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struck me that there was something off with the way her friends were scattered around the pool. The configuration was all wrong. There were none of the clumping patterns that seemed to happen around Ash, like when you apply a magnet to the underside of a paper sprinkled with metal shavings. When Ash was by the pool, her admirers were equally drawn to her and they clustered around her, vying for her attention.
    Over the next few days I confirmed that my deduction proved a fairly reliable indicator of Ash’s presence or absence. I’d occasionally get it wrong, and Ash would emerge from the pool house after what I imagined was a quick shower or slow fuck. But mostly, my observations indicated that Ash was spending less and less time on the estate.
    Following on the footsteps of Father’s equally enigmatic disappearances, it was almost creepy. What was going to happen next? Was Tabitha going to start wandering off too? Where the hell were they going?
    And what was up with Ash’s friends? Did she give them permission to hang out when she wasn’t there? Would Ash care to learn some of her suitors seemed to be coupling up when she wasn’t around? What did they do behind the closed doors of the cabana? I mean, someone could damage or steal things. Just because Ash didn’t care about anything didn’t mean I should just let strangers come in and tear up the place. There could be heirlooms in there. The responsible thing, I decided, would be to check the place out and make sure nothing was missing or destroyed. Or perhaps I just wanted to snoop and any excuse would suffice.
    Once I was inside the pool house I realized that I wouldn’t be able to tell if anything was out of place. Nothing was the way I remembered it from the last time I was in there, when it actually served as a guesthouse for weekend visitors. Worse, I immediately felt like I was trespassing, like I’d broken the lock off Ash’s diary, which I would never do. Well, maybe I’d have taken a peek if I stumbled onto one of the journals I had seen her writing over the years. You never know, they might have held the key to Ash’s undeniable charm.
    But I didn’t find any journals that morning. I found a lot of empty alcohol bottles, sandwich baggies with a few leafless green sticks, expended whipped cream canisters, cigarette butts, and a sampling of lingerie strewn around the cottage. I looked for signs of foul play, but fifteen minutes ticked by like hours and I didn’t find a pool of blood, deadly weapon, or dead body. There were no strange muddy footprints, broken lamps, or other signs of a struggle.
    I was starting to worry about being caught red-handed. Things didn’t turn out that well for me the last time Ash busted me for sneaking into her room. As the younger sibling I’d gotten stuck wearing a bunch of Ash’s hand-me-downs. Tabitha insisted that Ash’s clothing was far too expensive to discard when it was only “gently worn.” It had to spend a season on my gangly frame before it was suitable for the Goodwill bin.
    Ash and I were hardly the same size, so squeezing into her discarded and out-of-date fashions was a chore. I hated the clothing in my closet, the way it was two sizes too small and three years out of style. Just once I wanted to know what I’d look like in brand spanking new garments just in from Milan.
    One time after Tabitha and Ash came home from shopping the haute couture of Portland’s downtown boutiques—a trip I wasn’t invited on—I snuck into Ash’s room and pulled things out of her closet. Dresses that still had tags on them, shoes whose leather had never known the touch of soles, bags that were still packed with tissue. I piled them on the bed around me like wads of cash. I tried on her high heels and teetered around the room.
    Then I spied the most beautiful black and white Chanel dress and had to try it on. I never had the bravery to be my sister, but I hoped somehow, maybe through fashion osmosis, that donning her