This woman cannot stand still, and neither can her face. She’s had approximately a dozen shifts in expression as she’s absorbed the news that she can’t possibly understand about her dog calling my mother. It’s actually strange to see her skin moving, white and smooth, rather than green and flaky and crumbling every time her lips twitch one way or her forehead wrinkles another way.
She’s fully clothed now, in tattered jeans that hug her hips and a pink crop top hoodie, but her feet are still bare, showing off toenails painted all random colors, no rhyme or reason. And her hair—I’m not entirely certain what color she was going for, but it’s somewhere between burgundy and purple, and it’s giving off a fluorescent shine, as though it could double as a beacon were we to get stranded here and need to signal for help.
It’s quite bright. Impossible to miss.
“Well, I hope Marshmallow was polite and didn’t bark your mother’s ear off,” she finally says. She flits to the fridge, glances inside, grimaces, closes the doors, and then heads to the island, where she piles plates and bowls and utensils. She carries them to the sink, smiling indulgently at her dog, who’s now gazing at me like I’m some kind of dog god. “Good boy, helping Mommy with the dishes.”
“The contract, Ms. Fairchild.” I don’t tell her my mother’s left me six voice messages and is now not answering my return call, which means there’s zero doubt in my mind that she’s taxiing down a runway right now.
Did they track my phone?
Did they know last night that I was leaving?
Was I followed?
I was certain I wasn’t followed.
Begonia pulls her phone out of her back pocket. “Of course. Sorry. Nervous habit. Not that I like cleaning, but I—never mind. The contract. It’s right here in my email…” She swipes her finger over the screen, and after a moment, she bites her lip.
I cross my arms.
She hits the screen harder.
“Is there a problem?”
“No, no. It’s just thinking. I like your pajama pants. One of my students found that old video of the dancing hamsters late last year, so we did a unit on the art of the early internet memes.”
I frown at her.
She gestures to my crotch. “The dancing hamsters on your pants. I assume you’re a fan? Or were those a gift?”
“Hamsters have nothing to do with your contract.”
“I have the contract. I do. But my email program seems to have had a little glitch and emptied all the emails that were in my inbox, and I don’t get service here, and there’s no wifi, and…and that was supposed to be exactly what I wanted, but it’s a little inconvenient right now that I need to download my inbox again and I…can’t.”
“Inconvenient,” I repeat.
She tosses the phone on the counter. “I paid for this house! And Mr. Ferguson sent me instructions on how to get to the island and which golf cart company to use to get to the gate with my luggage, and to play a game where I said I was Marilyn Monroe, which makes so much more sense now, for the record, and he sent the code, and I wouldn’t know any of that if I wasn’t authorized somehow to be here, even by someone who shouldn’t have authorized me. I’m not a thief. I’m not a trespasser. Do you believe in fate, Hayes? Because I saw this house come up on the vacation rental site—one minute it wasn’t there, and I got lost in my search and started it over, and then poof, here was this house, and it was fate’s way of saying I’m sorry you married the wrong person and took too many years to realize it, here, go enjoy coastal Maine for a couple weeks, and gah, that sounds like I’m trying to sob-story you into letting me stay, but I’m not. I’m just telling you what happened, and you don’t need to feel sorry for me. I just want you to know I honestly thought I was supposed to be here.”
My headache is back, and the longer that dog sits there switching between watching her load the dishwasher while she babbles, and gazing at me like it’s a teenage girl and I’m my brother at a movie premiere, the more my sinuses clog up again.
“Give me your phone.”
She pauses in the midst of wetting a rag. “Are you going to make my dog eat it like he did yours?”
For the record, twitching while your head is pounding isn’t enjoyable. “Yes. That will solve everything.”
Her face screws up in irritation. “I’m trying very hard here.”
“And I have a headache, I haven’t slept in two days, and I wanted peace and quiet and to be alone, and this is my house. Give me your damn phone so I can find this damn contract you claim to have so that I know who I have to murder.”
“I don’t have signal, and I—”
“Give. Me. Your. Damn. Phone.”
She closes her eyes, sucks in a very large breath that has her chest rising under her pink shirt, and blows it out like she’s counting to three thousand.
