48. Cass
CASS
The next morning, I’m woken up and assigned to laundry duty.
It’s not the worst thing in the world. If nothing else, it’s robotic and mindless. Kinda meditative, almost. Of all the various prison jobs, many of which involve backed-up toilets, this is the one that the yoga-and-matcha girlies would be fighting tooth and manicured nail to get.
Not that there’s a ton of that species in here.
I keep getting strange looks and muted laughs.
One woman even guffaws in my face and declares, “There must be some justice in the universe after all, because I have never in my life seen a rich, stuck-up bitch like you getting locked up in a place like this!”
She seems genuinely pleased to see me. I’m glad I can restore her faith in karmic retribution.
Anyway, the laundry. It could be worse. Keeps my mind off the bigger problems, like the baby in my belly that might be born into captivity or the Blue-Eyed Bastard who promised me the moon and got me a jail cell instead.
I’m elbow-deep in a hamper of khaki when a guard approaches at the end of my row. She’s short and square, wearing her hair in a French braid so tight it looks load-bearing. I’m genuinely concerned for the skin tension on her scalp. The name tape on her chest reads COLLINS .
“Snyder. With me.”
I drop the bundle I’m sorting. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Don’t ask questions, inmate. Just move.”
I dry my hands on the front of my smock and fall in behind her. The woman who called me a stuck-up bitch watches me go with a strange sort of pity in her eyes.
I don’t like that.
I don’t like that at all.
Collins walks fast, so I have to trot to keep up. We pass through the first checkpoint without anyone looking at us, which is strange, because in my brief experience here, the guards at the checkpoints look at everything . Collins flashes a card at the reader, the lock chimes, and we’re through.
“Lawyer?” I venture, because I can’t help myself.
“Didn’t I just tell you not to ask questions?”
The hallway is quieter on this side, with less of that angry, pent-up energy in the air. Even the lights seem to be making less noise than they did back where I came from.
But it’s not a nice kind of quiet. In fact, the anxious whining noise in my ears seems to be getting louder to compensate for the ominous stillness.
I try to quell it as best as I can. I tell myself, Cassandra, do not be a fucking idiot. There are a hundred reasons a guard might walk you through a prison. Maybe even some good reasons.
I’m clearly new to this whole game, but I still name them in my head: Lawyer. Doctor. Disciplinary. A snitch interview. A surprise medical for the baby, perhaps. Maybe the nurse who did my medical intake called somebody.
And maybe even…
But no. Don’t even think of that one. Hoping is the most dangerous thing you can do in here. Best not to even begin.
And yet I can’t help it. My eyes close and I conjure up an image.
Blue eyes emerging from the darkness. Pale skin, dark stubble.
It’s him.
I don’t allow myself to say his name, even in my head, because the last time I did, I was lying on a guest room mattress with my hand with a one-way ticket to visit the Sandman, courtesy of that half-milligram of zolpidem, and the saying of it did not summon him the way I thought it would.
It was more of a monkey’s paw situation.
Saying Mat’s name summoned the inside of this grim, gray-walled detention center.
Besides, he’s in trouble, too. He got bailed out, so why on earth would he traipse right back into a prison?
No, it just can’t be him. It’s dumb to hope.
If it is him, though, I’m ready to rip him a new asshole. I’ve given a lot of speeches in the day-and-a-half I’ve been here, mostly to the wall above my cot. Most of them are about how I am never going to forgive him. They’re pretty convincing, if I do say so myself.
But somewhere between the third checkpoint and the fourth, a door in my head that I’ve been holding shut with both hands swings open, and out pours every selfish wish I’ve been pretending not to make.
Please be him. Please be him. Please, please, please be him.
I’ll forgive you anything if you came.
Just be on the other side of that door.
Collins keys us into a short, narrow corridor I’ve never seen, with doors set on both sides at uneven intervals, like a hotel that has been added onto a few too many times.
Some of the doors have little brass numbers, but most don’t. One of them, near the end, has a card slotted into a sleeve that reads: IN USE.
Collins stops in front of it. “Here you go.”
“What’s going on?” I ask.
She just grunts and swipes her card on the terminal. The lock thuds back, freeing the handle. She opens it up and gestures for me to enter.
I look at her one more time. Her face is hard and expressionless. She’s had years to learn how to iron it smooth, and there’s no trace of sympathy left. I won’t get any more answers out of her, that much is certain.
She is not, in any way, my friend.
I don’t have any of those left.
So with a swallow to steel my nerves, I turn and step inside, caught halfway between hope and horror.
This isn’t an attorney room—those come with tables and chairs, business spaces, places for serious talks to happen.
This is a conjugal visit room.
A double bed rests against one wall, with a maroon polyester coverlet pulled tight enough to bounce a quarter on. A laminate nightstand waits alongside, and in the corner is a single chair upholstered in industrial gray-blue tweed.
In that chair, with his ankle crossed over his knee and his hands folded on top of it, sits Senator Josiah DeMaris.
He wears his suit well. It’s a neat navy with a red tie knotted under his Adam’s apple in a perfect dimpled half-Windsor. Very presidential. His salt-and-pepper hair is freshly cut, his chin and cheeks freshly shaved. He smells, faintly, of the cologne he wore at his daughter’s wedding.
He smiles at me pleasantly. “Good to see you, Cassandra.”
The door clicks shut behind me. I hear the beep of Collins’s keycard and the clunk of the bolt dropping home into the frame. I’m locked in.
“Why don’t you sit down, sweetheart?” He gestures at the edge of the bed. “We’re going to have a chat, you and I.”
For obvious reasons, I have no intention of sitting on the bed. If the bed is where he wants me, it’s the last place on earth I want to go. I’ve had four years to earn my degree in What Happens When Men Like This Issue Bed-Related Commands, and let’s just say I graduated with honors.
Instead, I prepare myself for war.
The screaming in my head fades out slowly. I roll a fresh coat of emotional lacquer over all the tender parts of me.
Mama , I tell the baby, is gonna take a nap. Mommy needs to be the other one for a minute. The mean one, the violent one. The one who watched her sister get buried in a closed casket and swore then and there that she’d slaughter the man who did it if it was the last thing she ever did.
I let my mouth curl into a fanged smile. “Senator,” I purr, “you’ll have to forgive me for not dressing up. They didn’t tell me I had a gentleman caller.”
He laughs. “Oh, sweetheart,” he says, “I do like you. It’s a pity about what has to happen next.”