by Amber Kay
“What do you—” I draw back my words, gritting my teeth. Fists clenched at my sides. “What kind of person fakes cancer?!”
“The kind of person with a thirty-million dollar life insurance policy,” she replies, but it makes no sense.
“You did this for money? You’re already rich!”
“No,” she says. “Adrian is rich. I’m just the idiot woman that agreed to a pre-nup before we got married.”
“Pre-nup?” And now it makes sense. Adrian always responded to the subject of Vivian with a wry demeanor as if he knew something that I wasn’t aware of. The entire time, I was the joke. Vivian wanted it like that. She kept me out of the loop to keep me under her thumb.
“Every promise that came out of your mouth, every single word was really coming out of your ass,” I say.
“Congratulations,” she replies with faux applause. “You caught me. I lied to you.”
A vein pulses in my forehead, threatening to burst.
“I have to get out of here,” I say. “I have to get away from you.”
I charge toward the door. Vivian grips my forearm.
“Cassandra, wait.”
“No!” I say, spitting the word. “You’re a goddamn sociopath.”
She doesn’t release my wrist. I proceed to pry her fingers from around it. One by one.
“If you’ll let me explain—”
“What was the point of this?” I say. “You have successfully faked cancer. Everyone felt sorry for you, including me. Now what?”
“Phase two,” she says and I tense up. “Now, we commence phase two.” Vivian proceeds to touch-up her lipstick. She puckers her lips, rubbing them together then blotting the color with her thumb. Business as usual.
“What are you talking about?”
“For our entire marriage, I let Adrian have his fun,” she says. “He had as many women as he wanted. He got to drink all the booze his stupid little stomach could handle. Now it’s time for me to have some fun for once.”
“This is what you call fun?” I retort. “Lying. Cheating. Scheming.”
“No,” she says. “This isn’t the fun part. Not yet. This is the profitable part.”
“What?” I ask.
“I seek some financial compensation that will only be lucrative if I'm dead,” she says. “Isn’t that ironic? I'm worth more to Adrian dead than I am alive.” She laughs. I don’t.
“Vivian, I don’t—”
“You see, I'm worth a hell of a lot of money. The only problem is that I can’t touch it until after I've been declared legally dead. This is where you come in. This is where you help me get what is rightfully mine after twenty years of being married to a man who didn’t give a damn about me.”
“I-I don’t understand,” I say.
“You should sit.” She turns toward the door, cupping her hands over her mouth to call, “Amelia!”
Amelia saunters in, carrying a tray of drinks. She sits the tray atop Vivian’s dresser, but doesn’t leave the room. Instead, she watches. I feel her in the corner staring at me, her left eye still swollen to the size of a grape.
“Care for something to drink?” Vivian asks me. She gestures at me with the glass. In a fit, I smack it out of her hand, forcing Amelia to retrieve the broken pieces from the floor on her hands and knees.
“Cassandra let’s not be difficult,” says Vivian, patronizingly.
“What do you want, Vivian?” I ask, refusing to sit down, refusing to get too relaxed around this woman.
She saunters across the bedroom to her closet. Amelia holds her position in the corner, eyes shifting surreptitiously to me. I expect her to speak. Her lips part, but she says nothing. We exchange these secret stares with Vivian’s back to us.
While rummaging through her clothes, Vivian flicks an occasional glance at us over her shoulder. “When Adrian had the nerve to force me into a pre-nup, I was admittedly distraught,” she says. “But I knew that to get what I wanted, I’d need a plan. The insurance money is ideal. Thirty million dollars will be wired into an off shore account two weeks after I'm proclaimed dead. Carrick will take care of that proclamation and make sure the death certificate is printed. The account is in your name. It’s also an account that Adrian knows nothing about.”
“You put this in my name?” I ask, now suddenly soaked in sweat. “Why?”
Vivian removes a pencil skirt from its hanger and holds it up to her body to examine it in the mirror. “I need somewhere reliable to put the money until the time is right. I certainly can’t place the money in my bank account,” she laughs. “I’m supposed to be dead, remember?”
