I manage a polite smile despite the fact that this woman is wasting my time.
I’ve got quite the to-do list.
“Thank you,” I say, reaching for the door, which happens to be locked. A small sign on pink paper instructs me to press the button to my left to be buzzed out.
This might not be Fort Knox, but it’ll suffice, and Brienne’s so tame and obedient, she’s not going to try something crazy—like escaping.
I’m not sure how long this will take or how the hell these people are going to convince her she’s someone who never existed in the first place, but by the time anyone gets so much as an inkling that something isn’t adding up, it won’t be my problem.
A woman from behind a glass window buzzes me out, and I greet the Saturday late-morning sun with a shit-eating grin on my face.
Climbing into my glistening Volvo, which is a far cry from anything I’d ever drive by choice, I start the engine, roll the driver’s side window all the way down, and crank the volume on the classic rock station buried behind the NPR channel in my presets.
The wind messes up my perfectly coiffed hair, and for a second it feels good to be a little less than polished.
The rush.
I live for this rush.
And I can breathe again.
God, I can breathe.
I drive two straight hours, high as a kite on a cocktail of adrenaline and self-satisfaction, and I don’t think of Brienne.
Not once.
CHAPTER 25
The banks are all closed by the time I get back to Quinnesec Bluff that afternoon, but it doesn’t matter. It just gives me more time to get everything in order for next week.
There’s a locked file cabinet in Brienne’s office, one that I’m positive contains more bank statements and any and all account numbers I’ve yet to locate.
If only I could find a damn key.
Worst-case scenario, I’ll call a locksmith.
But this is exactly why I needed to have her committed—so I could gain full access to every file, every drawer, every record she has. It’s impossible to go rifling through someone’s private effects when they never leave their home. A handful of times I’d considered doing my dirty work when she was out cold with one of her migraines, but one misstep and all this would be for nothing.
When I get home, I’m famished. I snatch a coupon from a stack of mail and order a pizza. It’s too bad they don’t deliver beer. If I have to swirl and sniff another glass of cabernet, I’m going to gouge my eyes out with one of those flimsy self-defense weapons Brienne carries around on her key chain.
Grabbing my phone again, I text Samantha the address to Brienne’s house and tell her to grab a case of Old Milwaukee on her way. She replies in an instant, ever the accommodating girlfriend, and I settle into the couch in the room Brienne refers to as “the back parlor.”
So many times I wanted to scream in her face when she referred to the parlor or the scullery or mentioned washing the windows in the third-floor turret.
Who talks like that?
That’s the problem with people like her, people who grew up in these perfect bubbles with their money and their social media–worthy first-world problems—they have no sense of reality. They’re completely out of touch, and they have no idea how they sound to people like me—people who’ve spent more than a hot minute in the real world.
My stepmom once told me that privilege is an illusion.
And she would know.
She grew up in this very house, with the very same people who raised Brienne.
Now, Sonya wasn’t perfect and she sure as hell was no saint, but she was the closest thing to a mother I ever had, and she was the only one who stepped up to the plate for me when I was nine and Dad died from an “accidental overdose.” From what I know, she lost custody of Brienne permanently when Brienne was eight or nine. (Drugs or something—which she always refuted.) But when Sonya got clean and tried to make amends with her parents so she could be in her daughter’s life, they’d have no part of it.
But it’s their loss (may they rot in hell), because Sonya is one hell of a woman.
Or at least she was.
Pancreatic cancer stole her from me a couple of years back. It hit her hard and took her fast. I barely had a chance to say goodbye, and then she was gone. But before she died, she told me stories of her childhood. Of the kind of wealth and privilege trailer trash bottom-feeders like myself could only dream of. It was mostly material in nature, of course. Imported luxury vehicles. Name-brand clothing. Trips to Disneyland on a whim. Dinners at only the best restaurants.
But the thing that stood out to me the most was when she told me her dying wish was that I could someday know what it was like to lay my head on a pillow at night and not have a single care in the world.
It was how she grew up. But it wasn’t how she lived. And ultimately it wasn’t how she died.
And I decided then and there that I wanted that more than anything.
For me.
For her.
Sonya’s parents passed only a few years before that, and Sonya estimated they were worth at least ten million if not more. As Arnaud and Elisabetta Dougray’s only child, that money should have been hers. Instead, they disowned their daughter and left it all to Brienne. Sonya always resented the way her parents replaced her with her own daughter.
The entire thing was infuriatingly unjustified, she always said. And I never blamed her.
Where I come from, we might not drink cabernet every night or catch the opera when it’s touring through town, but we do take care of our own.
I wasn’t Sonya’s, at least not by blood, but she never made me feel that way. She fed and clothed me from a young age. Taught me how to drive. Worked two minimum-wage jobs with a revolving door of handsy bosses to make sure I had school supplies every year and a roof over my head that didn’t leak.
The way I look at it, I’m righting some wrongs.
Ever since the time I caught one of Sonya’s boyfriends stealing from us and slashed his tires, she always called me her “little vigilante.”
I think she’d take great pride in knowing nothing’s changed.
I’m fifteen minutes into some enlightening crime documentary while simultaneously watching surgery videos on YouTube when Samantha texts to tell me she’s at the back door.
“That was fast,” I say when I greet her a second later. Hooking my arm around the small of her back, I pull her in before Enid Davies has a chance to notice anything—though Enid would probably think Samantha was Brienne from afar. She’s a damn near perfect replica. “You miss me or something?”
I kiss Samantha hard, biting her lip.
“Ouch.” She pulls away, lifting her hand to her mouth and checking for blood.
I’m buzzing. Buzzing with pride. With life. With the anticipation of our wildest dreams coming true. “Sorry. You know how I get when I’m excited.”
“I forgive you.” She fights a smirk and places the beer in my arms.
I drop the case on the counter and pull Sam against me once more, burying my face in her neck and nipping at the soft flesh that smells like the bottle of Brienne’s perfume I found on her dresser the night after I moved in. She was in the shower, and I took the opportunity to snoop through her things, snapping pictures of purses and perfumes and clothing items for reference.