32. Cass
CASS
We don’t even bother with breakfast. No one is hungry. The Crispin staff, to their credit, has put together a continental spread in the morning room, row after row of fresh food underneath gleaming silver domes, but no one is eating.
The remaining partners stand around in clumps with their phones to their ears, mumbling things like Yes, I’m fine and No, no idea and Christ, Sandra, give me a minute.
A red-eyed woman I don’t recognize is sobbing into a linen napkin in the corner.
Susan’s chair at the head of the long table is empty, the place setting already cleared away by some highly efficient member of staff.
Matvei finds me by the window, hands me a paper cup of tea I won’t drink, and says, very low, “Pack your bag. We’re going.”
I don’t argue. We slip out a side door a few minutes later.
The drive back into the city takes forever.
There’s been an accident on the Saw Mill.
It’s no surprise, really, because the snow continues to come down, thicker and thicker.
We end up sitting in traffic outside Hawthorne for forty-five minutes while a Lexus on the shoulder smolders and a state trooper stares, perplexed.
Mat keeps one hand on the wheel and the other on my knee. Every so often his thumb sweeps once across my kneecap, like he’s reminding himself I’m still there, or reminding me.
“Talk to me, please,” I finally say somewhere around Yonkers.
“About what?”
“About what the fuck just happened. Are we going to die? Am I? You and I know damn well that no gas leak killed Bill.” I glance at him, shocked to find that my eyes are suddenly full of tears.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself from this whole insane chapter of my life, it’s that I’m not as callous and hardened as I always thought I was.
When Giana died, I figured that was it for me as far as feelings go. I’d be all rage, all the time, forever after. But it hasn’t been like that. Maybe it was for a while, and goodness knows I repressed tons of awful shit just to get through my pursuit and marriage of Raymond.
Now, though, I feel again. I feel sadness and fear, anger and lust.
I know who’s responsible for helping ease me back into the world of the living: A Blue-Eyed Bastard who tried to tell me I wasn’t cut out for this.
In some ways, he was very wrong.
In some others, though, he was very, very right.
He pulls his hand off my knee for the first time in an hour, only to lift mine onto his thigh and keep it flat there, palm down, grounding me. That’s a good call on his part: It’s so soothing to touch something this real and immovable.
“Listen to me,” he says. “This wasn’t random.
We both know that. But it also wasn’t aimed at us.
Not yet. If it had been, we’d already be dead, you understand?
They had the whole night. They picked Bill, though.
I don’t know why, but I’ll figure it out, and then we’ll decide what to do about it.
This can only end one way, Cass, and it’s the way we choose. Okay?”
“I see why you’re good at your job,” I mumble. “You’re very reassuring when you lay things out like that.”
“It’s not lawyer-y bullshit,” he promises me. “It’s fucked-up what happened to Bill and Susan, but there might be a silver lining to it for us. Whatever Raymond is doing just got a hell of a lot more complicated. Which means he’s going to be busy this week. Distracted. Looking the wrong direction.”
“Which is good for us.”
Mat nods. “If we play our cards right, yes.’
I want to believe him. I do. I’m so tired and overwhelmed by now that I’m willing to climb into the idea like a hot bubble bath and potentially never get out.
I squeeze his knee and look up at him. “Mat?”
“Yeah?”
“Promise me everything’s going to be okay.”
He turns his face toward me for a beat, eyes off the train of brake lights ahead of us, and I get the full force of the blue. “Everything’s going to be okay, dikarka. ” He rests a palm on top of mine, sandwiching me. “I’ve got you. I’ve got both of you.”
Back in the city, he drops me in front of my building. Just before I get out, after checking to be sure no one is watching, he snags my wrist to drag me back in the car and kiss my knuckles.
Then, once I’m marked with his lips, he lets me go back upstairs to my husband.
That’s what I expected to go upstairs to, at least.
But the penthouse is vacant.
The housekeeper, has obviously been in. The foyer table has fresh peonies and the air smells faintly of the lemon polish she uses on the credenza. But it’s lifeless. Raymond’s coat isn’t on the rack. His keys aren’t in the dish. His shoes aren’t lined up by the door.
