Page 78 of Rich Little Liars

‘And the property? The land where the house stood? We could arrange a sale, if you’d prefer not to deal with it yourself.’

I shook my head. ‘Leave it. I can’t think about that place right now. Perhaps later, when things are less raw.’

He nodded sympathetically. They always did. Everyone understood the widow who couldn’t bear to think about the place where her husband died. Everyone respected the woman who needed distance from her trauma. It was a narrative that made sense, that required no further explanation, that closed doors on questions before they could be asked.

The ruins would stay where they were. Blackened and skeletal, slowly being reclaimed by weeds and weather. I couldn’t sell them – couldn’t risk someone poking around in the ashes, asking questions about how the fire had started, why it had spread so fast, what had really happened in those final moments. Better to let the place rot. Let it fade from memory. Let nature do what it did best: bury the evidence of human disaster beneath its indifference.

Some memories were better left to crumble on their own.

Mr Greene slid the cheque across the desk towards me. I folded it carefully and slipped it into my purse, catching my reflection in the glass of a framed certificate on the wall behind him. Light hair, pale skin, faded eyes that could be grey or blue depending on the light. I practised the expression I’d been working on – grief, but controlled; sadness, but dignified – and watched it settle into place.

The money accumulated in my new bank account over the following weeks. Insurance payout. Daniel’s savings, transferred smoothly into my name because that was what happened when husbands died and wives survived. The numbers grew until they became abstract – not money any more, but possibility. Freedom.

A future that belonged entirely to me.

I spent hours in my rented apartment researching places to live. Scrolling through property websites late at night, cup of coffee cooling beside me, imagining myself into each photograph. So many options. So many lives I could step into.

In the end, I chose East Hampton.

It wasn’t the farthest option, or the cheapest. But it was exactly what I needed: a wealthy town full of people who valued privacy above all else. Who wouldn’t ask too many questions about the new widow in their midst. Who would accept my story at face value because doing otherwise would be vulgar.

The realtor – a woman named Clarissa with perfect teeth and a calming smile – walked me through the house on a hot morning. Three storeys of yellow stone. White pillars gleaming in the bright dawn light. Rooms that echoed with possibility.

‘It’s been on the market for a while,’ Clarissa admitted. ‘The previous owners divorced. Rather acrimoniously, I’m afraid. Some buyers find the history off-putting.’

‘I don’t mind history,’ I said. ‘I’m just trying to leave mine behind.’

She gave me that look – the sympathetic tilt of the head, the softening around the eyes – that I’d learned to expect. I was getting good at prompting it. At saying just enough to establish myself as someone deserving of gentleness without inviting further enquiry.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘This could certainly be a fresh start. A beautiful home in a beautiful town. Very exclusive. Very… discreet.’

Discreet. Yes. That was exactly what I needed.

I made an offer that afternoon. The sale completed in three weeks.

The weeks before the move were consumed by preparation. Not just packing – though there was little enough of that, since most of my possessions had burned – but something more fundamental. I was building Kelly Reynolds from the ground up. Deciding who she would be in this new life. What she would wear. How she would speak. What stories she would tell about her past and what silences she would maintain.

I bought new clothes. Nothing too flashy, nothing that would draw attention – just quality pieces in muted colours. The kind of wardrobe that whispered money without shouting it. Cashmere sweaters. Well-cut jeans. An objectively nice charcoal coat.

I practised wearing them. Stood in front of the mirror in my rented apartment and watched myself become someone else. Someone who belonged in places like East Hampton. Someone whose grief was genuine but contained, whose past was tragic but not sordid, whose future was full of quiet dignity.

The old me would have laughed at such performance. Would have mocked the pretension of it, the birth of an identity designed to fit someone else’s expectations.

But the old me was gone now. Burned away with everything else.

This was who I was. Who I needed to be.

Kelly Reynolds. Widow. Survivor. Woman of means.

I repeated it like a mantra. Let it settle into my bones until it stopped feeling like a costume and started feeling like skin.

The move happened on a crisp October day. I watched the movers carry boxes into my new house – boxes I’d packed with items purchased specifically to fill these rooms, to create the impression of a life that had existed before the fire – and felt something I hadn’t expected.

Peace.

Not happiness, exactly. That felt too far away still, too foreign to claim. But something adjacent to it. A settling. A sense that I had finally arrived somewhere I was meant to be.

The first night, I walked through every room with the lights blazing. Touched the walls. Ran my fingers along the marble kitchen counter, the glass banisters, the pale oak floors that gleamed like silver. All of it mine. All of it bought with money that had fallen into my lap like a gift from the universe.