The efficiency of this house's servants is astonishing. Only minutes pass before a stack of black face towels are delivered to my door, along with an expensive white leather purse, complete with a tasteful gold LV to declare precisely how overpriced it is.
I cross my arms over my chest and stare at the bag like it might bite.
Louis Vuitton, right? I can't think of any other reason a giant L and a giant V would be there.
The leather is pristine, without a single crease or scuff, and I suddenly feel incredibly allergic to wealth. What if I scrape it? I throw my purses around without thinking twice; this thing, on the other hand, has been babied for its entire life. The amount of people who have touched it without gloves is probably in single digits.
I owned exactly one nice handbag in my life—a Coach crossbody I found at TJ Maxx for sixty percent off, and I still felt guilty about it for two weeks. Babying it lasted all of thirty minutes. Ultimately, no matter how pretty or branded, it's meant to hold all my miscellany.
Somehow, I think my view of a purse and this body's original owner's view don't align…
But I need answers more than I need to preserve heirloom-quality leather, so I approach it with the reverence of a surgeon, pinch the zipper pull between my thumb and index finger, and ease it open.
Inside: a matching wallet—because of course—and a phone in a white case with the same gold hardware aesthetic. There's a small bag inside, I'm pretty sure made with silk, with some powder foundation and a travel-sized Prada perfume. There's also a set of car keys belonging to a Porsche, with house keys attached.
I drive a Porsche now. Or she did. Whoever I am.
I pull them all out.
The phone screen stays black when I press the side button, so I plug it in on a wireless charging pad built into one of the nightstands, hoping against hope the original owner doesn't have it password protected.
Now for the wallet.
I flip it open and my stomach does something complicated.
There are credit cards in every slot. A black Amex and several cards with names I only vaguely recognize, like Neiman Marcus—maybe some store at a high-end mall?—along with several rewards cards.
All have the same name: Vivienne Marshall.
Her driver's license is strangely tucked in behind several cards instead of in the usual spot, and I stare at the photo with a faint sense of injustice. She looks amazing, even with a standard DMV photo. Only the truly blessed are capable of looking good in those.
Granted, I'm currently in that blessed body, but it still feels unfair for me in my past life.
Vivienne Marshall.
Same first name. Same spelling—the double N, the E everyone assumes is an A. The last name's different, though. I was Vivienne Wells before I… well, before.
I'm not sure if it's comforting or not to share the same name as my previous life.
There's cash, which I would have ignored until I realized they were all in hundreds.
I pull the bills out and count them with shaking fingers.
Four hundred. Six hundred. Eight—
Nine hundred and forty dollars.
In cash.
I shove the bills back in and snap the wallet shut like the money might evaporate if exposed to air too long. Who carries almost a thousand dollars in cash?
Drug dealers. Grandmothers who don't trust banks. Women with secrets.
Which category does Vivienne Marshall fall into? Hopefully just obnoxiously wealthy.
I open the coin pocket—more out of compulsion than curiosity—and a single brass key slides into my palm. It looks like any normal house key, only strange because there's already a set attached to Porsche fob. It's unremarkable, except for the tag attached to it—a small leather thing stamped with an address.
4712 Maple Street, Apt 3B.
I stare at it for a long time, my fingers trembling against the key.
My apartment.
My apartment. Not Vivienne Marshall's. Not this body's. Mine. Vivienne Wells's shitty third-floor walk-up with the radiator that clanked all winter and a neighbor dog who barks at all hours of night.
I grip the key so hard the brass teeth dig into my palm. The pain is real. The key is real. The address is—
How? How is this possible? This is a different body, a different name, a different life.
The room in expensive gold accents, the five-figure purse, the Porsche I could never afford in my lifetime—none of this belongs to Vivienne Wells. So why is my apartment key here, in this woman's wallet?
Okay. Okay, fine. I don't understand this yet. I don't have to understand it yet. I just have to—
Something else falls from the coin pocket, landing with a soft clink against the dresser.
A strange, foreboding feeling creeps up my back as I look down in what feels like slow motion. Two rings spin until they fall flat, taking much longer than I ever thought they could.
The silver bands catch light like captured stars. My fingers move without thought, picking up the engagement ring first—a solitaire diamond that could probably fund a small country's economy. Instead of a square or a circle, it's set at an angle to look like a diamond, which feels pretty on the nose. The band follows, a simple chevron thing, probably more expensive than it needs to be considering it's only however many millimeters of metal in a basic shape.
My ring finger is smooth and unmarked, but they slide on easily, a perfect fit. Their weight feels both wrong and familiar.
Then I hold my hand up, watching light fracture through the diamond into a thousand little rainbows. The bands are platinum, I guess. White gold? I never learned the difference. Never needed to.
My left hand looks like it belongs to someone else now. Someone who gets proposed to with rings like this.
Someone who's married.
I'm married.
Fuck.