by Joy Fielding
“Four hundred dollars,” the first contestant offered.
“Four hundred dollars?” Drew echoed. “Are you crazy? Even I know they’re worth way more than that.”
“Seven hundred and fifty dollars,” came the second bid.
“One thousand,” came the third.
“A thousand and one,” said Lester Whitmore.
“What do you say, Casey? I bet you know the answer.”
Assuming they’re good clubs and it’s a half-decent bag, I’d guess sixteen hundred dollars.
“The answer is one thousand, six hundred and twenty dollars!” the host announced. “Lester Whitmore, you’re the winner on The Price Is Right.”
“So how close were you?” Drew asked. “Pretty damn close, I bet. There’s just no beating you when it comes to anything golf, is there?”
“Wow, that’s some shot,” Casey heard Warren marvel from a distant recess of her brain, his voice full of unbridled admiration. She watched him emerge from the darkness in her head and step into the bright sun of a brilliant spring day. “Where’d you learn to hit a golf ball like that?”
“My father taught me,” Casey said, assuming her place in the sun beside him.
“Who’s your father—Arnold Palmer?”
Casey laughed and started walking up the fairway, pulling her golf cart after her.
“I think you might actually have outdriven me,” Warren said as they approached the two dimpled white balls, sitting only inches from each other, approximately two hundred yards from the tee box.
Casey had, in fact, outdriven her handsome date.
“What—you aren’t even going to tell me it was just a lucky shot? Soothe my wounded male ego?”
“Does it need soothing?”
“Perhaps a few kind words.”
“You’re so cute when you’re insecure,” Casey said in response, and was relieved when Warren laughed. She didn’t want to come off as either mean-spirited or smug. When Warren had called several days earlier to ask her out, and inquired timidly whether she played golf, she’d refrained from telling him she belonged to the toniest course in the city, and that she had a nine handicap. She’d said simply that she’d love to play. As early as that morning, she’d been debating with herself whether to perform at well below her natural level, thereby allowing Warren to feel appropriately masculine and superior.
She’d decided against it.
Casey watched as Warren prepared for his next shot with a series of laborious half swings and waggles, then watched him slice the ball into the pretty creek that wound its way through the front nine of Cobb’s Creek, the public golf course that Golfweek magazine had recently named the sixth best municipal course in the country. She thought of her father. “Always kick ass when you’ve got the chance,” he used to say. Still, she had no desire to kick ass, at least where Warren’s lovely backside was concerned. What would be the harm in letting him win? It would be so easy to sway, collapse her left elbow, or take her eye off the ball, thereby joining him in the water. Instead, she assumed her proper stance over the ball, made sure she was lined up correctly, banished her father’s voice along with all other conscious thought, and swung at the ball. Seconds later, she watched as it flew effortlessly across the creek to land in the middle of the green, approximately ten feet from the pin.
“Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before?” Warren asked, his third shot landing just outside hers.
“Actually I’m a pretty good golfer,” she admitted, putting in for birdie.
“No kidding.”
“I turned down a golf scholarship at Duke,” she told him two holes—and two pars—later.
“Because …?”
“Because I think sports should be fun, not work.”
“So, let me see if I have this straight: instead of spending your days golfing in the glorious outdoors, you’d rather spend them inside, finding jobs for disgruntled lawyers.”
“I’d rather be decorating their offices,” Casey replied.
“Then why aren’t you?”
Casey retrieved her ball from the cup and dropped it into her pocket, then walked briskly toward the next hole, Warren struggling to catch up. “My father considered things like interior decorating to be frivolous and unworthy of my time. He insisted that if I wasn’t going to accept the scholarship at Duke, then the least I could do was get a more rounded education, which is how I ended up majoring in psychology and English at Brown, despite the fact I understand zilch about human behavior, and George Eliot literally makes me want to tear my hair out at the roots.”
“That still doesn’t explain how you ended up running a lawyer placement service.”
“To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure how that happened myself. You’d have to ask Janine. It was her idea.”
“Janine?”
“My partner, Janine Pegabo. The woman you were supposed to be seeing the morning we met.”
“The one who broke her tooth on a bagel,” Warren said, remembering.
“That’s the one.”
“How is she?”
“She needs a new crown.”
“Ouch.”
“She’s not happy.”
“What about you?” Warren asked.
“I don’t need a new crown.”
“Are you happy?”
Casey gave the question a moment’s thought. “Reasonably, I guess.”
“Just reasonably, or beyond a reasonable doubt?”
“Is there such a thing?” Casey waited for the foursome in front of them to leave the green of the tricky par three before teeing up. Warren’s question was still echoing in her ears as she swung, and as a result, her swing was a touch too quick, and the ball sailed low and to the left, winding up in the sand trap at the back of the green.
“Aha. Now’s my chance.” Warren grabbed his seven-iron and swung, his ball shooting high into the air and landing delicately on the green. “Yes!” he shouted, only to watch the ball trickle off to the right and bury itself in a clump of leaves. “Damn. That hardly seems fair.”