“Why not Carrick’s account?”
She tosses the skirt to the floor, once more forcing Amelia to tend to the mess. Poor Amelia might as well be a rug as far as Vivian is concerned. With each article of clothing Vivian decides to throw to the floor, Amelia scrambled dutifully to gather the mess. She glances at me and those eyes beg for mercy. Vivian resumes perusing her wardrobe, tossing and dismissing the outfits that dissatisfy her.
“Carrick isn’t a viable option,” she says after finally choosing a strapless red dress to wear. Amelia and I watch Vivian undress. She removes her robe then undergarments and it’s like she doesn’t care that she’s naked in front of us. But Vivian has never had a problem with modesty before.
“Carrick’s past isn’t clean enough for this kind of job,” she says while slipping into the dress. She spins toward Amelia who zips the dress from behind, then toward me with her hands on her hips. “I needed someone who had no connection to either Adrian or me,” she says. “No criminal record and a clean slate. So I chose you, the unsuspecting college student who needed the money more than anyone else. I thought you’d jump at the chance. If you hadn’t been so damn stubborn, this could’ve gone a lot smoother.”
“You figured that because I'm broke that I’d help you defraud your insurance company? Are you insane?” I say and I can’t help, but laugh. “You want me to risk possible prison time so that you can steal Adrian’s money?”
“That money is rightfully mine!” she snarls.
“Yeah, but not legally,” I say. “Adrian may have done a lot of horrible things to you, but he doesn’t deserve this.”
“You don’t understand,” she says. “Twenty years of that man and he has treated me like shit! Then he had the nerve to make me sign a pre-nup? I have paid my dues. He has turned me into the person I swore I’d never be—my mother, the pathetic little cuckold.Adrian owes me. Whether he knows it or not, he owes me.”
“Vivian, this is extreme.”
“This is what has to be done,” she says. “I deserve this and no one is taking it away.”
I plop atop the edge of her bed, speechless…at first.
“You and Randall have been planning for years, haven’t you?” I say.
She’s silent. Finally exposing a crack in her armor.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know his real name and that his medical license was revoked and that he’s been impersonating an actual doctor for the past fifteen years. Did he also teach you how to fake cancer? Tell you what to say, how to act and what to do to fool people into thinking that you were dying?”
“How much did he tell you?” she asks.
“How did you do it?” I ask. “How did you fake it? The bedsores, the incontinence, the blood…how did you do it? And why cancer? Of all the ways to fake your death, why pick the most devastating way?”
“Why cancer?” she repeats. “Well, I couldn’t just fake some garden-variety car accident to convince the insurance company I was dead. It’s too overdone and too easy to disprove. I needed a paper trail, a long string of medical evidence to prove that my “death” wasn’t just suspicious coincidence. To them, I'm a terminal cancer patient who’s been “dying” for months. No need for them to suspect me of foul play.”
She lifts her skirt, exposing the familiar varicose veins streaking her inner thighs. “I hired an amazing tattoo artist,” she says. “He
was very good at producing some realistic body art. I told him to make these look real. What do you think? Don’t they look beautiful?”
I don’t reply. She continues, “I have Amelia to thank for the ‘bedsores.’ A couple knife wounds did the trick. Hurt like hell. I even lost forty pounds to make myself look frail, weaker.
It took five years of research to emulate the perfect cancer patient. I toured local hospitals and sat in with the terminally ill to watch them and to take notes. Everyone thought it was for charity. They thought I was so selfless to devote my time to those people. So when the time was right and I announced my ‘diagnosis,’ everything was perfect.”
“Those pictures,” I say as I remember my research. “The ones I saw of you with those kids in the cancer ward, they were all apart your agenda. You used those kids’ illnesses to authenticate your charade.”
Amelia glances at me, red in the face, the shame coloring her cheeks like canvases.
“You helped her do this?” I snarl. “What are you—like her henchman or something?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Amelia does as she’s told,” says Vivian while stroking the girl’s bruised cheek. Her hand grips the back of Amelia’s neck, yanking her closer so Vivian can kiss the top of her head. “And she’s been such a good girl. What about you Cassandra? Will you be a good girl too?”
