Privilege- Chapter Eight: Knowing Wins the Battle

“My God, the morning is beautiful.”

Addy smiled at the thought.

Sunlight poured through the windows as she stood before her mirror, applying moisturizer.

Moisturizer.

Nothing else.

No foundation.

No dark lipstick.

No false lashes.

No contouring designed to reshape a face Emmet had already considered beautiful before deciding beauty was something that required constant correction.

Addy looked at herself.

There were faint lines around her eyes now.

She left them alone.

She had work.

Actual work.

Two business lunches with prospective investors, followed by an afternoon meeting with representatives from a company interested in a regional partnership.

The conglomerate that employed her was young, ambitious, and expanding aggressively. Addy's position was difficult to define neatly. Part corporate liaison, part client relations, part sales.

She privately called herself the honey pot.

She was paid to make wealthy people feel welcome.

Years earlier, she might have considered such work beneath her.

Now she loved it.

She was good at it.

All those years Alice had spent teaching her how to enter a room, remember names, flatter without appearing to flatter, and recognize who possessed money had finally become useful.

The difference was that Addy was being paid.

Her charm belonged to her.

There was a company credit card in her wallet, but unlike Emmet's cards, it wasn't a leash.

It came with receipts.

Budgets.

Expense reports.

Rules that applied to everyone.

Addy found the bureaucracy strangely comforting.

She styled her hair while practicing Portuguese.

“Bom dia.”

Easy.

“É um prazer conhecê-lo.”

Better.

She repeated the phrase.

Then she picked up her pingado and took a sip.

Delicious.

Only a few months had passed, and her Portuguese remained clumsy, but she could order food, navigate the city, make small talk, and embarrass herself in increasingly sophisticated ways.

She didn't mind embarrassment anymore.

That was another freedom.

For years, Addy had been terrified of looking foolish.

Now she understood that looking foolish and being destroyed were entirely different things.

The woman in the mirror smiled.

Her identification said her name was Frances.

Addy still wasn't accustomed to that.

Perhaps she never would be.

She had not spoken to Emmet after the flight from Canada.

There had been nothing to say.

Addy had pulled a baseball cap low over her face and slept—or pretended to sleep—for most of the journey.

Normally, Emmet would have criticized the hat.

That night, exhausted after being summoned to the accident site, he slept too.

When they landed, they separated without an embrace.

Without a kiss.

Without goodbye.

Emmet had an office to reach.

Addy had a dead sister upstairs in a Canadian lodge.

Neither knew what the other knew.

At least Addy hadn't.

She never returned to the Taylor house.

Instead, she went to Frances's condo.

It was already being packed for Brazil.

Addy had never been inside.

Once, years earlier, she had driven an unconscious Frances into the parking garage after she'd gotten drunk at the club.

That was as close as Addy had come.

She expected a mess.

Frances had been a slob as a child. Alice had spent years shouting at her to brush her teeth, clean her room, pick up her clothes, behave like a human being.

Instead, Addy walked into luxury.

The condominium was immaculate.

Expensive appliances.

Custom furniture.

Art.

Everything coordinated.

Emmet's money.

Of course.

Addy walked from room to room.

Then she found the photographs.

Frances in Europe.

Frances on beaches.

Frances at restaurants.

Frances standing beside people Addy had never met.

Frances smiling.

Living.

And in several photographs:

Emmet.

Addy took one from a shelf.

She stared at it for a long time.

Her husband had traveled with Frances.

While Addy waited at home.

While Addy was told Emmet was working.

While Addy was told Frances was too troubled, too awkward, too incompetent to manage much of anything.

Addy put the photograph down.

She searched the desk.

That was when she found the first journal.

There were more in the closet.

Addy began reading.

She did not stop until morning.

Frances had written everything.

Not beautifully.

Not consistently.

But enough.

The first revelation was almost mundane compared with what followed.

Frances had been devastated when the Madisons withdrew financial support around the time of Addy's wedding.

Money had been redirected.

Appearances maintained.

Addy's marriage had become the family emergency around which everything else was rearranged.

Frances wrote about crying in the pantry.

Emmet found her there.

He comforted her.

Then he slept with her.

