23. Cass #2
I saw Mat in the lobby, looking at me without actually looking, and my heart double-clutched with the sweetest pain.
I’ve thought of him every day since the encounter in the park.
All I’ve had to do is close my eyes and there he is, on his knees in the freezing stone tunnel, my coat draped over his head like the roof of a cathedral while he worshipped me and made me see angels.
The cold of the stone at my back… the heat of his mouth… the stillness of his presence when he stayed there afterwards, cheek to my belly, eyes closed, like he was listening for something only he could hear.
I press a hand to my stomach now. Through the cashmere, I can almost convince myself there’s a flutter, even though I know it’s too early for that. It takes until weeks sixteen or so before it’s detectable. I’m a long way from that. Whatever I’m feeling is just the chicken.
Still, I can pretend. It’s not like lying to myself is new for me. I’ve been doing that for a long, long time.
Hi, you, I think. We’re getting close.
It could happen this weekend. It could really, truly happen. The end of this nightmare.
I keep waiting to wake up. That’s the part nobody warns you about when you set out to plot a murder: the disbelief. I’ve been steering toward Raymond’s death for five years now, since the day the funeral director told me they couldn’t open the casket.
All my many steps and missteps along the way seem so distant and irrelevant now. Cyanide pills and fifty grand in cash, a dingy bar and a dark back alley… The whole time, I doubted. This isn’t going to happen. You were stupid to think it ever could.
But now, it might. It actually fucking might .
Giana would laugh if she could see me right now.
She’d take one look at the four-poster bed and the silver dome over the chicken and she’d say something like, Well, look at you, fancy girl!
Living the dream, are we? She had a way of saying things that made you feel stupid and loved at the same time. Things like…
“ Birthday gift for the princess!” She strode into my dorm room and dropped a thick envelope on my lap.
I looked at it stupidly, then up at her. “It’s not my birthday, doofus. You’re my sister. Shouldn’t you know that?”
She shrugged. “Easy there, sourpuss. Call it a late Christmas present, then. Or early Valentine’s Day. Or— Look, just say thanks and tell me I’m the best sister ever and you’d wither and die without me, mmkay?”
I grinned reluctantly. “ Thanks, Gi. You’re the best sister ever and I’d wither and die without…”
The words dried up in my mouth as I shook out the envelope’s contents and realized just how much there was. Five grand in crisp new twenties, easily. The banded stack was thick enough that I had to thumb the corner twice before I believed it was real.
“ Giana…”
“ Mhm?”
“ What the hell is this?”
She flopped onto my twin XL, kicked off her boots, and stretched like the lazy cat she’d always been.
“What does it look like? That’s tuition, baby.
Books. Ramen. Lingerie. Whatever it is that you fancy pants college girls spend on.
I noticed last time I was here that you had a fridge full of nothing but mustard and a Brita filter, and I thought, ‘That’s not the kind of girl I raised. ’”
“ That you raised?” I asked incredulously.
She popped open an eye to regard me. “Didn’t I?”
I sat up, the envelope heavy on my knee. “Gi, c’mon. Be serious. Where did you get this?”
“ Work, dummy. Where do you think?”
“ What kind of work pays enough that you can just give this away?”
“ The kind of work I do.” She wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was studiously picking at a hangnail that didn’t exist. “The kind that pays.”
“ In cash? In a brick of freaking twenties? I’m serious, Giana ? —”
She held up a hand. “Don’t start. I have a headache already.”
“ Yeah, well, tough titty. I’m starting.”
She sat up. Her hair was longer than usual and she had it half-up, half-down with a calico butterfly clip. I’d always loved her hair. Long and auburn, with a slight curl to it, just enough to look wild and free. “Shut up and take the money, will you please?”
Something about it just felt wrong, though. “Is it dangerous?”
“ The money? It won’t bite, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“ The work, Gi,” I said impatiently. “Is it dangerous?”
She looked at me then, finally, and her face did a funny flicker.
The older-sister, nonchalant, I can’t-be-bothered armor slipped and underneath was a girl who was so unbelievably tired.
Then she put it right back on. “It’s fine.
I’m a grown woman who can handle herself, and you are a precious widdle baby who needs textbooks. Take. The. Money.”
My own mask must’ve slipped and revealed that, underneath, I was a girl who was afraid that my big sister was going to hurt herself.
Seeing it, Giana softened. She reached over and tucked my hair behind my ear.
The motion made her blouse gap and I saw fingerprint bruises along the top of her breast. But she forced my eyes to meet hers.
“Hey. Look at me. I’m okay. I’m always okay. That’s my thing, remember? You go be smart, and I’ll go be okay, and one day, we’ll both be sitting somewhere fancy, getting fat off room service and laughing about all this.”
I stare at the fire until my eyes ache.
As it turned out, she was not okay. Not in the least. Five years after that envelope landed in my lap, a man cracked her skull in a hotel room and she did not get to laugh about anything, ever again.
The memory leaves me a little nauseous, but also more certain than ever.
Raymond is going to die this weekend.
I’m going to make sure of it.