She moves toward me. I flinch away and scoot toward the opposite end of the mattress, unable to stand.
“I need you, Cassandra,” Vivian says after kneeling in front of me, cupping my hands inside hers. “We have to stick together.”
I pull away, jerking out of her grasp.
“This has nothing to do with me,” I say. “I'm not helping you do this.”
“I made you the sole beneficiary of my will,” she reminds me. “You’ve publically attacked me. Everyone at the banquet hall witnessed it. You’re having an affair with my husband...or at least that’s what I made them think. Money and lust are two of the most common motives for murder. The police will automatically suspect you if I mysteriously disappear.”
“So it’s not just Adrian you’re scapegoating. It’s me too.”
A familiar darkness clouds her eyes as she stares at me through her bangs, expressionless.
“Work with me or I’ll make damn sure that you can’t work against me,” she says. “Your choice.”
As she speaks, I realize that it was all planned. From the moment she met me at Frank’s, I was her scapegoat. You weren’t chosen at random, Cassandra, she’d said. You’ve been a subject of interest for a while...
Faking cancer was to lure me in. Adrian was right: Nothing Vivian does comes without an ulterior motive…
“Cassandra, I intend to protect you from the public backlash. All you have to do is stick to the original plan. Marry Adrian. I’ll ‘die’ from my cancer, as planned. Carrick will take care of the technical aspects. The insurance money will be deposited into the designated account that we’ll split. We can both be very wealthy women.”
Vivian stands, but before she can turn, Amelia lurches forward and plunges a syringe needle into Vivian’s neck. I flinch backward. Vivian’s body crumbles onto the bed. Amelia stands over her, shoulders quivering. Mission accomplished.
“Move!” she tell me. “You have to move now. That stuff won’t last long.”
She grabs my arm, pulling me toward the door. Once outside, her grips loosens.
“What’d you do to her?” I ask.
“Injected her with succinylcholine, a powerful neuromuscular paralytic drug,” she says. “It won’t last long—ten minutes—tops. You need to go home.”
“Amelia, how are you—”
“Just go home,” she urges. “Don’t come back to this house. Cassandra, I mean it.”
“Come with me,” I say.
“Someone has to stay with Vivian. Make sure she doesn’t hurt any of the others. I’ll call Adrian and tell him to come home. When she’s in her manic state, he’s the only one who can talk her down. You. Go. Home.”
Each of her word stab into me, warning me, pleading: just do what she fucking says, Cassandra! I start down the hall, leaving Amelia behind to fend for herself. I flee from the house, door slamming behind me. Across the lawn, through a flowerbed of gardenias, I sprint.
Breathless, I stop, inches away from the wrought iron gate fringing the estate. I don’t expect the silence. It burns in my ears. It’s too silent, too serene like the calm before a storm. I glance once more at the gate, urging myself to heed Amelia’s advice, but something about this is a little too easy. Vivian going down without a fight? Doesn’t make sense. Surely, she couldn’t have actually—
Orange engulfs the manor. I swear it’s a trick of the light or my morbid imagination getting the best of me. I move closer, across the lawn, using my hand as a visor to deflect the sunlight from my eyes. A stench hits the air. Reeks of…gasoline.
“Oh god.”
The manor is on fire.
37
I rush across the lawn, flailing my arms as if it’ll help.
Upon reaching the bottom step of the manor porch, fire gushes through the windows, shattering the glass outward. I drop and cover my head with my arms.
“Amelia!” I call out, banging on the door. Eventually, it cracks open, but the knob is hot to the touch. With my hand over my mouth, I rush without thinking into the house, holding my breath to keep the smoke at bay. I turn and everywhere fire frames me, eating through the walls, chewing the floorboards. A massive something caves from the ceiling, bringing it down in front of me. I roll backward on my feet, toward the only unclaimed wall in the living room.
“Amelia?” I call again, hoping for answer. No one responds. Not Amelia and certainly not any one of the several other servants that work here. Despite the heat pushing against and the stench of heady ember in my throat, I forge forward. Up the stairs that crumble as I climb them then down the second floor hall.