When she opens her eyes again, I swear she’s muttering to herself about wishing it was my brother here instead of me. But she hands me the phone with very controlled movements, like she wants me to know I’m trying her patience, and like she thinks I’ll truly care about where her patience sits when she’s trespassing in my house.
“Does your family know you say damn? That’s not allowed in any of your movies.”
“Unlock it,” I order softly.
She flips it around to her face, swipes up, and then hands it back to me. “If I find out you’re Hayes Rutherford’s doppelgänger and that you are really the one who’s not supposed to be here, I’ll do something we’ll both regret.”
“Believe me, Ms. Fairchild, if I could be anyone else right now, I would be.”
Her nose wrinkles, and she goes back to attacking the countertops. “Why would you want to be anyone else? You’re financially set, you have a good reputation, your family is lovely, and there’s literally nothing in the world you can’t have.” She lifts a hand. “Yes, yes, except this house to yourself at this exact moment. And no family is ever as perfect as they look on TV. I’m aware. You’re inconvenienced and imperfect. So am I, Hayes. So am I. But I’m rolling with it, and I think you’d be happier if you tried to do the same.”
I connect her phone to the hotspot on mine, which gets weak signal, but signal nonetheless, then order her email to download while she yammers as she flits about the kitchen, continuing to gather dirty dishes and dumping them in the dishwasher, then wiping the counters down.
“How many people did you have over?” I ask.
Her nose wrinkles. “Just me and Marshmallow.”
I eyeball the dishwasher, which is close to full.
“Oh, that.” She flaps a hand at her mess. “It’s been such a long time since I decided where we should eat that I don’t actually know my favorite foods anymore. I’m sampling them all. Do you know I’d never had curry before yesterday? There’s a soup and sandwich shop over in town with a curried chicken salad and it was so good. I’m thinking of offering to do some bussing in exchange for tips and tricks on how to make my chicken salad that good when I go home. I’d never ask for their actual recipe, but if they wanted to share the brand of curry powder they use, or any you should know to never combine these ingredients suggestions, that’s all I need.”
She never stops talking.
And her email is downloading, and dear god, she has three thousand unread messages.
No, four thousand.
No, still going.
She’s not a squatter. She’s an assassin, sent to murder me by making me twitch to death at the sight of her Jesus Christ on a curry sandwich, thirty-four thousand unread messages.
“You need psychological help,” I tell her.
“My therapist said I probably only need to check in every three to six months. She was massively helpful during the divorce. And I still have daily work to do on myself, but I’m up for the hard work, and that’s the important part. Well, that and all the hard work I’ve already done. Scoot over, please, and I’ll get these bread crumbs behind you.”
I shift, glance around, and the disaster that was my kitchen is now a workable space, aside from the dishwasher still hanging open.
The refrigerator’s open again too.
I’m twitching all over again, watching her put my kitchen back to rights. “Could you please make that dog go live outside until I’ve removed you from this house as well?”
She visibly stifles a sigh, then squats and smiles at the dog. “Marshmallow! Go catch a butterfly! Go catch a butterfly, you good boy!”
The dog barks, wags its tail once, and trots to the back door, where it noses the lever, uses a paw to swing the door open, and slips outside.
Begonia makes one last pass through the kitchen, shutting the dishwasher and the refrigerator door. She dusts her hands together, then beams at me. “Coffee while we wait?”
“No.”
“No, thank you, Begonia, but it’s a very kind offer to share your special coffee of the month club coffee with me,” she says, affecting a baritone.
I slowly lift one eyebrow in response.
And Begonia, in what I’m rapidly deciding is true Begonia form, squints at me. “Does your family drink the same coffee that’s served at your theme parks, or do you have, like, a private coffee plantation where you grow and harvest your own? With—what is it? Civets, right? Civets eat the raw coffee beans, then digest them, and when they’re harvested on the other end, they’re super fancy and delicious in a way you wouldn’t think considering what the beans have, erm, been through.”
“I don’t drink coffee. I drink the blood of people who piss me off.”
