Ambien. A full bottle. She pocketed half the pills. Past experience proved that something like these could come in handy one day.
Slowly, Ariana crept down the short hall, assuming the bedroom would be at the very end. On her way she passed by the open door to an office and paused. Sitting in the middle of the desk were two sets of legal-size papers. One was flagged with pink Post-its indicating places to sign. The temptation was too great. With a quick glance at the bedroom door, Ariana turned and stepped into the office.
Positioned on the west side of the house with the blinds drawn, the room was dimly lit. Ariana's eyes adjusted quickly as she picked up the papers and quickly scanned their contents. It was a will. Grandma Covington's will. Both a new version and an old. Ariana scanned the pages to find what had changed. Her eyes fell on Kaitlynn's name in the old version and her heart stood still. Grandma Covington had set aside two million dollars for Kaitlynn Nottingham.
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Palms sweating, Ariana quickly scanned the new version.
"She's removing Kaitlynn from her will," Ariana whispered to herself. After the fond manner in which Kaitlynn had spoken about Grandma Covington, Ariana wasn't surprised that Kaitlynn had once been in her will. But Kaitlynn had been convicted of killing Grandma Covington's son more than two years ago. Why had the woman waited this long to take Kaitlynn out?
Suddenly Ariana felt a rush of realization. Maybe Grandma Covington hadn't believed that Kaitlynn was guilty. Maybe she had been hoping that her adopted granddaughter would be released. But since Kaitlynn had lost her chance at an appeal...
It all made sense. Suddenly, Ariana found a soft spot for the old woman growing inside her chest. This lady loved Kaitlynn just like Ariana did. How could Ariana murder the only other person in the world who cared about Kaitlynn?
She couldn't. It was as simple as that. Ariana breathed in and felt her mind start to clear. Once again she had let herself come far too close to the abyss. Once again she had been saved.
Ariana was just turning to go when she heard a whir and a creak. Her heart hit her throat and she made a move for the sliding glass door, but it was too late. Grandma Covington wheeled her way into the room and paused near the door.
This was it. The jig was up. Unless...
Ariana felt her hand close around the slim gold stand on the library lamp in front of her. She could still do it. If she had to.
"Briana Leigh?" Grandma Covington squinted in the darkness.
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She wasn't wearing her glasses. "Is that you? What are you doing in my office?"
Ariana's grip loosened. She took a deep breath. Grandma Covington and her shoddy vision had just given her an easy out.
"Just looking for a pen, Grandma," Ariana said, perfectly mimicking Briana Leigh's slight Texan drawl. "I'll see you at breakfast."
Then, before the woman could question her further, Ariana slipped out the back door and onto the patio. She paused for a moment to collect herself, then shook her hair back and strolled toward the main house.
Kaitlynn would have been proud of her, she knew. Proud--and grateful. But that didn't change the fact that Ariana was screwed.
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WASTED
Ariana watched from one of the extra bedroom windows as Teo picked up Briana Leigh in his Hummer later that morning. She wondered what Briana Leigh had said to him, if anything, about the confrontation with her grandmother. Was she the type of girl to keep it to herself and hope that it would go away, or would she get all dramatic and weepy and tell Teo everything?She had a feeling it was the latter.
The second the roar of the engine had faded in the distance, Ariana grabbed her purse and headed downstairs. She snagged the keys to the Cadillac off the hook inside the mudroom and walked to the garage, where several choice autos were kept waxed and buffed and ready to go.
Ariana paused for a moment, wishing she knew more about cars. Which of these rides would be worth the most on the open market? The Bentley? The Ferrari? The vintage 'Vette? But even if she could
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somehow figure that out, she wasn't exactly versed in grand theft auto. She wouldn't have had a clue where to sell a car if she'd stolen one. And she had a feeling cars were easily traceable. Annoyed at her own naivete, she got behind the wheel of the Caddy and zoomed out onto the driveway.
There was one thing she did know about, and that was fashion. Today she was going to utilize that expertise without Briana Leigh breathing down her neck. If ever there was a day for retail therapy, this was it.
