23. Cass
CASS
A week and a half later, the second window is here.
Raymond drives us upstate. I sit in the passenger seat with my hands folded in my lap and my expression tuned to demure wife on a quaint country weekend.
It’s a long journey to spend pretending, but as with most things in my life lately, I don’t have a choice.
I just need to hold out for a little while longer, and then we’ll make it to the light at the end of the tunnel.
He’s not making it easy, though. He’s been keyed up all morning. He had three espressos before we left the apartment, so his right knee has been bouncing against the gear shift since the GW Bridge.
I have a nasty feeling as to why that is, which is confirmed or at least reinforced when his phone buzzes again.
It’s been going nuts the whole way. He’s got the Bluetooth synced to the car, but he hasn’t been answering through the speakers.
Every time it goes off, he glances at the screen propped in the center console, swears under his breath, and lets it go to voicemail.
Then thirty seconds later, he picks it up and types something fast and angry and sets it down again.
I haven’t asked. Asking is not in my job description today. My job description is to sit pretty, don’t fidget, don’t comment on the driving, don’t look at the phone, don’t bring up the vitamins.
For the most part, I’m fine with that. We haven’t talked about the vitamins and, if I have it my way, we never will.
Raymond came home late that night. By then, I’d already done what needed doing: cleaned out my hiding spot, washed my hair properly, put on the cream cashmere pajama set he likes, and made his short ribs from scratch.
He walked in, looked at me standing at the stove, and didn’t say a word about it. Whatever phone call dragged him out of the apartment was apparently enough to bump Interrogate wife far down the to-do list. He took his food into his study and worked until two in the morning.
I’m not stupid enough to think he forgot.
I’m hoping he just decided he was wrong, or that the Hailey Bieber line sounded more plausible than I gave it credit for, or—my favorite theory—that the shady business thing he’s gotten himself involved with is eating his attention from all directions and there isn’t enough brain space left over to come after me right now.
Whatever it is, I’ll take it.
In the meantime, I have eaten six saltines for breakfast and am holding very still so that the curves of upstate New York don’t make me throw up in his Bentley. Raymond’s phone buzzes again. He grabs it and reads. His knuckles go white on the wheel.
“Everything okay?” I venture hesitantly. I feel like I have to speak up at some point; saying nothing for two hours is as suspicious as prying.
“Fine.”
“Anything I can?—?”
“No.”
I fold my hands tighter and look out my window.
The trees thin and a long stone wall emerges, then a wrought-iron gate with THE CRISPIN HOTEL AND HUNTING LODGE worked into the metal in curling, old-timey script.
The venue for this weekend’s firm retreat sits at the end of a mile of unplowed gravel drive, in a wooded part of the Hudson Valley where the cell service comes and goes like a toxic boyfriend.
Situated between winding labyrinths of frozen ornamental hedges and a koi pond with a sheet of ice on top is the building itself: a Tudor mansion with leaded windows and a slate roof, ivy climbing up to the chimneys, the sort of place you book for a wedding when you want everyone to act like they’re in a Shakespeare reboot.
A valet jogs out to meet as Raymond cuts the engine. Another opens my door. I step out, rearrange my coat, and accept the gloved hand at my elbow with my best country-club smile.
“Welcome to The Crispin, Mrs. Snyder.”
“Thank you so much.”
Raymond hasn’t bothered to wait for me. He strides ahead up the salted stone path, muttering on the phone now. Whatever the latest text was, it lit a fire under his ass. I follow at the appropriate distance, head up, chin tilted, every bit the wife-shaped silhouette he prefers in public.
The lobby is a prism of dark wood and tartan rugs, lit by a fire going in a stone hearth at the far end. There’s a Christmas tree still up by the staircase even though it’s nearly the end of January, hung with red velvet bows and gold pears.
Bill Oglethorpe is standing dead in the middle of all of it with his hands in the pockets of his green tweed jacket, beaming like he owns the place, which he does, or so the rumor goes.
Then again, Bill Oglethorpe is rumored to own damn near everything in the Northeast. He’s the WASP of all WASPs; his family came over on the Mayflower and promptly bought everything they set eyes on.
“At long last!” Bill booms. “There’s my boy.”
Raymond pockets the phone in one smooth motion and switches faces, just like that, from snarling lockjaw to country gentleman. “Bill, you old bastard.”
