I think of the photo of Vanessa’s dying father’s hand and even though that image pissed me off—it felt exploitive, like she was using his death to troll for attention: Look at how sad I am!—now that I’m sitting next to her, I am uncomfortably aware of how genuine her grief is. Both parents gone and a brother in an institution. If I were a better person I would feel sorry for this bereaved woman sitting next to me and reconsider my plans for her, but I’m not. I’m shallow and I’m vindictive. I’m a bad person not a good one, and as I battle through this unwelcome pang of genuine empathy I force myself to think instead of the safe. I look around the room and wonder if it’s in here: Hidden behind a panel of books in that bookshelf? Under that pastoral oil painting of some Liebling ancestor’s prize horse, a beast with oversized haunches and a cropped tail?
But beside me, Vanessa is still weeping—murmuring “I’m sorry”—and I can’t help it, I reach over and place my hand on hers. Just to make it stop, I tell myself, and yet there’s a hollow feeling in my chest that I can feel filling up with sorrow for this semi-stranger that I am planning to rob. “How did he die?” I can’t think of anything else to ask.
“Cancer. It came on very quickly.”
Oh God. The last thing I wanted to hear; I do not want to identify with her, in any way. “How awful,” I manage limply as she launches into a harrowing description of her father’s dying weeks that evokes my own worst nightmares.
“I’m very…alone…right now,” she gasps. Why is she telling me these things? I want her to stop talking. I want to hate her, but it is hard to hate her when she is dripping tears on my hand.
“I can’t imagine,” I say lightly, hoping that will end this train of conversation, and gently tug my hand away. But something about the way she looks at me when I say this, as if the only thing she wants in the world is to be understood, makes me rethink my answer. Because dammit, I do understand. I think of Vanessa’s photo of her dying father’s hand and I see my own mother’s shriveled hand; I imagine the choking silence of our house if the cancer takes her before I can save her. I know that if she dies this time I will be alone alone alone forever. Just like Vanessa. And my eyes mist over and my mouth falls open and I hear myself saying, “Or, maybe I can imagine. My father is gone, too. And my mother is…ailing.”
Her tears stop and she looks at me with bald eagerness in her face. “You, too? How did your father die?”
I scramble for an answer, because I know the proper one is not Oh, he’s not dead, my mom just chased him off with a shotgun after he hit me one too many times. Instead, I imagine an alternate past for myself, a doting father who played Uno with me instead of drinking tequila until he passed out, a dad who threw me in the air not to make me scream but to make me laugh. “Heart attack,” I offer. “We were really close.” I find myself choking up at the thought of this imaginary father, the purity of his love for me, the safety I feel in his strong arms.
“Oh, Ashley, I’m so sorry.” She’s not crying anymore. She’s giving me this look and I feel a little sick to my stomach knowing that I now truly have her exactly where I want her: She thinks we are sisters in our struggles.
I can’t afford to start believing that, too.
* * *
—
I have never done a job like this. I’ve never moved so fully into someone else’s life, infiltrated their home and coerced them to be my friend. Most of my cons have taken place in the dark, under the cover of intoxication: parties, nightclubs, hotel bars. I’ve grown quite good at pretending to like someone that I secretly loathe. It’s easy when it’s four o’clock in the morning, and your mark has just consumed a liter of Finnish