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Until she wasn’t. Because the bad things that were now happening to PJ Wallis were not the kinds of things that were supposed to happen to Monica.
The audience wouldn’t like Monica if she were the way Pandy was now: destitute, on the verge of a breakdown; a pathetic woman who’d dared to believe in herself and had lost everything.
And it wasn’t just about the money! Indeed, it wasn’t really about the money at all, but the fact that in taking her money, Jonny had robbed her of her creative freedom. He’d stolen her opportunity to take a chance on herself, and in doing so, had enslaved a piece of her soul.
Collapsing onto the typewriter, she sobbed and sobbed. What was the point? She might as well destroy Monica, and she would start by burning the original notebooks. Wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands, she picked up the last notebook and once again examined the page where Hellenor had written KILL MONICA.
And then, like a drunk who instantly feels sober when faced with a crisis, Pandy felt her tears dry up. Without the advance, Jonny would certainly take her loft, but it wouldn’t be enough. And then he’d try to go after something else: either Monica or Wallis House—most likely both. He probably couldn’t get them, but he was nevertheless free to make her life miserable by trying. He could file suit after suit. Because, as her lawyers had explained again and again, she’d never signed a prenup, and was therefore “vulnerable.”
Which meant that in order to prevent Jonny from attempting to take Wallis House, she might have to produce the one person who stood in his way: Hellenor.
And that would not be good.
Once they started looking, who knew what they might find out?
Fucking Hellenor, Pandy thought with a start. Now she had to tell Henry how she had foolishly managed to put everything at risk.
She pushed back from her desk with a grunt. The call to Henry was inevitable. She might as well get it over with. Her cell phone didn’t work here, so she would have to use the landline.
She walked to the end of the hallway, past the eighteenth-century French wallpaper that Jonny would undoubtedly rip out, to a small door set into the paneling. She yanked it open and, feeling for the light switch, went down a set of steep, enclosed stairs. When she got to the bottom, she kicked the door. As always, it was stuck.
She kicked it again and it opened. The stench of something slightly rotten rose up into the air. Pandy coughed. Dead mice. She leaned across the couch and unwound the two windows. They opened smoothly, but brought in a handful of dead leaves. Pandy brushed the leaves away and looked around.
The den, as usual, was in its gloomy half-light. The windows in this room were small and high, meant to save on heating. She went to the wall and flipped on the light. The gloom could be explained by the dark plastic paneling that someone had stuck on the walls in an attempt at renovation.
She opened another door and went into the mudroom. Unlike the den, no one had ever attempted to renovate the mudroom, but the appliances, at least, were recognizable. There was a washer and dryer, a big farmhouse sink, a toilet, and most important of all, heat, generated by a potbellied stove in the center of the room.
Arranged around the stove were a picnic table and two old Barcalounger armchairs that had started out a hideous orange but had now faded to a dirty tan.
Leaning against one wall was the tall, narrow mirror where she and Hellenor had checked themselves before they left the house. If Hellenor looked too strange, Pandy would make her change.
The mudroom and the den. Where Pandy and her family had spent most of their time. Because the TV was in the den, and the phone was in the mudroom. The phone was located on a small shelf next to an old answering machine, which still worked. Next to the shelf was a large corkboard where their mother had left herself notes. It still held an assortment of old birthday cards and photos.
Pandy sighed and picked up the receiver. Henry was going to kill her.
She glanced at a photo on the corkboard: her and Hellenor on one of the many Halloweens in which Hellenor had insisted on being Peter Pan and Pandy had been forced to be Wendy.
Pandy frowned. She hated Wendy.
She put down the receiver. She couldn’t tell Henry. Not right this second. She had to think. Henry was right; she needed to clear her head.
She looked back at the photograph. Hellenor, with her short boy-cut hair, green tunic, and bow and arrow. Hellenor, who had managed to avoid just the sort of trouble Pandy was in right now. Hellenor, who had chosen not to become emotionally encumbered by marriage, children, or even a relationship.
And now Hellenor was perfectly happy.
Goddamned Hellenor had no worries. And boy, oh boy, wouldn’t she just love to be Hellenor right now, Pandy thought bitterly as she marched back up to her room.
* * *
Several minutes later, having changed into a pair of baggy shorts and a T-shirt—her only old clothes that still fit—Pandy stuck her phone into her back pocket and headed down the path that led to the boathouse. The veined marble stones skirted the boxwood maze and ended at a set of wooden steps, at the bottom of which was an ornate Victorian structure with a cupola and a large teak deck.
At the top of the stairs, she paused. It was hotter than she had expected. The air was still. There would be thunderstorms later.
Pandy went down the stairs and around the boathouse to a dock where a shiny red canoe was always tied. She got into the boat, sat down, unhooked the rope, picked up the paddle, and pushed the boat away from the dock.
The lake was shaped like a gourd, with a narrow chute at one end, enclosed by marshes where all the little turtles bred in the early summer. It was to this marshy underworld that Pandy now made her way.
She paddled briskly for a minute or two, and then, exhausted, put the paddle back into the canoe and let the boat drift to the center of the lake.