“A lawyer who expects life to be fair. Interesting,” Casey said as they walked down the center of the narrow fairway. “Actually I’ve been taking a number of night courses in interior design for the last few years. I hope to get my diploma in the very near future.”
“And what does your father think about that?”
“My father’s dead.” Was it possible he didn’t know who her father was?
“I’m sorry.”
“He and my mother were killed in a private-plane crash five years ago.” Surely that was hint enough.
“I’m sorry,” Warren said again, as if he still had no idea. “That must have been awful for you.”
“It was hard. Especially with the press hounding us the way they did.”
“Why would the press hound you?”
“Because my father was Ronald Lerner,” Casey said, watching for Warren’s reaction. There was none. “You never heard of Ronald Lerner?”
“Should I have?”
Casey made a face that said he probably should have.
“I grew up in New Jersey and went to law school in New York,” he reminded her. “I just moved to Philly when I joined Miller, Sheridan. Maybe you could fill me in on what I missed.”
“Maybe later,” Casey said, stepping into the vaguely heart-shaped sand trap as Warren crossed to the other side of the green. She burrowed her heels into the soft sand and secured her footing before looking up to check her line. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Warren waiting to hit his ball, which was sitting nicely on top of a small pile of leaves. Had it always been so visible? she wondered, replaying his tee shot in her mind. “Damn,” she heard him say as the ball disappeared from sight. “That’s hardly fair.” Clearly his ball hadn’t sunk as deeply into the leaves as they’d first thought. She was seeing it from a different angle after all. “Worry about your own game,” she scolded herself, talking into her chin as she swung at t
he ball and missed completely, something she hadn’t done since she was a child first learning the game.
She ended up shooting 85, very respectable, but still four shots higher than her handicap would indicate. Warren shot 92, although according to Casey’s silent calculations, it was actually 93. (She hadn’t deliberately been keeping track of his score; it was just something she did automatically.) Still, she could have been wrong. Or it could have been an honest mistake on Warren’s part. There’d been an awful lot of chatter, and it would have been easy to forget a stroke. Or maybe he just wanted to impress her.
“He cheats at golf,” she heard her sister say.
“Be quiet, Drew,” Casey muttered.
“Sorry,” Warren said. “Did you say something?”
“I said, do you know why they call it golf?”
“No. Why?”
Casey smiled at the old joke she was sure Warren must have heard at least a dozen times but was too polite to admit. “Because all the other four-letter words were taken.”
“Shit,” Drew swore again, snapping Casey from her reveries. “This is what happens when you have to resort to doing your own nails. Normally, Amy does them for me. You remember Amy—the one with the diamond stud in the middle of her tongue? She works in that place over on Pine Street—You’ve Got Nails! Anyway, she’s the best manicurist in the city, bar none, and I’ve been going there once a week since forever, until of course, you ended up in here, and it seems I can no longer afford to spend twenty-five dollars a week, a measly twenty-five fucking dollars a week,” Drew repeated for emphasis, “on keeping my hands presentable. Anyway, no more manicures for me, unless I want my daughter to go hungry, which wouldn’t be such a horrible thing, if you ask me, because little Lola is starting to get a little lardy. And yes, I know she’s only five, and there’s plenty of time for her to start worrying about diets and stuff, but a girl can’t be too careful.” Drew made a snort of derision. “Guess I don’t have to tell you that. If only you’d looked both ways, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“Angela Campbell, come on down! You’re the next contestant on The Price Is Right!”
Drew continued prattling on, her voice competing with the shrieks of the latest lucky contestant, and after a few minutes, Casey found herself tuning out. She was exhausted from the steady stream of chatter that had been pressing against her ears, like a hot iron, ever since the doctors had announced she could hear, and that it would be beneficial if everyone talked to her as much as possible. Since then, voices had been coming at her nonstop, in a well-intentioned, if unnecessary, effort to stimulate her brain into further activity. The noise started first thing in the morning, when the interns arrived for morning rounds, continued all day, with the arrival of doctors and nurses, then family and friends, and even extended into the wee hours of the night, when the orderlies came in to mop up. If they weren’t talking at her, they were reading to her: the nurses read the front page of the morning paper; her niece proudly recited the story of Little Red Riding Hood; Janine continued her excruciating trek through the nineteenth-century streets of Middlemarch.
And then there was the television, with its parade of moronic morning talk shows, hysteria-filled game shows, and sex-crazed afternoon soaps. Then came Montel and Dr. Phil and Oprah and Ellen, followed by the forensic experts at CSI or the libidinous doctors of Grey’s Anatomy or the bizarre lawyers of Boston Legal. Everybody vying for her full, undivided attention.
And, of course, there was Warren.
He came every day. Always, he’d kiss her forehead and stroke her hand. Then he’d pull up the chair next to her bed and sit down, talking softly to her, telling her about his day, reporting his conversations with her various doctors. He said he was hoping there were other tests they could perform, tests that could tell them how much, if anything, she understood of what she was hearing. Surely there was a way of gauging her brain capacity, she’d heard him arguing with Dr. Zarb. How long before she regained the use of her arms and legs? he’d questioned Jeremy. How long before he could take her home?