Addy reread the entry three times.

She wanted it to be a lie.

Then came details no outsider could have invented.

Emmet's expressions.

His habits.

The particular phrases he used when he wanted obedience to sound like advice.

Addy knew that man.

Frances had known him too.

Far better than Addy ever realized.

The affair had begun before the wedding was even cold.

Two days into Addy and Emmet's honeymoon, Frances joined him at a nearby hotel during

one of the mysterious absences Addy had mistaken for business.

That explained the nights.

The empty bed.

The hours Emmet disappeared.

The honeymoon on which Addy had slowly realized her husband had no interest in honeymooning with her.

Frances had been nearby.

Emmet had arranged women for himself and Frances during those nights as well.

Then Frances became pregnant.

The pregnancy ended in an abortion.

Afterward, Emmet paid for graduate school.

Addy stopped reading.

She walked into the bathroom and vomited.

Then she returned to the desk.

There was more.

According to Frances, Emmet had told her that he carried a hereditary condition he feared passing to a child. After the pregnancy, he underwent a vasectomy.

Suddenly his cruelty at the dinner table years earlier made sense.

If I wanted children, I would have had them decades ago.

He had known there would never be children.

He simply hadn't considered Addy important enough to tell.

The clothes came next.

The makeup.

The ridiculous heels.

The hypersexual dresses.

Addy had spent years believing Emmet dressed her that way because he desired her.

Then because he wanted to control her.

Both explanations had contained part of the truth.

Neither contained all of it.

Frances had become obsessed with being considered the ugly sister.

Emmet had apparently decided upon a solution only he could have devised.

He exaggerated Addy.

Made her theatrical.

Artificial.

Cheap.

Meanwhile, he refined Frances.

Procedure after procedure.

Face.

Body.

Jaw.

Nose.

Ears.

He wasn't simply making Frances resemble Addy.

He was attempting to reverse their positions.

One sister made artificial.

The other made sophisticated.

Addy sat very still.

She remembered the first time Alice noticed the resemblance.

She remembered Emmet calling her Franny.

Once.

Then again.

She remembered Frances sleeping in the master bedroom.

And the face in the darkness that had looked so much like her own.

Addy finally understood.

Emmet had spent years turning two women into variations of the same woman.

Then punishing each because the other existed.

Frances hated her.

The journals made that clear.

But hatred had not been where it began.

At first there had been envy.

Then humiliation.

Then Emmet.

Frances believed he loved her.

She believed Addy was the obstacle.

Whenever Emmet refused to leave his wife, Frances blamed Addy rather than him.

Eventually the entries became vicious.

Addy found one about the dress.

“Addy, once again being overly dramatic because Emmet gave her a $4,000 dress. What an ungrateful bitch.”

Addy stopped reading.

She remembered that night.

She had been sick.

A fever of one hundred and two.

Emmet had ordered her out of bed.

When she refused, he grabbed the back of her head by her hair.

The dress was two sizes too small.

Addy had taped herself into it.

She couldn't sit.

So she stood for seven hours.

Smiling.

Hiding her trembling hands.

Terrified that someone would discover she was ill and embarrass Emmet.

Frances had seen only the dress.

Four thousand dollars.

Poor Addy.

Poor spoiled, dramatic Addy.

For years, Addy had done the same thing to Frances.

She had seen the scholarship but not the loneliness.

The awkwardness but not the humiliation.

The silence but not what caused it.

The ugliness everyone told Frances she possessed, but never the person trapped underneath it.

They had spent their lives looking at one another through keyholes.

Emmet merely learned how to stand on the other side of the door and decide what each woman saw.

Addy continued reading.

Frances had known about her depression.

She had known Addy was isolated.

And she had hoped Addy would kill herself.

The gun.

The euthanasia pamphlet.

Addy closed her eyes.

So there it was.

Frances had wanted her dead.

Addy had killed Frances.

Neither fact canceled the other.

That was the part Addy understood now.

There was no innocent sister.

There was no evil sister.

There were simply two women who had been taught to measure themselves against each other until comparison became hatred.

And Emmet had found that hatred useful.

The final entries changed again.

Frances was beginning to understand that Emmet would never marry her.

