27. Cass
CASS
At the cue from the Crispin Hunting Club staff member, all the men disperse to their shooting positions. The partners are giddy with glee; the associates look nervous.
Matvei, needless to say, is calm, cool, and collected. He’s literally the only one who doesn’t look like he’s about to Dick Cheney one or more of his colleagues.
The wives are not, of course, expected to shoot.
As per usual, we’re decoration. Most of the women drift back toward the heated tent that’s been set up at the edge of the clearing—a canvas pavilion with portable space heaters, a coffee urn, and a tray of tiny cranberry scones to nibble on.
Susan goes with them. She lifts the flap of the tent and disappears inside without a glance back.
A few of us stay outside, though. Some wives want to play along.
Someone’s way-too-young second wife—blonde, named Tippi, I think, or maybe Bippi, or Pippi; one of those names that sound like an off-brand bath product—is being walked through the basics of holding a gun by her septuagenarian husband.
She giggles over and over, which he seems to find charming.
I’d put money on her wrist being broken by recoil before the morning is out.
I take the shotgun the staff hand me without comment.
The wood of the stock is a warm honey color, polished to a shine, and the metal of the barrel has been chilled to a temperature that I can feel through my mitten.
I break it open the way I saw Matvei do, peer down the barrels at nothing in particular, and snap it closed.
Clack.
Huh. That’s a satisfying little sound.
I’m directed to my position, a small, flagged spot at the edge of the clearing that’s been marked off with a length of orange tape staked into the frozen ground.
Raymond is somewhere down the line to my right; I can’t see him through the trees. Matvei is somewhere down the line to my left. I can’t see him, either. The other partners and associates have been spaced out along the edge of the woods, each in our own little zone of murderous possibility.
The world goes quiet. There’s just the wind in the birches. The crackling frost. Crows cawing, men coughing.
I stand there with my shotgun in the crook of my arm. I can’t stop thinking about Susan.
I won’t tell. But you should know something, sweetheart. There are no secrets in this firm.
What is that, even? Is that a kindness? A coded message? A fake-out?
Susan Oglethorpe has had forty-one years of practice in being underestimated by powerful men. What if I’m just the latest in a long line of idiots who looked at the diamond brooch on her lapel and decided she was harmless?
What if the entire potting shed monologue—Mr. Pell, the hay in the hair, the post-nup, all of it—was a carefully invented little aria designed to make me drop my guard while she’s off radioing the news to Bill from inside the heated tent?
What if right now, this very second, Bill is jogging through the snow toward Raymond’s position to lean in and mutter something into his ear, and Raymond’s face is going purple and pinched, and?—
I exhale into the cold air.
Stop it, Cassandra. You’re spiraling. If Susan wanted to torch you, she could have done it last night, in the doorway of The Ice Room.
She didn’t, though, did she? No. She walked away.
The least you can do is take the blessing without turning yourself into a basket case.
Below the Susan static, underneath all of it, my hand keeps wanting to drift to my belly. But even though it would be the exact kind of comfort I need right now, I don’t let it.
There are eyes everywhere out here, even the ones I can’t see. I picture Matvei standing on his mark, his coat swirling around his ankles in the stiff early morning breeze, his shotgun easy in his hands, his blue eyes scanning the line. I wonder if he can feel me thinking about him.
In eight months, you’re going to be someone’s father.
A twig snaps to my right. I turn, expecting that Matvei’s sixth sense has drawn him to me.
But I’m wrong.
It’s not Matvei.
It’s Raymond.
He’s making his way toward me along the orange-flagged line, shotgun broken open over his forearm, cheeks ruddy from the cold and whatever was in Bill’s flask.
If you asked him, he’d say the wax cap he’s wearing makes him look like a country gentleman from a Ralph Lauren ad.
If you ask me, he looks more like an aging frat boy on his way to a Vineyard Vines wake.
He’s grinning. There’s something strange about that grin. It’s not a happy grin, that’s for sure. It is the grin of a man who has just gotten some very good news that is going to make a lot of people who are not him very, very unhappy.