She imagined him staring longingly into her open, unseeing eyes. Anyone watching would likely turn away, not wanting to intrude on such a private moment. Anyone except Janine, that is, who thought nothing of barging in on them regularly, or Drew, who was oblivious to everything that didn’t directly concern her.
Was it possible that Drew was less oblivious than she let on?
Was it possible her sister had tried to kill her, in order to lay claim to the fortune she believed was rightfully hers?
“ ‘I thought it right to tell you, because you went on as you always do, never looking just where you are, and treading in the wrong place,’” Janine had read. “ ‘You always see what nobody else sees; yet you never see what is quite plain.’ ”
Had she missed the obvious where her sister was concerned? Had she been treading in the wrong place, refusing to acknowledge what was quite plain?
This much was plain, Casey was forced to acknowledge: Drew had had both motive and opportunity to kill her.
No, I won’t do this. I won’t allow Detective Spinetti’s suspicions to poison my mind. Warren is still convinced it was an accident. Trust his instincts. Concentrate on something more pleasant. Listen to the damn TV. Find out how much that king-size tube of toothpaste is really worth.
“So, tell me something about yourself,” the TV host prompted the newest shrieking contestant.
“So, tell me more about Casey Lerner,” she heard Warren say, his soft voice caressing the nape of her neck, beckoning her back into their not-so-distant past, to that time when their relationship was unfolding, when each encounter was a source of wondrous new discoveries and love lurked behind each sigh, wafting tantalizingly through each lull in the conversation.
“What would you like to know?”
They were spending the morning at the farmers’ market in Lancaster, a pleasant little town approximately sixty miles west of Philadelphia, with a population of just under sixty thousand people. Originally called Gibson’s Pasture, it was first settled by Swiss Mennonites around 1700 and was now a pedestrian-friendly urban center, where historic old buildings competed with a host of new outlet stores. The farmers’ market, where many local Amish farmers brought their meat, fruit, vegetables, baked goods, and crafts to be sold, had been in operation since the early eighteenth century, and the redbrick building housing it was one of the oldest covered markets in America.
“I want to know everything,” Warren said.
“That’s all?”
“I’m not very demanding.”
Casey smiled. “I’m not very complicated.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“It’s true. I’m pretty straightforward. What you see is generally what you get.” She paused, tilted her head to one side, her long blond hair falling across her right shoulder. “So, you tell me—what do you see?”
Another pause. Warren inched closer so that his face was only inches from hers. “I see a beautiful woman with sad blue eyes.”
“What?”
“And I can’t help but wonder what makes her so sad,” he continued, ignoring her interruption.
“You’re wrong,” Casey demurred. “I’m not—”
“And I want to take her in my arms and hold her, and tell her everything’s going to be okay….”
“—sad.”
“And I want to kiss her and make it all better.”
“Well, maybe just a little sad.” Casey lifted her chin as his lips moved toward hers, landing like a soft feather on her mouth. “Come to think of it, I’m actually quite distraught,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around him as he kissed her again.
They spent the night—their first night together—at King’s Cottage, a Spanish-style mansion that had been converted into one of the area’s two B and B’s. Built in 1913, it had eight rooms, with private baths, antique furniture, and large, comfortable beds. “It’s lovely,” Casey said as the flame-haired prop
rietor handed over the key.
“You’re lovely,” Warren said, once again surrounding her with his arms. They made love, the first of many times they made love over the course of that night and the weeks that followed, and each time was “magical,” as Casey later confided to Janine and Gail.
“It’s like he can read my mind,” she told them.
“It’s so romantic,” Gail said.
“Excuse me while I go throw up,” Janine said.
The subject of children came up during another of their weekend getaways, this time to historic Gettysburg. They were just nearing the end of the mile-long hike along the Big Round Top Loop Trail when three adolescent boys raced past them, almost knocking Casey over. “So, how many children would you like?” Warren asked, grabbing her elbow to keep her from falling.
“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it,” Casey lied. In fact, having children was something she’d thought about a lot. She often wondered what sort of mother she’d be—absent and indifferent, as her own mother had been, needy and clueless, as Drew was, or possibly, hopefully, more like the “actual” mother she remembered seeing at the sandbox when she herself was a child, a woman who enjoyed her children and wanted to nurture and care for them. “I guess two would be nice. What about you?”
“Well, I’m an only child, remember, so I’ve always pictured a house full of kids, but two sounds good.” He smiled, as if they’d just compromised on an important point and come to a decision.
Casey pretended not to notice. “What were your parents like?”
“Well, I never really knew my dad,” Warren said easily. “He died when I was a kid. My mother, on the other hand …” He laughed. “She was fierce. A force to be reckoned with.”
“In what way?”
“Well, to start with, she was married five times.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, I kid you not. According to family legend, she divorced husband number one after he threw her down a flight of stairs, and number two when he went to prison for embezzlement. Husband number three, my dad, the only good one in the lot, according to my mother, died of a heart attack at age forty-nine. I don’t really remember much about either number four or five, since I was away at school during both those fiascoes. However, my mother managed to come away from those last two outings with enough money to keep her in the style to which she’d always aspired. Speaking of which, I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist on a prenup.”