Mary had been right about the younger woman at the club.

Another sorority girl.

Another pretty young thing.

Another possibility.

Frances had undergone years of surgery believing there would eventually be a reward.

Emmet would leave Addy.

Frances would take her place.

But perfection had moved again.

It always did with Emmet.

Frances's final entries were bitter.

She intended to leave him.

Brazil would be the beginning.

A new job.

A new condominium.

A new country.

Addy sat with that for a long time.

Of everything she had learned, this hurt in the strangest way.

Frances had wanted out too.

Not in the same way.

Not for the same reasons.

But eventually, she had looked at Emmet and seen something Addy herself had taken years to see.

Nothing would ever be enough.

Addy felt anger.

Then grief.

Then something dangerously close to pity.

She hated Frances.

She missed Frances.

She had killed Frances.

All three things could apparently coexist.

Near the liquor cabinet, Addy found the Brazil documents.

The condominium was ready.

The job was waiting.

A plane ticket sat on the kitchen table.

Movers were scheduled.

Forty-six hours.

Frances had been less than two days from leaving.

Addy looked around the apartment.

Then at the photographs.

Then at her sister's passport.

A terrible idea arrived.

Addy rejected it immediately.

Then she looked at the passport again.

Emmet's final work had been remarkably effective.

Not perfect.

But remarkable.

Their ages were close enough.

Their coloring was similar.

Their faces now shared proportions they had not been born sharing.

Addy thought of the staff at her own house.

They hadn't recognized her.

People saw what they expected to see.

Emmet had taught her that too.

Addy went to the mirror.

She pulled her hair back.

Tilted her face.

Frances looked back.

Not exactly.

Enough.

Her heart began pounding.

Addy had money.

Not much by Emmet's standards.

A fortune by the standards of the woman she had once been.

For years she had secretly taken cash from allowances, household money, reimbursements.

Escape money.

She finally understood what it had been for.

She removed Frances's winter clothing from the luggage.

Replaced it with summer clothes.

She found cosmetics Frances used.

Jewelry.

Shoes.

Then Addy opened the journals again.

Destroying them would have been safer.

She couldn't.

They were evidence.

Of Emmet.

Of Frances.

Of herself.

Perhaps also the only honest account of her sister's life Addy would ever possess.

She took them.

The latest journal presented another problem.

Frances's story ended before Canada.

Too abruptly.

So Addy added to it.

Carefully.

Not pages.

Enough.

Frances had injured her writing hand in the SUV door.

The handwriting deteriorated.

Then stopped.

Emmet had promised they would be together “soon.”

Frances no longer believed him.

She was finished waiting.

Brazil was hers.

From then onward, Addy decided, there would be no forged Frances journals.

If she needed to write, she would write in Portuguese.

Her own words.

In a language neither sister had inherited from the other.

There was one more thing.

Emmet.

Addy opened Frances's email.

The password was almost insulting in its simplicity.

Frances had used variations of the same one since adolescence and, because she could never remember it, had written reminders throughout the condo.

Addy composed a message.

Short.

Frances had met someone.

She was done waiting.

Do not contact her.

Addy stared at the screen.

Then sent it.

For once, one of Emmet Taylor's women had left him.

Even if the wrong woman had written the message.

Getting into Brazil was the most frightening part.

Addy dressed like Frances.

Not caricatured Frances.

The professional woman Frances intended to become.

She used the documents already arranged for the move and kept conversation to a minimum.

The resemblance Emmet had created did most of the work.

Luck did the rest.

Addy understood perfectly well that luck was not innocence.

She was committing fraud.

She was stealing a dead woman's identity.

She was leaving her sister's body in another country.

She was allowing everyone who had ever known Adeline Taylor to believe that woman was dead.

There was nothing noble about it.

But nobility had ceased to interest Addy.

Survival did.

For once, she chose herself.

The police came several weeks later.

Two officers.

Polite.

Professional.

They asked for Frances.

Addy invited them inside.

Her heart beat so violently she could feel it in her throat.

They asked about the lodge.

About Emmet.

About Addy.

Apparently, the body had been discovered after missed deliveries and unanswered attempts to reach the property.

