Chapter 9 Olivier
Olivier
Three months before the honeymoon
When Cassie walked through my door again three hours later, her demeanor had changed. She was wearing her funeral dress, the short little black one, her hair brushed nice and straight.
“You’re here!” I said, dropping my cool act. I’d been anxiously checking the time, running nightmare scenarios through my head. “You’re back.”
I got up and went to hug her, I was so relieved. “I’m sorry if I scared you about the whole marriage thing. I completely understand if you want to forget I ever said that.”
Panic made the words tumble out fast and furious.
Cassie made a strange face. “You were serious about that?”
“Of course I was.” Had she not heard the desperation in my voice? Had she not listened when I said I was about to be forced out of the country? “I’d marry you in a heartbeat, if you’d have me.” I chuckled, like wasn’t this all so very sweet?
She studied me in silence, half-amused, half-confused. I didn’t know what else to say to convince her but I was willing to try anything. “We’re having fun together, aren’t we? Think about all the great things we could do. So, yes, I’m serious, Cassie. I want to marry you. And if it’s about money…”
I drifted off. I’d have money again. I’d pay her, one day. I was just about to promise that when she cut in.
Her eyes lit up. “That asshole,” she said, as she went to the coffee machine.
“I’ll do that,” I said, jumping to take over and pulling out two coffee mugs. I’d have done anything she wanted me to.
She went to sit on the couch. “That little rich asshole.”
“What happened?”
She shook her head. “Millions he had. Plus the house. Houses, I should say. You won’t believe how much this is worth,” she said, circling the air with her index finger.
I already knew, of course. I’d looked it up when I moved in, thinking of the day I’d have my own brownstone in one of Brooklyn’s finest neighborhoods, instead of living in the basement.
“I’m so sorry your father treated you that way,” I said, thinking I knew where this was going. “It’s not right.”
Cassie took the mug I offered her and sipped slowly.
“Turns out his parents had money and when he inherited, after he left us, he made a few smart investments or whatnot. She, his ‘wife,’ said he had every intention of leaving me something in his will. That he’d planned to amend it someday.
I am his child, too, and he didn’t mean for me to have nothing at all, but he never thought he’d die so suddenly. I mean, duh, obviously.”
“Oh, Cassie!” I put on my most compassionate air, ready to hug her into oblivion, whatever she needed.
But then she continued. “Turns out the house, my house, wasn’t my mom’s after all. It belonged to his family. He just let her live there after he left. She never said anything.”
“You could ask her about it,” I said, treading carefully. I wanted to show that I was on her side, by her side, when no one else was.
Cassie stopped midsip. “She’s dead.” She said it like I should know this, like it had come up before. Had it? “Anyway, it’s mine now.”
She nodded fiercely, nostrils flared and jaw clenched, nowhere near done with getting all this off her chest. “She thought giving me the house would be enough.”
Every time she referred to her stepmother, Cassie said “she” or “his wife” with such loathing it was almost comical.
Or maybe it was pain. My landlady had never seemed like such a bad person to me, but she must have known her new husband had conveniently left his daughter behind to go live this lovely life with his new family.
I liked the guy a lot less now than when he was alive.
“Well,” I said, “owning your house is pretty nice.”
Cassie shook her head, like I wasn’t following.
“I wasn’t going to only take what I was given.
At first I was going to throw out a number, but that felt kind of crass.
So I waited. And oh my god, I thought I heard her wrong.
Like what, a couple of million is nothing to her?
” She seemed to think about that, her face beaming with a new insight.
“Maybe it is nothing to her. Shit. I bet the boys, her ‘sons,’ are getting much more. Plus she gets this house. Ugh, I hate them all. How she almost made me beg…”
Had Cassie just said “a couple million”? I held my breath, wondering if I was hallucinating.
It was too much all at once.
“That’s incredible,” I said. I think my eyes may have been watering, the stress from thinking I’d lost her, my ticket to freedom, to the shock of her whirling back in here with all that new information.
“You’re sweet,” she said.