She laughs. “Oh, wow, do you have any idea how many of my students quoted that line to me last fall? I didn’t see Trick or Date—my ex really didn’t like Razzle Dazzle films—but my kids adored it. They even said Jonas was hot for an old guy. Teenagers, right? Thirty-something is not old, but maybe he should start playing roles more mature than college kids? I mean, it was great that your family finally moved him up from playing the high-schooler, but—”
This woman is getting on my last nerve, and she thinks I’m making jokes. “I’m printing the non-disclosure agreement, and then you can leave. Immediately.”
My phone buzzes as some emotion I’d prefer to ignore flashes across her face. Truthfully, I’d prefer to ignore all emotions.
They make life entirely too complicated.
As does my brother’s text message.
Mom’s on a plane with Amelia Shawcross. If you’re hiding at your place in Maine, I recommend drowning a sack of puppies. Got a great prop guy who can make it look real and a semi-reliable paparazzo who owes me a favor. Alternatively, dash off to Vegas and have a shotgun wedding with the first person you meet who’d have you. Let me know if you go with the second option, and I’ll have Caspian draft a good prenup before you land.
All I wanted was six hours of sleep before digging into the inconsistencies that everyone else in Razzle Dazzle’s corporate real estate division overlooked to figure out why we seem to have a small leak in our bank accounts.
Instead, I have a modern flower child with the world’s most obnoxious dog making a mess of my house while my mother’s on her way here to convince me to marry a Wall Street heiress who needs a husband who won’t mind when she flies off to visit her secret lover in Cambodia.
Suppose it could be worse.
She could be bringing Paisley Windsor too. Mom’s convinced Paisley’s a misunderstood socialite who needs a little consistency in her life, and that with the right paperwork, she, too, would make me a good wife.
Anything to avoid a repeat of my early twenties when I believed in love.
“Does your eye always twitch like that?” Begonia asks. She’s flitted into the living room, where she’s gathering scattered clothing and paint rags, slowly but steadily erasing the evidence that she was ever here. “You seem like you’re under an unhealthy level of stress. Way more than I’d expect for you finding an unexpected guest in your house. Is everything okay?”
I open my mouth to ask what a healthy level of stress would be when finding a squatter in my house, but before the words can form on my tongue, the back door swings open again, and her dog trots in, carrying a wooden statue in its jaw.
“Marshmallow!”
He drops the statue, sits back on his haunches, and regards her with a faux innocence that’s utterly diabolical while I process the rest of what I’m seeing. “What the fuck?”
Begonia falls to her knees and grabs the small wooden statue. It’s roughly eighteen inches high, and rubbing its head as she’s doing will not fix what that dog has done. “Just needs a little polish and freshening,” she says brightly.
“Maurice Bellitano carved that.”
She goes pale. “The Maurice Bellitano?”
“That’s my grandfather. Your dog chewed off the head of Maurice Bellitano’s carving of my grandfather.”
“Oh, god,” she whispers.
We both stare at the statue in her hands.
While my grandfather was more rotund than the slender statue, the high-waisted suit pants, the suspenders, and the loafers are undeniably him.
The head used to be as well, but now there are gnaw marks in my grandfather’s eyeballs, his nose is gone, and the scally cap he always wore is missing half its brim.
I shift my attention to Begonia.
Her expression leaves zero doubt that she knows exactly who Maurice Bellitano was, and exactly how priceless that piece of wood in her hands is. “Oh, no no no…”
And now my head is going to explode.
When my mother sees this—
Wait.
Wait.
I look at my phone again.
Then at Begonia, a squatting divorcée with her poorly-disciplined dog and her glowing hair and her disaster all over my entire house.
An idea takes hold at the root of my brain.
It’s a terrible idea.
Worse than terrible.
The consequences, the repercussions—if this backfires, it could do far more harm than good, and cause more problems than the situation I’d like to extract myself from.
But if it works, it could give me exactly what I’ve wanted and needed for months.
Years, even.
“Do. Not. Move,” I order. “Do not think. Do not breathe. Do not move. Do you understand?”
She’s kneeling on the floor, one hand on her dog’s collar, the other gripping my grandfather’s chewed head, staring at me with wide-eyed fear again. “My brain and my instincts are very much at odds over understanding right now, if I’m being perfectly honest.”
“And for the love of god, do not talk.”
I need to think.
And I need to do it quickly.
