.”
Next to me, Lachlan is suddenly alert and quivering. “Jaysus, Nina. You’ve been holding out on me.” He leans in and breathes into my ear, the tip of his nose cold against my earlobe. “So,” he whispers lasciviously, “did you lose your virginity to a Liebling, or to their caretaker?”
6.
LACHLAN AND I LEAVE Southern California in the sunshine, the kind of morning when café windows are flung open and people eat breakfast en plein air. By the time we make it to the Sierra Nevada foothills the temperature has dropped thirty degrees and rain clouds are gathering overhead.
We stop in a small town halfway up the mountains and eat hamburgers at a Gold Rush–themed restaurant called Pioneer Burger with red-checkered tablecloths and wagon wheels hanging on the walls. Forest animals carved from tree stumps