“I mean it, Cassie. You’re really something. Going after what you want. Getting your due. You’re fearless.” Sometimes I wondered where that stuff came from. You’re a smooth talker, my dad would say. Lots of pretty words, that’s how you tricked us.
Cassie studied me, excited now. “Come home with me. I’m done here. Really glad I stuck around until they read the will. She’s having the paperwork drawn up, and I’ll get the money in a few weeks.”
“The two million dollars?” I said, still trying to make sense of it all.
She nodded, still partly sour from not wringing even more cash out of the widow.
Finally, it hit me. Cassie hadn’t stayed in New York for fun.
Or for me. She was strategizing, staying away from her stepmother until she felt ready to finagle something out of her father’s death.
She wasn’t leaving without her slice of the cake.
And it had worked: now she was inheriting two million dollars and her house upstate.
See, this is the American dream. And it had fallen into her lap.
“So, are you coming with me?”
I felt my mouth open, words forming in my brain, possibilities shaping in my mind.
But now that she had money, I had even less to offer her.
“I’d love to be with you. But I can’t stay in this country unless we get married.
I know it sounds crazy. You barely know me.
But is there any way you might consider it? ”
She laughed. “So you’re, like, proposing to me?”
“Yes!” I said, eager. Hungry.
“You want to marry me?”
“It would make me so happy.” I mean, it was the truth.
She smiled strangely as she looked me up and down.
It took me a moment to understand what she was waiting for.
I felt my mind and my body dissociating as I clumsily knelt in front of her and grabbed her hand.
“Cassie, will you marry me? I’ll get you a ring,” I added quickly, just as I remembered cubic zirconium was all I could afford.
“How does that even work, the green card thing?”
I paused, not wanting to sound too keen.
Then I tried to steady my voice before launching into it.
“I know someone who did it; it’s easy. He used an immigration lawyer who handled everything.
” That was a lie—the first part, anyway.
I had read articles about people who’d done this.
It was pretty common, apparently. America was so good at putting a shiny bow on itself that many looked at it and thought, I want a piece of that.
“In New York, you can easily apply for a license and get married twenty-four hours later. I don’t really have friends in the city, and you have no family left, right? ”
She grimaced, like she was disappointed I hadn’t been paying attention. But I had paid attention, and I could tell how much she craved it.
I forced a smile. “Just you and me then. Feels even more special, don’t you think?”
Marriage fraud, they called it. For me it meant immediate deportation, banned from reentering the country for life.
For her there was imprisonment, up to five years, and a $250,000 fine.
The U.S. government knew all too well how valuable American citizenship was, and it didn’t like when its people attempted to sell it. But that was only if we got caught.
My only other option was to go home quietly until I figured out a way to come back to New York.
But no, that wouldn’t work. I’d managed to keep my tax debt at bay while I was here.
I owed a lot of money for me, but I guess not enough for the French government to come at me in another country.
But if I moved home, there would be nowhere to hide.
They’d find me, maybe not right away, but soon enough.
Besides, I had no idea if I could ever come back here.
It was getting harder and harder to obtain work visas for the United States.
Many international companies were giving up on trying to bring in employees from their foreign offices; the hassle wasn’t worth it anymore.
I’d already had to go through months of paperwork before I could move here.
Between the new immigration laws, being let go from my current job, and having no college degree, it’d take a miracle to make that happen again.
“I want to go home and do it there,” Cassie finally said. “The wedding, I mean. With my friends and everything. I want a white dress, drinks, dancing, the whole shebang.”
I should have asked myself why she was even considering helping me.
Was it only about making her ex jealous?
Did she expect anything of me? I should have been full of questions.
Two years of my life were in the balance, as well as my entire future.
But I felt so desperate, the ticking time bomb of my departure ringing louder and louder in my ears.
“That sounds wonderful,” I said, getting off my knee.
I felt ridiculous staying down on the floor.
She hadn’t said yes. But she hadn’t said no, either.
“And you’d look so beautiful. I can picture it.
” She smiled. “But I couldn’t wait that long.
My visa expires next week. I’d have to get married as soon as possible.
I could get in a lot of trouble if I stayed after it expired. ”
Cassie pouted. “You mean, like, at City Hall?”