Page 56 of Everyone Is Lying to You

Knowing she could also be working with Olivia has made her even more interesting to me. And if she truly was having an affair with Gray that could be my next story. In fact, she could also very well be a suspect in this case. If he hurt Bex maybe he hurt her too. Or maybe she wanted revenge because he refused to leave Bex. Maybe she has nothing to do with this at all, but it’s something to pursue while I have no other leads.

And reading about her is addictive anyway. So is watching her. I can’t stop. Like Bex, she has “it,” even if the content of her videos isn’t necessarily my cup of tea. She’s sweet as pie one minute and militant and controlling the next. She’s a drill sergeant dressed like a picnic table. She’s obsessed with carrot-and-stick parenting,a form of discipline that seems to border on abuse, but her audience adores it. They want to know everything about her life and her parenting techniques for her four boys—Jaxon, Callum, Finn, and Revy. They want a constant rundown of her days, and most of all, they want to know how to land a man like Marsden.

Her voice from all the videos now rings in my ears. She lives in my brain.

“Hey, guys, and welcome back to my channel! Today, I’m going to be giving some tips for the ladies on how to attract a masculine man—a provider man,” she says in one clip.

“Thank god I didn’t waste my twenties chasing career success and instead devoted them to raising babies and caring for my man. My life is truly filled with purpose,” she insists in another.

“Let me tell you the six habits that turn my momming game up to eleven. I rise before the sun is up. I work out hard daily and do it first thing in the morning. Working out gives me vibrant energy that coffee cannot re-create and puts me in a positive headspace with my kids. Every supermama needs a superpower. Endorphins are mine,” she explained as she tried to sell me a workbook to better organize my entire life calledMom So Hard.

One video rolled into the next and into the next. Before I knew it, I’d lost two hours and I desperately wanted to be the kind of woman who could wake up at five in the morning and do burpees. I had to genuinely admire her dedication to running her household with the iron fist of aFortune500 CEO. I admittedly run mine more like an illegal day care overseen by Oompa Loompas.

“Excuse me?” I say to Veronica now, popping out an earbud.

“Come to dinner tonight? A few of us have organized something. Since the conference isn’t really happening anymore wedecided to make the most of the time. I’m Veronica, by the way. We met in the lobby on the first day.”

“I remember,” I say, and sit up properly. When I do, she sits down next to my legs, perching beside me like we’re old friends.

“My family owns this place, you know.”

“The Sensoria?”

“Yup. Always has. I learned to swim in that pool and got potty trained in one of the suites.” She laughs at the silliness of it.

“I thought it used to belong to a Spanish countess.” I remember the fact from my tour when I arrived.

“My great-grandmother,” she says. “And then it went to her son and then my dad. But he died without a boy. Only three daughters, heaven forbid, so what happens next with the property is totally up in the air. It’ll probably go to one of our husbands.”

“Can’t it just go to you?”

“Probably not.”

“That’s annoying.”

She shrugs as if to say,Of course it’s annoying, but it’s also a fact of life and how dare I question it.

“So, what do you say? Secret dinner.” She drops her voice conspiratorially and rubs her palms together as she sayssecretand then delivers a husky laugh.

“I guess. When? Where?”

“All excellent questions.” She crosses her legs and tips her face up to the sun. “We’re setting it up at sunset out in the desert. Over there.” She gestures toward the expanse. “Behind Devil’s Staircase. Invite only.”

“Devil’s Staircase?”

“That rock formation. Look at the horizon, slightly to the left. The rock that looks like a spiral staircase. Do you see it?”

I squint into the distance and can sort of make it out.

“Why Devil’s Staircase? It looks like it’s going up. Wouldn’t the devil be…you know…in the other direction?” As if I’m some sort of scriptural expert.

“It also goes down. Straight down into the gorge on the other side. Straight into hell.” She says this with a wide smile. I remember her vacant expression from Marsden’s statement about Gray. The way he squeezed her leg. In person she’s the opposite of that stiff woman. She’s electric.

“So I just walk out into the desert and look for a table or something?”

“Be on the patio at five. We have dune buggies.”

“Can I write about it?”

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