To my left, I spot the first body, a charred bundle of melting human. No face remains. In the next room, the bodies of three others lay haphazardly on the floor. Also charred, blackened by the flames that took them.
I turn away, tears stinging in my eyes and smoke in my throat. Four casualties in less than five minutes of being here. Things can’t be good for Amelia.
A wall collapses to my right. I leap over the debris that blocks my path. Smoke congests my lungs, filling them to capacity like two overflowing glasses. The heat has taken me, making me woozy, disorientated. I have to save someone from this mess. This can’t have all been for nothing…
“Amelia? God, please answer me! Anyone?” I call through cupped hands.
The third floor stairway has so far survived the flame, but I imagine I have very little time to navigate myself upward before the fire takes it. Dazed, I lugging myself up these stairs, gripping the bannisters to steady my tilting body. Twice, I stumble over a step and drop to my knees for a second, wheezing. Up ahead of me, I notice a shadow, a face, but my vision doubles. I'm not sure what I see anymore.
“Cassandra?” calls the voice. “Cassandra! Get up and move!”
I recognize it. “Amelia?”
“Come on!” she insists while pulling at my arms to prop me up. Somehow, she hoists me to my feet and helps me toward a room. We settle in this quiet space. Amelia fiddles with my leg. After a minute, I glance down and notice the deep blackened wound in my calf. I’ve been scalded and didn’t notice.
“You’re losing blood,” Amelia says. She presses the back her hand to my forehead. “You’re feverish too. We have to get you out of this fire. Why did you come back when I explicitly told you not to? Dammit, don’t you ever take any warning seriously?”
“What’s happened?” I wheeze.
“No time to explain.” After tying off my wound with a scarf, she helps me back to my feet, my arm around her shoulder as she assists me in walking.
“This way! There’s a fire escape outside the third guest room,” sh
e says while pulling me toward the door. Once back into the hall, a wave of ferocious heat pounds at us, scorching the skin right from my face. I can’t even see through all the orange fog. It’s too much.
Amelia tries, but with me in tow, I'm extra deadweight that she doesn’t need. I expect her to abandon me. It’s my own damn fault for rushing into a burning house thinking I can play hero. Instead, she pushes through, pulling me against the flame. Toward the second floor, the supporting beam of the hallway ceiling plops in front of us, forcing us apart.
Amelia tumbles and fall unconscious on the other side of the room. I'm flung backwards as if an imaginary hand grips my shoulders and yanks me to the floor. On my bad leg, I'm useless walking, so I crawl.
I crawl toward Amelia, ignoring the debris that collapsed on top of her. As I attempt to drag her from beneath, I realize my strength and know it’s no match for the weight of a twenty plus pound piece of wood. So I don’t move.
I remain beside Amelia, clutching her hand and realizing our fate. I can’t walk and she’s unconscious. We’re screwed either way. Pretty soon, I can’t lift my head. I open my eyes to Amelia’s face and something in me wants to move. I push up with my arms, forcing my limp body to move. Someone clasps hold of my arms, yanking me backwards.
My head bobs forward. I lift it to see who’s pulling me. Some man in yellow. A fireman, I suspect. When I realize they aren’t trying to Amelia, I yank away and fall forward on my hands and knees.
“No,” I say. “You can’t leave without her. She’s still alive. Please!”
He ignores my struggle and flings me over his shoulder, forcibly removing from the inferno.
“We have to go back in there,” I say. “There are other survivors.”
No one heeds my pleas. I'm carried to the ambulance and dropped onto a gurney. Some EMT shines a light into each of my eyes, checking for dilation. Another begins connecting me to machines and IV bags.
My focus sets on the Lynch manor—a once beautiful house now in flames. How the hell did this happen? Had Vivian flipped out for and threw a stray match? Has she really jeopardized the lives of ten other people to prove a point to me? Oh god! Is this my fault? If I had just obeyed Karen’s orders and not confronted Vivian, would any of this be happening?