On the way back to the Plaza of the Americas, Ariana cranked up the radio and tried to enjoy the feeling of the wind in her hair. She was going to have a little fun while she could, because in a couple of weeks, when Briana Leigh went off to Atherton-Pryce, Ariana was going to be homeless and broke. No more cars, no more mansion, no more three square meals a day. Unless she figured out a plan B, this could be the last time she would ever be this free.
At the plaza, Ariana parked the car and strode right to the first boutique she and Briana Leigh had hit a few days before. She had chosen the most understated outfit she could put together from the garments Briana Leigh had bought for her--an eggplant A-line skirt with a sleeveless ruffle-front blouse and bronze gladiator sandals. Altogether she'd felt almost presentable, but still not quite comfortable. As soon as she walked through the door of the boutique, she selected all the things Briana Leigh had refused to let her try on. She brought the whole armful back to one of the brightly lit dressing rooms and closed the door behind her.
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"No one has told me what to wear since I was four years old," Ariana muttered to herself, stripping off the Briana Leigh wardrobe and tossing it on the floor.
Her cell phone beeped and she fished it from her purse. There was a picture message from Hudson waiting for her. With a smile, Ariana opened it and laughed. It was an extreme close-up of Hudson with an exaggerated sexy expression, one eyebrow raised and a saucy smirk on his lips. The caption read, When can I see you?
Ariana quickly texted back one word: Soon. Then she turned off her phone. She had important business to attend to.
As she slipped into a silky, light blue Nicole Miller dress, Ariana let out a sigh of relief. She turned to look at her reflection and smiled. There she was. There was the person she needed to be. There was really nothing better than retail therapy.
Except, of course, that she couldn't buy anything.
Ariana took the dress off and tried a black Michael Kors top paired with a sweet white eyelet skirt. Then she slipped into a rose-colored Elie Tahari dress. How could anyone look at these things and call them boring? Ariana felt sophisticated, beautiful, and refined. She should be the one making over Briana Leigh, not the other way around.
She would be so much more attractive in these things, Ariana thought, turning to check herself out from behind. She now understood how frustrated Kaitlynn was whenever she thought of Briana Leigh having all that money, even though Ariana now knew that Kaitlynn had been mistaken about the inheritance. Still, all Briana Leigh did was misspend the cash she did have on awful clothes, alcohol, and obviously183
pointless tennis lessons. If Ariana could even get her hands on Briana Leigh's allowance, the money would be put to much better use.
Half an hour later Ariana was through with her private fashion show. She sat down on the bench in the dressing room, back in the Briana Leigh-style clothes, and sighed, feeling morose as she looked at all the lovely things on their hangers. Life was so unfair. Even without that inheritance, Briana Leigh had everything. The Black AmEx card, the car, the cash. And here Ariana was, slumped in a dressing room, unable to buy herself even one little dress.
A tear slipped down Ariana's cheek. She had thought that this trip would make her feel better, but it was all so futile. There would be no Milan, no Australia, no future for her or for Kaitlynn. It was over. Her plan, her meticulously laid plan, had failed. She might as well have been back in that tiny roo
m at the Brenda T, staring at the wall. Yes, she had gotten out, but without money she was just as trapped as ever.
A sob welled up in the back of her throat, and, try as she might to choke it back, Ariana couldn't stop it from coming. She pulled her feet up onto the bench and buried her face between her knees, muffling her tears.
She would never have a future. Dr. Meloni had been right. She was never going to be free....
A few minutes later Ariana came up for air. She glimpsed her pathetic reflection in the mirror--mascara dripping down her face, eyes red and puffy--and suddenly she felt a flash of hot anger.
No. She was not a victim. She was in charge of her own life. There
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was a plan B out there somewhere. There was always a plan B. All she had to do was figure it out. And if she wanted a Calvin Klein shirtdress, dammit, she was going to have one.