I stand in the foyer with my bag still on my shoulder and listen. No sounds emerge, though.
“Well,” I whisper to no one, “this is unexpected.”
I walk through the apartment slow, room by room. Kitchen: empty. Dining room: empty. Living room: empty. Raymond’s study: locked, of course, but no light under the door.
Our bed is made within an inch of its life. The master bathroom shower is dry as a bone. His sink is spotless. His razor is in its little chrome stand. His towel is hanging on its hook, dry and unused.
So where is he, then?
Monday comes. He doesn’t come home.
Tuesday comes. He doesn’t come home.
By Wednesday morning, I don’t know whether to breathe or to start the official meltdown. I sit on the kitchen island in my socks with a piece of dry sourdough in one hand and the burner in the other, and I text Mat once again:
Still nothing.
He texts back inside of a minute, the way he has every time since he dropped me off.
Stay where you are. Don’t go looking.
Yes, sir.
I like the sound of that.
Eat something wholesome. I know you’re starving yourself over there.
You’re not the boss of me, Satyrin.
Thank God for that. I’d never get any work done with you around, distracting me.
By Wednesday afternoon, the news has caught up to what we already know. There is a small item in the Times.
William Oglethorpe, longtime partner at Snyder & Oglethorpe LLP, dead at sixty-eight, of cardiac arrest during a weekend at a Hudson Valley retreat. Survived by his wife, Susan, and three grown children. A private service will be held Thursday morning at St. James on Madison.
Cardiac arrest . That’s what they’re going with. I almost laugh. Then I almost cry. Then I just close the laptop and stare at the wall for a while.
Dani calls twice, but I let it go to voicemail both times.
I’m just not up to face her right now. She’s in the throes of young puppy love and I’m in the throes of—well, it’s not puppy love, but maybe wolfish love?
Whatever you’d call it, mine is a little wilder and a little more dangerous and has a lot more fangs involved.
Point is, we’re not operating on the same plane at the moment.
She’s a forever friend, though, the kind you can always pick up with no matter how long it’s been since you last connected.
It’ll all be okay. I can only hope that, in the meantime, Fireman Chad is buying her flowers and breaking her headboard on a nightly basis.
After her engagement blew up in her face last year, good sex with a good man is the very least she deserves.
There’s also the other thing separating me from her: the fact that I’m currently incubating a life inside of me. The bean is making itself known in new ways, each more hellish than the last.
My breasts ache like I’ve been getting whacked with a crowbar in my sleep. The peony smell from the foyer has become nauseating, so on Wednesday evening, I drag the whole arrangement to the trash chute and stuff it in stems-first, then stand there panting like I’ve run a 5K.
There’s a tiny, almost-not-there pull low in my belly when I sit up too fast, which the internet insists is round ligament discomfort and very normal at this stage.
That just makes me laugh. Normal? Me? Hell no.
I’m a would-be homicidal wife to a criminally involved asshole, pregnant by another man with questionable ethics and a loose regard for the law, caught in the middle of so many criss-crossing conspiracies that my head starts to spin like a merry-go-round every time I try to get a hold of things.
Like Elvis, normal has left the building.
Thursday morning is Bill’s funeral.
I still haven’t seen Raymond.
I lay my outfit on the bed. At least this part of things is straightforward.
Black wool dress, knee-length, high neck, long sleeves.
Black tights. Black pumps with the heel low enough that I won’t sink into wet sod in the graveyard.
Black coat. Black hat. Pearl studs in my ears, but no other jewelry except for my gaudy wedding band.
I’m in the bathroom in my slip, doing the concealer under my eyes, when I hear a sound I’ve almost stopped dreading.
A key in the front door.
I freeze with the wand halfway to my left cheekbone.
The door opens and creaks closed. There’s the rustle of a coat coming off, the metallic clink of the key going into the foyer dish, the groan of the second floorboard inside the front hall. And then:
“Cassandra.”