The condition of the remains and the facial trauma had complicated immediate visual identification. The lodge records placed Mrs. Adeline Taylor there. Clothing and personal effects belonging to Addy remained in the house. The bedroom was regarded as hers.

The medical reconstruction of Frances's face created the final, terrible confusion.

Authorities believed the dead woman was Adeline Taylor.

Emmet, meanwhile, had admitted that Frances had repeatedly placed the gun on Addy's vanity.

He had also been the last person known to leave the lodge with the woman police believed was Frances.

The investigation had questions.

So did Addy.

She answered carefully.

She did not invent more than necessary.

That was another lesson Emmet had inadvertently taught her.

Complicated lies failed.

Simple lies survived.

“I was at the bar.”

True enough, once.

“I was seeing a man named Rob.”

Also true, in the loosest possible sense.

“I borrowed Addy's SUV.”

The vehicle existed.

People had seen it.

Then came the important part.

“Addy said she needed to talk to Emmet privately.”

One officer wrote that down.

Addy swallowed.

“When I saw him later, he smelled like smoke.”

That was the lie.

The fire had been hers.

Her clothes.

Her blood.

Her panic.

She handed it to Emmet.

For years, he had made Addy carry the consequences of his behavior.

This time she gave him one of hers.

The officers thanked her.

Then left.

Addy locked the door.

She made it three steps before her knees failed.

She sat on the floor shaking for nearly an hour.

Freedom, she discovered, did not always feel like freedom.

Sometimes it felt exactly like terror.

Emmet was arrested.

The case against him was circumstantial, but ugly.

His marriage had been visibly estranged.

People knew he threatened Addy.

Employees had heard him describe her as unstable.

There were questions surrounding the gun.

Questions surrounding the euthanasia pamphlet.

Questions about the forced liquor cabinet.

Questions about the burned material in the fireplace.

Questions about why he had known Frances was placing a firearm on his wife's vanity and had done nothing.

And there was Frances.

The woman authorities believed was alive in Brazil.

The woman whose relationship with Emmet became impossible to explain innocently once

investigators began examining financial records.

Graduate tuition.

Housing.

Travel.

Cosmetic procedures.

The Rio condominium.

Years of money flowing from Dr. Taylor toward his wife's adopted sister.

Emmet had spent years constructing a secret.

Now the secret looked like motive.

Addy followed the case from Brazil.

She never contacted him.

Several weeks after his arrest, Emmet suffered a fatal heart attack in custody.

The criminal prosecution died with him.

The investigation eventually settled into its official shape.

Adeline Taylor was dead.

Dr. Emmet Taylor had been suspected in her death.

Frances had left the country.

Addy read the final reports alone.

She did not laugh.

She had imagined she would.

Instead, she closed the computer.

Emmet was dead.

Frances was dead.

Adeline Taylor was dead.

Only one of those deaths had required a coffin.

Now sunlight filled the apartment.

Addy finished her coffee.

She checked the time.

Work.

She smiled.

On a shelf nearby were Frances's journals.

Addy kept them locked away.

She occasionally considered burning them.

She never did.

They were ugly things.

Jealous.

Cruel.

Petty.

Sad.

Human.

Much like Frances.

Much like Addy.

Sometimes Addy wondered what would have happened if the two of them had discovered the truth earlier.

Perhaps they would have destroyed Emmet together.

Perhaps they would simply have found different reasons to hate each other.

There was no use rewriting that part.

Addy had done enough rewriting.

She picked up her bag.

Before leaving, she looked once more into the mirror.

Emmet had spent years trying to turn Frances into Addy.

In the end, he had succeeded too well.

But the woman in the mirror was neither of them now.

Not entirely.

She had Addy's memories.

Frances's name.

Emmet's money had opened the first door.

Alice's social training had taught her how to walk through it.

Everything after that belonged to her.

There would always be a darkness behind her.

A sister bleeding in a Canadian bedroom.

A husband dying in custody.

A dead woman's passport in a drawer.

Freedom had not made Addy innocent.

It had merely made her free.

She understood the difference now.

Addy turned off the light.

Then she stepped into the Brazilian morning.

She had people waiting for her.

For once, she intended to arrive.