Ariana's adrenaline took over. She dried her tears, grabbed the gray shirtdress, and strode out of the dressing room, slapping it down on the counter. Without even a hint of guilt, she pulled out her wallet and handed over two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. As the saleslady wrapped the dress in pretty tissue paper and placed the gold sticker with the store's emblem on the bag, Ariana felt a rush of delight. She savored the moment. One little moment in which she had taken charge of her own life.
"Briana Leigh! Love the new haircut!"
A hand fell on Ariana's shoulder and she froze. Had someone just called her Briana Leigh?
When she turned around, the girl's face colored with embarrassment. She had bleached blond hair and a pair of red-rimmed sunglasses that did nothing for her ruddy skin tone. Plus she was wearing last season's Ugg boots.
"Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry! I thought you were someone else!"
Ariana shuddered. Without a word, she sidestepped the girl and strode out of the store.
I'd rather be dead than be Briana Leigh, Ariana thought as she used the key remote to unlock the Cadillac.
But a nagging voice in the back of her mind reminded her that, in a way, she was already dead.
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* * *
Tears rolled down Ariana's face like big fat drops of failure. She couldn't stop crying. No matter how hard she tried, the sobs just came and came and came, racking her body as she lay atop the silken comforter on her temporary bed. Once she had started, there was no going back. Now she felt like she might cry forever.
One Calvin Klein dress had not helped the situation. Her lack of self-control had, in the end, only made her feel worse. She had to do something. Had to fix the situation. There was only one option left. That was, if she could actually bring herself to pull it off.
Ariana heard Briana Leigh's footsteps outside the room. She sat up and tried to wipe her face dry, but it was too late. Briana Leigh shoved open the door and came bounding in without so much as a knock. She was wearing the same outfit she'd left in that morning--a denim mini and a barely there tank. She froze the second she saw Ariana's face.
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"Emma? What's wrong?" she asked, crossing the room.
It was the first time since Ariana had known her that she had actually showed concern for another human being.
"Nothing. I'm fine," Ariana said, sniffling.
Briana Leigh grabbed some tissues from the porcelain-covered box near the bed and handed them over.
"Please. You look like you've been crying for hours," Briana Leigh said. She stepped back and crossed her tanned arms over her stomach as she looked down at Ariana. "What's the matter?"
Ariana pressed the tissue to her nose. "It's just... I'm such an idiot." She hazarded a glance at Briana Leigh, who looked simply confused. Confused, but also concerned. Ariana took a deep breath and decided to take the plunge. "I've... Briana Leigh... I've been lying to you."
Suddenly a dark cloud passed over Briana Leigh's face. She took a step back from the bed, her shoulders curling forward. Like maybe she was a girl who had been lied to before.
"Lying about what?" she asked flatly.
"About... well, everything," Ariana said. She squeezed her eyes shut and decided to just blurt it out. "I'm not who I said I was."
The words hung in the room for a moment, enveloping them both in a heavy uncertainty. Ariana hazarded a glance at Briana Leigh's face. The girl was as still as a statue.
"What does that mean?" Briana Leigh said finally.
Ariana sighed. "I'm not the same person Dana knew. I'm... I'm... well, let's just say I'm broke. The other day at the store? It wasn't that I forgot my wallet. I don't have any money. Not anymore."
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Her words were true. And it pained Ariana to say them out loud.
Briana Leigh blinked. Her body language relaxed slightly. "You're kidding."
Who would kid about such a thing? Ariana thought. But all she said was, "No, I'm not."
"What happened?" Briana Leigh asked.
Wide-eyed, Briana Leigh lowered herself onto the bed, picking up the tissue box and placing it between the two of them. Ariana got the sense that Briana Leigh was no longer concerned. That instead she was hungry for a good fall-from-grace story. Well, fine. Ariana would give her one.
Ariana pulled her leg up onto the bed and turned to fully face Briana Leigh. She toyed with the one clean tissue in her hand, folding it in half and creasing it, then folding it in half again. She couldn't tell her own story of woe for obvious reasons, but she had about a half-dozen to choose from that she had witnessed over the years. It was amazing how often wealthy families managed to fall into ruin.
