to hear her whine some more, to bolster my hatred of her. It will make this so much easier. But something about the expression on my face gives her pause. She blinks, her face stuttering with alarm.
“Oh really, it’s not so bad,” she murmurs.
Lachlan is giving me a look of death over Vanessa’s shoulder. I realize that I am coming off as unsympathetic, even judgmental, not exactly Ashley-like. I soften my tone, blink hard so that my eyes mist over with something approaching empathy. “And you’re living all alone? You don’t get lonely?”
“Well, a little, yes. A lot, sometimes. But hopefully not anymore now that you’re here!” Vanessa laughs a little too hard, a frantic high note that vibrates the vases on the table. She glances over to see if I’ve noticed this, with a look of neediness so obvious that it’s like she’s just flipped the switch on a neon sign. She hates being here by herself, I suddenly understand. She’s lonely, yes, but that’s only part of it. Is it possible that she loathes this place? Are Lachlan and I here to frighten off the ghosts of her past?
Despite myself, I wonder what they might be.
* * *
—
The kitchen stretches along the left rear of the house, a sprawling room designed during the era of cooks and kitchen maids and mistresses who never entered the kitchen. The years have clearly seen some attempt to turn it into a more modern kitchen—the cooking fireplace now houses a decorative arrangement of white birch logs and a Viking stove has been installed against one wall. A kitchen island the size of a boat anchors the room, its wooden top appealingly nicked and stained with age. Gleaming copper pots hang from a rack over the center island, polished to a shine. But all the counter surfaces are bare, as if emptied and staged for a real estate showing, and it’s hard to imagine anyone cooking in that enormous space, let alone whipping up meals for one on that eight-burner stove.
A long breakfast table has been pushed along the wall below a row of picture windows that overlook the lake. This is set with an elaborate spread: plates of pastries and cookies, a cluster of bone china teacups, an embossed tea service in polished silver, a crystal carafe of wine, freshly cut flowers. It’s all so pretentious, so ludicrously over-the-top, that it almost feels like a weapon, intended to make us feel small before her.
Lachlan catches my eye and raises an eyebrow. La-di-da.
“I know, I went a little overboard, but I couldn’t help myself, but it makes no sense to just let this stuff get dusty,” Vanessa says as she herds us toward the table. She laughs nervously, and picks up a teacup, turning it in her hands. The porcelain is so thin it’s nearly translucent, painted around the edges with a decorative motif of a bird. A warbler or a sparrow or a starling— Who am I kidding, I know nothing about birds. “This was my mother’s favorite china, she always insisted that we use it every day instead of saving it for special occasions.” Her eyebrows shoot upward in sudden alarm. “Oh, but I don’t mean to give you the impression that you’re not a special occasion! Anyway, half of it is gone at this point because we broke it. I have wine, too, I wasn’t sure if you drink, so just let me know which you’d prefer.”
She is twittering like a bird on speed and I just want to tell her to stop it. I am starting to wonder if she isn’t a little bit…unhinged.
“I’ll have wine,” I say.
She is visibly relieved. “Oh good, me, too.”
Lachlan is standing at the table, just staring out the windows because he can finally see it properly: the lake, spreading out before us. The rain clouds are clearing and the last of the setting sun is leaking through them, with shafts of pale light illuminating the surface of the lake below. The water is steel gray and jagged—not the serene dark blue you find on the postcards for sale in Tahoe City, but something darker and more ominous. I know the lake well so I am prepared