Raymond’s voice is calm. There’s no edge in it. It’s just my name, devoid of anything that tells me what kind of husband I’m getting this morning.
“In here,” I call. I’m honestly amazed at how level my voice comes out. Years of practice will do that, I guess.
I hear him come down the hall. When he stops in the bathroom doorway, I turn to look.
He’s in a black suit. He shaved this morning, wherever he was. His mustache is crisp and his shirt is freshly pressed. There’s a black tie folded over his forearm, not yet knotted. His hair is a little damp at the temples, like he’s just come out of someone’s shower.
“You look nice,” he remarks. “Black suits you.”
I’m baffled. Compliments? From Raymond Snyder?! Hath hell frozen over? Hath pigs begun to fly? Hath I sustained massive blunt force trauma to the head?
Is hath even a real word?!
“Oh. Uh, thank you,” I mumble, eyes downcast.
He walks into the bathroom and stops politely out of arm’s reach. He doesn’t try to touch me. He just looks at me, head tilted slightly, eyes flat like two coins.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Okay, now, I’m definitely sure that I was cold-cocked with a two-by-four, Looney Tunes style. This cannot be reality. Next thing I know, he’s gonna plop a romantic smooch on my lips and tell me he loves me.
I blink. “Sorry for what?”
“For disappearing on you without a word. That was unkind of me.”
“Oh. I mean, sure. It’s been a hard week,” I venture. I’m so lost right now it’s actually crazy.
“Yes, it has.” He looks past me, into the mirror, then back.
“For everyone.” He shakes his head slowly and, dare I say it, he actually looks kinda sad?
“I keep thinking about Bill. The man worked through cancer in ‘04, did you know that? Never lost a step. And now, this…” He spreads one hand.
“A gas leak . In a hotel that charges twelve hundred dollars a night.”
“It’s awful,” I manage.
He lets out a weary exhale as he leans against the doorjamb.
“Yes. Well.” He pulls the tie off his forearm and lifts it to his collar.
He starts knotting it without a mirror. “The show must go on.” As he tosses the silk length around, he keeps talking.
“I know you’re probably wondering where I’ve been, and I hope you can understand that I’m trying to keep things separate.
There are things on my plate this week that I cannot bring home with me. Do you understand what I mean?”
I think of all the things Matvei has either said or implied about Raymond and I shiver. “Sure, of course.”
“Good.” He finishes the knot, fidgets with it, then turns to face me. “I want you to know I appreciate you, Cassandra.”
Put a fork in me, because I am done. We have entered the realm of the unreal.
“I mean it,” he insists. “I haven’t been an easy man to be married to lately. I know that. The pressure of— Well. You don’t need the details. But I see you. I see what you carry.”
I see you, dikarka, says another voice in my head, in another accent, and my throat closes up tight.
Then I freeze as a second meaning to his words sinks in. I see what you carry. Does he mean…? Could he possibly…?
No. He doesn’t know about the baby. He bought my lie about the prenatal vitamins and there’s no way he’s unearthed any other information. I’m just being paranoid. It’s okay, I’m fine, it’s fine, everything is totally fucking fine.
“Thank you,” I say awkwardly, just to fill in the gaps.
He nods crisply. Then he turns toward the bedroom. “I need a little while to prepare. The car is downstairs already. The driver knows where to go.”
“You want me to wait for you?”
“No.” He pauses with his back to me. His hand finds the doorframe. His knuckles are very white against the white paint, the only place on him that gives him away. “Go ahead without me. I’ll meet you there.”
“Raymond—”
He turns just his head, looks at me over his shoulder. The corner of his mouth lifts, not in a smile but more of a pained grimace.
“You know, Cassandra,” he says, “I’ve been thinking. People underestimate how much of a marriage is just witnessing. Watching what the other one does and what the other one doesn’t do.” He raps the doorframe once, lightly, with his ring. “I think I’ve underestimated you. For a long time.”
I’m speechless.
“Anyway. Go on,” he says. “I’ll see you there in a little while. Let’s give Bill the send-off he deserves, yeah?”
With that, he disappears down the hall.