"It was my dad. He kind of embezzled all this money from his company for, like, twenty years." Ariana tore her tissue in two and plucked another from the box.
"No!"
"I know," Ariana said, realizing that this was the first time she had Briana Leigh's complete attention. "My mom and I... we had no idea. We thought he was this perfect guy, you know? Always bringing home presents and whisking us away on these amazing vacations. Then one day a couple of years ago, he tells my mom he has a last-minute business
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trip and leaves first thing in the morning. Ten minutes later there are all these FBI guys practically ramming down the door. They searched our entire house, tore it apart, basically, and took all our computers and files and everything." A tear slid down Ariana's cheek. "It was horrifying."
Briana Leigh was visibly moved. "So your dad fled and left you guys to deal."
"Basically. Great guy, huh?" Ariana said with a sniffle.
"You must hate him," Briana Leigh said, twirling a piece of long auburn hair around her finger.
"I did. Maybe I still do. I don't know. It's complicated with parents, you know?"
Briana Leigh swallowed and glanced away. "Yeah. Definitely."
"Anyway, he didn't get very far. They tracked him down in California. He was about to hop a plane to Thailand, but they arrested him. Now he's in jail and the government seized everything. Our houses, our cars, our bank accounts..."
Briana Leigh stared at some far-off spot across the room. Ariana wasn't sure if she was losing the girl or if Briana Leigh was just taking it all in.
"After that my mother just became all withdrawn," Ariana continued. "She went on all these antidepressants and wouldn't even come out of her room."
Ariana thought of her own mother now. She was edging too close to the truth for comfort.
"And then last year she killed herself," she lied flatly.
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"Oh my God." Briana Leigh snapped back to the moment. She looked at Ariana, clearly horrified.
"I have no one," Ariana said. A real tear dropped as the truth of those words hit home. It landed on the bedspread, turning the silky peach an ugly, wet brown. "Nothing. And I've been lying to you, even after you've been so nice to me...."
Briana Leigh gave a slight nod, as if she was agreeing with this assessment of her own behavior.
"Anyway, I was just in town, and someone in a store thought I was you, and I
just lost it," Ariana continued, wiping her eyes with the tissue. "I mean, all I could think about was how great it must be to be you. You have this house and all this security and a grandmother who loves you. Plus, you get to go to Atherton-Pryce in the fall while I go back to that shitty public school in Chicago.... Anyway, thinking about that made me realize how great you've been. I mean, who else in your position would take a random stranger in? And then I felt even more guilty and I just knew I had to tell you the truth. I'm so sorry."
Briana Leigh looked at Ariana, and her eyes were filled with tears. Ariana's heart skipped an intrigued beat.
"It's not so great being me," Briana Leigh admitted.
"What do you mean?" Ariana asked, finally drying her eyes.
"Remember how I told you my dad died in an accident?" Briana Leigh said, tugging at the hem of her tank top. "That wasn't exactly true either."
Ariana had to chomp down on the inside of her cheek. She was finally going to get the truth.
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It wasn't!
"No. He was actually murdered," Briana Leigh said, looking down at her hands as she twisted the fabric. "By my best friend." A tear slipped down her cheek and Ariana chomped down harder.
So, not the truth, but the cover story. Still, it was better than that "accident" stuff. It was something.
"What?" Ariana breathed, trying to sound shocked.
Briana Leigh stood up and paced over to the dressing table, where, for the first time since Ariana had known her, the girl managed to stand in front of a mirror and not look into it. Instead she toyed with a light blue scarf Ariana had found in the back of the closet. She picked it up and wrapped it around her hand.
"Her name is Kaitlynn Nottingham and our families were friends. When I was eleven and she was thirteen, her parents died in a plane crash," Briana Leigh said, her voice full as she pulled the scarf tighter around her palm. "She came to live with us and it was like suddenly having an older sister. I was usually away at my boarding school, but when I was home, we had the best time."