Page 21

After quite a lot of badgering, Daphne’s daughter Diane finally set a date for Ruth to interview her. Ruth drove down the gleaming streets of Diane’s gated community, squinting at the massive McMansions, looking for the right address.
The houses were a confusing mix of styles. She’d driven by a black and white Tudor home with ivy that sat next to a plantation-style home with great columns stretching up to the sky and then by a home that seemed to have no recognizable architectural style at all unless “Big” counted. Being rich felt like another country to her. Ruth slumped in her seat. She wondered if any of the Montgomerys lived in this gated community. Not Lucy, of course—Ruth knew exactly which luxury building Lucy lived in.
Ruth was still reeling from the letter the Montgomerys had sent her, and she’d been up past midnight reading law blogs about journalistic rights. Not that it would be much use if the Montgomerys decided to go after her. She didn’t have the money to fight them in court and she suspected that real estate developers might have some shady people on speed dial, people who found extrajudicial ways to get their point across.
The threat of eviction also weighed heavily on her mind. When Ruth was seven years old, they had been kicked out of a rental and ended up at a pay-by-the-week motel, where she could always hear the cars driving by and smell their exhaust fumes. Ruth would walk to school, terrified that one of her classmates would find out where she was living. Her situation had felt so alien and embarrassing even though every motel room housed a different family crammed in with their worldly possessions.
They’d been there for weeks, until finally her mom had broken down and called Ruth’s father for help, something she did only twice in Ruth’s childhood. Louise never talked about her father, never even told her daughter his name. Ruth had only found out who he was in her late twenties, when he’d reached out to her. But she still remembered seeing him for the first time. He pulled up in a Lexus and handed her mom an envelope of cash. She remembered seeing the suntanned arm, the Sunshine Development parking tag, the shiny gold Rolex on his wrist. He had barely glanced at little Ruth, sitting on a curb nearby, alone and afraid, before driving away. Ruth had learned from a very young age that she had very little control in life; the constant threat of eviction and poverty had taught her that.
Daphne had grown up in a similar way but seemed to have come to a very different conclusion. It was wrong, of course, but Ruth couldn’t help thinking that maybe anything was better than a perpetual sense of powerlessness.
“Hello,” Diane said stiffly, as she opened the door. “Please come inside.” She was wearing a fuchsia silk dress and was covered in gold jewelry. Ruth was surprised she could still stand upright with that much metal strapped to her.
Her heels echoed on the marble floor as Ruth shuffled behind her, her cheap loafers already beginning to chafe her heels as she moved through Diane’s palatial home. She wondered what kind of person she would have been if she’d grown up in her father’s home and not her mother’s, if this was what normal looked like for her. She felt disloyal just for thinking it, but maybe a tough childhood didn’t sting so much when you had your own horse. It would have at least taken the edge off.
“If any of the neighbors see you and ask why you’re here, tell them you’re my dog’s masseuse. I’ve been meaning to hire one anyways, to help with her anxiety.”
“How do you know she’s anxious?” Ruth asked.
“She pees on our laptops,” Diane said, rolling her eyes as if Ruth should have known that a keyboard dripping in dog urine was the telltale sign of a canine mental health crisis.
Diane showed Ruth into a lounge whose décor could only be described as ‘expensive hideous.’ The couches were a mix of animal prints, and the walls were patterned in gold Versace wallpaper.
A housekeeper bustled into the room with a pitcher of cucumber water and Gucci branded glasses. Ruth took a deep sip before glancing in her glass.
“Are those—” she began.
“Yes, Gucci ice cubes,” Diane said, tapping the pitcher, which was full of floating G’s.
“Nice,” Ruth said. She thought it was fucking stupid, but she was also dying to know how much rich idiots would pay for a branded ice cube tray. She wondered if they sold Gucci water to match.
“So, I only have a limited amount of time,” Diane said frostily. “And I would like this done before my daughter comes home from school, to protect her from this.”
“Sure,” Ruth said, pulling out her recording equipment. She had heard Daphne talking on the phone to Harper before and been surprised at their relaxed, friendly conversation. Ruth had been close to her grandmother, but her grandmother watched game shows and complained about her care workers, all very harmless activities for an old woman. Was it healthy for Harper to be so close to a woman who had confessed to murder? Then again, everyone lost their grandmother eventually—for Ruth it was an aneurysm, for Harper it would be a jail cell.
“So, I’ll start recording now,” she began hesitantly, pressing the button. “Just as a preliminary, have you been listening to the podcast?”
“No,” Diane scoffed. “Why would I want to give my mother more attention? Especially now? But Harper is listening so I’m sure she’ll tell me if I miss anything important.”
“Oh okay,” Ruth said, momentarily taken aback. “So, how are you coping with your mother’s confession?” Ruth asked.
Diane exhaled a rush of air. “It’s been a nightmare. I still don’t understand why she confessed, when she must have known how hard it would be for her children. My social life has been decimated. Nobody wants me on their charity boards or at their fundraisers. I’ve even been kicked off the Peony Foundation’s Board, and I was MC’ing the gala this year!” Diane said, slapping a hand on the table.
“What’s the Peony Foundation?”
“It’s a charity that helps victims of crime move on with their lives. Apparently, they don’t like the optics,” Diane said bitterly, making air quotations. “They don’t understand that I am a victim of my mother’s crimes!”
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” Ruth said. She meant Diane calling herself a victim, but Diane assumed she was being sympathetic.
“Yes, I just want to help people, you know? And I already bought the mostbeautifulDolce & Gabbana dress for the gala.”
“I’m sorry,” Ruth said insincerely.
“Thank you. We’ve been disinvited from every party from here to Miami. And we always spend the holidays in Miami, so that one is particularly painful,” Diane said. “And of course, I worry how this will affect my husband’s real estate business.” She sighed and gestured at her Versace walls. “You have to understand, Brad built this from the ground up. Sure, he had some family loans and there was always the trust fund, but really, that gave him just a couple years, five tops, to become successful. And the thought of all that hard work being destroyed is tragic.”
“I bet,” Ruth said.
“Speaking of my husband’s business,” Diane said carefully. “Someone at Sunshine Development reached out to me, Lucy Montgomery? She asked me not to participate in the podcast, said you were a risk to the company,” Diane explained. She smiled but her eyes were examining Ruth, as if still trying to decide for herself. “I told her that we wouldn’t be discussing the Montgomerys, that this was just an opportunity to set the record straight about my relationship with my mother, but it was a strange call. My husband does a lot of work with Sunshine. I wouldn’t want there to be any fallout.”