He hasn’t seen me yet. He’s peering up at the branches overhead as he meanders down the edge of the woods. The snow crunches under his L.L.Bean duck boots.
He’s twenty feet away.
Fifteen.
Ten.
My vision sharpens and slows. I’m vaguely aware of every small thing: the cold on my eyelashes, the weight of the gun against my ribs, the smell of pine and gunpowder and woodsmoke from the heated tent, the distant thud of my own pulse in my ears.
I become aware, also, that there is no one else within line of sight. Raymond and I are alone in a slot of empty woods. He picked a route that took him out of the eyeline of the rest of the men. On purpose, I wonder? I bet it is. Old habits. Hitting me is less obvious if there’s no one to see.
But.
But also.
But also: There is no one within line of sight.
I repeat: There is no one within line of sight.
He’s ten feet away, I’m holding a gun, and there’s no one around to see what I might do with it.
A high, white noise begin to keen between my ears. Panic? Glee? Bloodlust? Who’s to say? What’s the difference, really?
Could this be the window?!
I mean, it could be closing right now. What if Susan is, in fact, in the tent right now telling Bill?
What if Bill is, in fact, on his way? What if the next minute, the next thirty seconds, is the last unwatched moment I will ever have with this man?
What if the universe is doing the thing it’s been doing for me lately—handing me the same gift twice, dressed up a little differently each time—and this is it?
Here you go, Cassandra. Here he is. He came to you.
A hunting accident. How clean is that?
A tragic, unspeakable hunting accident. A wife, untrained, clumsy with cold, mishandling a firearm she should never have been allowed to hold in the first place.
Who would look at a grieving widow weeping into a Hermès scarf at the funeral and cry out, Murderer?
No, that would never happen. The coroner would understand.
Open and shut. Heartbreaking stuff, really.
My thoughts jump to Matvei. This will be the end of whatever I’m supposed to call the thing between us. Our deal done, our contract severed. Baby or not, I can’t imagine he’ll stick around. He’s just not that kind of man.
I think: He’ll be furious.
I think: He’ll forgive me.
I think: Or he won’t.
But either way, I’ll have done what I came here to do.
Eight feet now. Raymond is still squinting up overhead. He won’t even know which direction it came from, I realize, with a cold-blooded clarity that surprises me. And by the time he figures it out, I’ll be on my knees beside him, screaming.
I’ve always been a good screamer. Since the night I arrived at Mount Sinai and saw what Raymond had done to Giana, I’ve always had air in my lungs to scream.
Giana.
Giana.
Giana, who once drove four hours through a blizzard in a car with no heat to bring me a sheet cake on my twentieth birthday because she didn’t want me to spend it alone in my dorm.
Giana, who slipped twenty-dollar bills into my wallet when I wasn’t looking all throughout college.
Giana, who was working a job that made bruises bloom along the top of her breasts just so that I wouldn’t have to take out another loan.
Giana, who told me, I’m okay. I’m always okay.
That’s my thing, remember? Giana, who paid for me, again and again, with her body, with her time, with her sleep, with her dignity, with everything she had—until a man in a hotel room cracked her skull open against a marble bathtub.
Even if this choice costs me Matvei, even if things go wrong and I end up in jail, all I have to do to make that okay is remind myself of the price Giana paid.
She paid with her life .
This is the least I can do.
I move slowly. There’s no room to screw this up. One shot—literally.
I spread my feet. The shotgun comes up off my forearm and into both my hands as if it has been waiting to do so my whole life. I used to think I’d want to say something cutting and savage right before I did it, but I don’t give a shit about speeches anymore. I just want this shit over with.
I level the barrel at his chest.
Only then does Raymond finally drop his gaze and find me in the underbrush.
The parallel lines between his furry brows deepen.
The smarmy smile twitches at one corner.
Cassandra? , his eyes say, before his mouth can.
He has not yet fully understood. His brain has not yet given him permission to understand.
That’s okay. He’ll catch up in another second. When he does, though, it’ll be too late.
I’m sorry, Matvei, I think.
I’m sorry, baby.
I love you, Gi.
The morning is very quiet around me, except for a single crow overhead, calling once against the sky.
I curl my finger around the trigger.