Pretty Things by Janelle Brown

Author:Janelle Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2020-04-20T16:00:00+00:00

19.

THE NEXT MORNING I run through the same routine—yoga on the lawn—and wait for Vanessa to show up with her mat in tow. An hour of asanas later and my muscles are shaking with fatigue, but no Vanessa. I do my cobras facing the house so that I can watch the windows, but there is no movement behind the curtains. When I take a casual stroll around the property on my way back to the cottage, I see no signs of life at all. The big wooden garage doors are closed tight and the lights in the windows are out. A battered sedan has materialized in the driveway, but even though I linger nearby, I don’t catch sight of the person who drove it.

I go back to the caretaker’s cottage and pull up the library feed. After a while, an older woman drifts into frame, her hair scraped back into a ponytail, an old-fashioned feather duster in the pocket of her apron. Presumably the housekeeper. I wonder, with some concern, if she will find the hidden camera, but she ignores the shelves of books entirely. Instead she listlessly moves a few things around on the coffee table, plumps up the pillows on the couch, and drifts back out of frame.

Vanessa passes through the library twice after the housekeeper leaves, but she never stays in the room. She just wanders through, looking like she’s lost, looking like she can’t quite figure out where she’s headed. The phone firmly clutched in her hand, like a child’s well-worn stuffie.

Lachlan comes and looks over my shoulder. “What a useless human being,” he says. “Does she do nothing at all? Does she even have a mind?”

Something about his tone makes me sour; I find myself feeling oddly protective. “I wonder if she’s depressed.” I study the somnambulant cant of Vanessa’s walk. “Maybe I should go ring her doorbell again, try to cheer her up.”

Lachlan shakes his head. “Make her come to us. Don’t want to come off too eager, yeah? Puts us in the power position. Don’t worry, she’ll come ’round.”

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