“Takes one to know one, eh, Snyder?”
They shake hands and then do the half-hug, half-shoulder-thump thing that men of a certain generation always do. I float up next to Raymond, still maintaining a slight distance just in case, and of course—it goes without saying—still wearing my most pleasant smile.
Bill’s wife, Susan Oglethorpe, materializes out of nowhere.
She’s in her mid-sixties, blond, impeccable, and Botoxed to within an inch of her life.
She’s wearing a camel cashmere coat over a green cocktail dress, along with a strand of pearls and the same diamond studs she has worn at every event I’ve ever seen her at.
“Cassandra, darling.” She takes me by both shoulders and kisses the air on either side of my face.
“Susan, hi. You look gorgeous.”
“Oh, please. ” She pulls back and gives me an up-and-down. “Look at you. Look at this coat. It is so brave of you to wear that color.”
I blink. “Sorry?”
“Red! In January!” She pats my arm. “Most girls wouldn’t dare. But you’ve always had your own way of doing things, haven’t you?”
Forcing the smile back to my lips, I say, “You’re so sweet.”
“I mean it,” she insists. “Brave, brave, brave.”
Bill laughs at something Raymond mutters and claps him on the back. “Drinks on the terrace at six,” Bill says. “Don’t be late, son.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Bill claps him on the shoulder one more time and steers Susan off toward the front desk. Raymond’s hand slides off my waist the second they’re out of earshot. He pulls his phone out again, glares at it, and sets off toward the check-in counter without looking to see if I’m following.
Across the lobby, a man in a long black coat is signing something at the far end of the front desk. He’s standing in profile to me, head bent over the clipboard, dark hair falling forward into his eyes.
Matvei.
He hasn’t looked up, but he knows I’ve arrived. I can feel that he knows. There’s a stillness that comes over him, the same one I saw in the corner booth at Khaza a lifetime ago, the one that lets me know exactly where I am in his peripheral vision at all times.
A bellman wheels his single suitcase past him toward the staircase. Matvei takes his key, slips it into his coat pocket, and turns to follow without sparing the lobby a second glance.
I face front again before Raymond can clock my distraction.
“Honeymoon Suite for Mr. and Mrs. Snyder,” the clerk is chirping. “Mr. Oglethorpe upgraded you himself, sir. Congratulations. You’re on the third floor at the end of the east hall.”
“Lovely,” Raymond drawls. He might as well have said, I couldn’t give any less of a fuck.
I give the clerk a sympathetic smile.
“Enjoy your stay, Mrs. Snyder,” she says.
“Thank you so much,” I reply. “I think we’re all going to have a very good time.”
The Honeymoon Suite has a four-poster bed, a fireplace, and a clawfoot tub by the window. The windows frame a view over a snow-covered rose garden. It’s beautiful, undoubtedly so.
But when the bellman shuts the door behind him, Raymond drops his bag, rips off his coat, and walks straight into the bathroom with his phone pressed to his ear.
He shuts the door. The bathroom fan kicks on. I can hear a low, urgent murmur through the wood, and the occasional sharp retort when whatever the other person says lands wrong.
I sit on the edge of the bed. I’m still in my coat, but I don’t take it off. I’m not sure why. I just sit there with my purse on my knees and listen to my husband seethe at someone through a closed bathroom door for a quarter of an hour.
When he comes out, his face is the color of raw beef.
He walks to the closet, hangs his coat on a velvet hanger, lines up the shoulders, smooths the lapels, and says, without turning around, “I’m going to play squash with Bill before drinks.
Don’t wait up tonight. There’s a thing after dinner, partners only. Could go late.”
“Of course. Have fun, dear.”
He grabs his phone and his wallet and is out the door in under a minute. As soon as he’s gone, I order room service and put on pajamas. I take out my contacts. I sit on the four-poster bed and watch the fireplace do its thing for a while.
Hours tick by like that. At some point, the room service comes. A little wheeled cart with a domed plate and a sprig of rosemary on the napkin. I tip the kid in cash and eat half the grilled chicken sitting cross-legged on the bedspread, watching the flames lick at a log that won’t quite catch.
My mind drifts where it always drifts now.
To him.
It’s strange to see someone I saw so recently and still feel the pang in my chest like we’ve been separated for decades. Long-lost lovers, only without the love. But that feeling was so real.