Page 51 of The Lost Heiress

Ana hesitated. “I was going to watch something, but I don’t want to bother you.”

“Help yourself,” Ransom said, picking the remote off the coffee table and handing it to her. “It won’t bother me.”

Ana took the remote and settled on the other side of the sofa, an arm’s length from where Ransom sat. She turned on the television and flipped to MTV. The music video for “Our Lips Are Sealed,” by the Go-Go’s, was playing. Ransom turned off the overhead lamp he’d been using, and the room was sheathed in darkness, dimly lit by the glow of the television.

“What were you writing?” Ana asked, glancing over at him.

“Just taking some notes about my day,” Ransom said.

“You keep adiary?” Ana asked, her voice teasing.

“Not a diary,” Ransom said, “a journal. I’m not a thirteen-year-old girl.”

“Clearly.”

“What?” Ransom said defensively. “A lot of respectable people keep journals: Leonardo da Vinci, for one. Frida Kahlo. Mark Twain.”

“Judy Blume heroines.”

Ransom cracked a rare smile. “What do you have against journaling?”

“Nothing,” Ana said. “I’m just having a hard time squaring it with your character is all.”

“How so?”

“I mean, you always seem so serious and, like, dour,” Ana said. “Not someone who reflects on how their day went or how they’re feeling.”

“Dour?” Ransom repeated.

Ana shrugged. “Sociopathicis maybe the word I’d use. No offense. It’s just how you come off.”

Ransom laughed. “If I tell my publicist you said that, she’ll want to include you in my next focus group.”

“You focus group your personality?” Ana asked in disbelief.

“Not my personality, the public perception of my character,” Ransom said. “It’s not unusual in my line of work.”

“I guess,” Ana said. “But what’s wrong with just being yourself? Or do you not trust people to like you for that?”

“It’s not that simple,” Ransom said. “My job depends on how people see me. I don’t get to leave that at the office at the end of the day or take a vacation from it. And no, I don’t trust the media to portray a nuanced or generous illustration of who I am or for the public to grasp it from a ten-second sound bite on the nightly news or a headline splashed across the tabloids.”

“But don’t you think that’s a little like lying?” Ana asked. “To ... I don’t know,consciously constructhow you come across to other people? It sounds a little manipulative.”

Ransom shrugged. “I don’t think so. Everyone has two selves, a public self and a private self, whether they’re cognizant of it or not.”

“I don’t,” Ana said.

“Okay,” Ransom said, “then tell me the last time you masturbated.”

Ana scoffed, heat rushing into her cheeks.

“See?” Ransom said. “Everyone has things they prefer to keep to themselves.”

They were quiet for a moment. A commercial for nacho-cheese Doritos came on the screen. Ana’s eyes flitted to the closed journal on the coffee table in front of them. What she wouldn’t give to skim those pages. She’d thought when she took the black notebook from Ransom’s locked desk drawer that she had been pilfering a diary, but it had, quite disappointingly, turned out to be a sketchbook, full of drawings and diagrams of buildings from some architecture class. A huge bust.

“Those big family birthday parties you were telling me about earlier today,” Ransom said after a while. “Does your family still have them?”

Ana looked over at him. She was surprised he remembered that. She didn’t think he had really been paying attention. “My uncle doesn’t throw them anymore,” she said. “My cousin—his only child—she passed away, in a terrible accident.”