Look at me, and look at you.
I turned on the light, and I looked.
The reddish shade of her hair would easily pass for mine. Her body wasn’t quite the same, her torso a little bit longer and her breasts rounder, but it hardly mattered when nobody but Dwayne had seen me undressed in years. Her toes were polished in a shade I couldn’t remember if I owned, but who would bother to check? Especially not if they were sure it was me, and I felt certain that they would. The mole was right. The clothes were right. She was fair-skinned, like me. Eyes blue, like mine. Below that, the gunshot had done too much damage for it to matter. Although her nose . . . I squinted. It was close. Maybe a little bit snubbier. A subtle difference. You had to really be looking for it. I was almost positive nobody would notice.
“Almost” isn’t worth the risk.
I grimaced. Hesitated.
Meat, I thought. It’s just meat.
When I was done, I threw the quilt over her, taking care not to smudge the blood around, mindful of every step. Listening to the calculating voice inside that told me to be quick, thorough, careful.
I hit the switch on the garbage disposal with my elbow: no fingerprints.
I made sure to lift the toilet seat before I threw up.
I double flushed with a capful of Clorox, just in case.
When I turned around, I saw a long-sleeved shift dress hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and a pair of riding boots set neatly on the floor next to Adrienne’s overnight bag: the clothes she’d been wearing when she got here. I put on everything, including the underwear that were crammed into a side pocket of the bag. Only the boots were tight; her lace thong sat neatly across my hipbones, my breasts snugged into the cups of her bra. The dress zipped smoothly and fell into place, the hem brushing lightly against my bare thighs. I tossed my own clothes into the hamper, so that anyone who looked would assume I’d done what she had: arrived at the house on a warm fall afternoon and changed into a swimsuit to lounge in what was left of the afternoon sunshine. Every trace of Adrienne went into her bag. I would leave my own in its place.
When I turned to check my reflection in the mirror, I found a stranger staring back. A woman who looked a little like me, but more like her, as though I’d started to transform into a more polished self but popped out of the chrysalis before the process was done. My mirror image stood tall with her shoulders back, held her chin at a confident tilt, pursed her lips just so. I rummaged in Adrienne’s bag for a lipstick and swiped it across my own lips, rubbing the color into the corners with my finger like I’d seen her do. I lifted the corners of my mouth.
There you are.
Adrienne Richards smirked back at me. I cocked my head; so did she. I placed a hand on my hip, and she did the same.
Then a muffled thump came from the other side of the wall, and it was me again in the mirror: frozen, one hand to my heart, my mouth open in a little O.
Something was moving in the bedroom.
I peered around the door, and let out the breath I’d been holding. It was only Dwayne. I’d told him to stay outside, but of course he hadn’t listened. Not only that, but he was leaning toward the coverlet, reaching for it, ready to lift a corner to peer underneath. I stepped out of the bathroom and cleared my throat.
Dwayne looked up—and if I hadn’t been confident already that I could play my part in what was to come, his reaction would have been all the convincing I needed. He stumbled back with a shout, holding his hands out in front of him as if to ward me off.
“Fuck!” he yelled. He caught himself against the edge of the dresser, breathing hard, peering at me across the room. I brought a hand to my hip.
“I told you to wait outside,” I said.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said. “I thought you were her. You scared the shit out of me. Honest to God, you look just like . . . Wait. Are those her clothes?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Let’s talk outside.” He hesitated, glancing again at the bed, the motionless shape under the bloodstained blankets. I stepped forward. I held out the buck knife, wiped clean, and he took it from me with a questioning look.
“Trust me,” I said. “You don’t want to see what’s under there.”
After that moment in the bedroom, it wasn’t hard to make Dwayne understand how it was supposed to work. How it would work, if we were lucky. Over the course of two summers, many conversations, and a few dozen bottles of wine, Adrienne had unwittingly given me—given us—all the information we needed to drain her accounts and disappear. Once, when she was really drunk, she’d confessed that she and Ethan had been prepared to flee the country when it looked like he might actually be charged for his crimes. I didn’t even have to pretend to be shocked, and the more I stared openmouthed, the more she talked.