“They were. They are. They’re in Florida now … living in a retirement resort I helped put together.”
“You’re so lucky to still have them … I miss my parents so much.”
“I should see them more. I will see them more. Miranda…” Miranda had wanted nothing to do with Rosa and Tomasso, or any of Jason’s brothers and sisters. Like Miranda’s own family, Jason’s relatives were people Miranda felt were best “left behind.”
“You have to pick and choose, darling,” Miranda would tell him. “Hone your list of friends. Keep the best relationships polished and bright … let the others tarnish. What in God’s name do I have in common with your mother? Or with mine, for that matter? Why waste time pretending? If you feel you must visit, then go. I’m not stopping you. But I’m not going, and neither is Heather. They’ll feed her all sorts of unhealthy things.” The subject had been the source of numerous arguments, ones Jason always lost.
“Miranda … what?” Cassie asked, studying Jason’s face in the firelight. His expression was cold, inward-looking. The lines etched around his eyes and mouth made him look older and tired, a man who had already seen the best—and the worst—of what the world had to offer. And yet the night before when they were making love, she had seen his face transformed—alive and joyful, his rare smile lighting his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Jason replied, shaking his head. “What were we talking about? Oh, yes, my parents … You’d like them, Cassie. Maybe I’ll fly them up this summer. We could all spend a week or so together here. Would you like that?”
“Jason, please, no more excuses. Can’t we talk about Miranda?”
“No.” The word came out with far more force than he intended, and he immediately tried to soften his tone. “I mean, Cassie, I’m not ready. It’s … too close. Painful.”
“But you know that we … I can’t … we have to talk about her if we hope to stay … I mean, have any future together.” She was stumbling over her words, afraid of sounding pushy or possessive, yet anxious that he face the truth. Every time Miranda’s name came up, he changed the subject. And the closer they were drawn to each other, Cassie was beginning to realize, the more solidly Miranda stood between them.
“Cassie…” He was sitting next to her again suddenly, brushing her bangs back off her forehead, running his hand down the curve of her cheek. “I am … I have a lot of things to sort out. I’m sorry. I wish this were easier—”
“Just tell me, Jason, now,” Cassie broke in. “Am I just … am I simply a substitute for Miranda? Because if that’s the case, it’s better I know. It’s better things end here.”
He could lie, of course, he told himself. It would be such a simple thing to do … and it would be so much better for her if he wasn’t in her life. He could lie … and who would ever know the truth? He could just continue the lie that Miranda had been so good at perpetuating: the devoted Darins, that perfectly matched couple. Oh, there had been cracks in the facade—but people were always willing to believe in hype. And Miranda had been such a good little self-promoter, even to her own sister. Cassie actually believed that he had loved Miranda … and he could let the lie stand. He should let the lie stand, except…
“No, Cassie,” he said, pulling her to him. It was selfish. He had no right. Yet he heard himself saying as his lips found hers, “Things don’t end here … they’re just beginning.”
Eighteen
Jason was home for ten days straight, the happiest days of Cassie’s life. Careful and discreet by day in front of Heather and the staff, they were voracious lovers by night, often not falling asleep until dawn filtered through Cassie’s guest room curtains. No one in the house seemed to notice. But Sheila Thomas nailed Cassie first thing Monday morning after the weekend in the Berkshires.
“Who is he?”
“Excuse me?”
“Who’s the lucky man? It’s written all over your face—love, or at least some very excellent sex.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cassie replied with a laugh. “Let’s get to work.”
“Okay, be like that,” Sheila said with a sniff. “But don’t expect mine to be the shoulder you cry on when the time comes.”
“What makes you think I’ll be crying, Sheila?”
“Experience. The harder they fall, the longer they weep. Now, about this school-board thing…”
They were in the middle of an in-depth piece on a scandal-plagued Bronx school district that had thrown out its entire board a few weeks before. It was a choice assignment: timely and important. Magnus himself had suggested that Sheila and Cassie cover it as a team.
“He said some real nice things about your work on the traffic violations things,” McPherson muttered when he gave them the new assignment. “Thinks the two of you are hot stuff.”
“Do I detect a note of disagreement?” Sheila demanded.
“Not really,” McPherson admitted. “I just don’t like to be told by anybody who should be doing what in my department. I don’t like favoritism. Or interference. It can backfire, you know. You two damn well better keep your noses clean.”
They had been given a camera crew and a project allowance. They had also been given a larger office to share: the empty corner suite that had been Miranda’s.
“Man, we’re really moving up in the world,” Sheila said as she ran her fingers across the pristine keyboard of Miranda’s high-powered computer terminal. “These babies can just about write the stories for you.”
“And it’s a great view,” Cassie said, standing at the plate-glass window that looked down on the sea of traffic rolling up Sixth Avenue. Across the street the windows of Rockefeller Center glinted in the sun. The benches and sidewalks below were clogged with sightseers and early lunchers out to get some air. In another week it would be June. Cassie’s thoughts drifted: to Jason … summer … the Berkshire cottage.
“After this trip, I’ll try to take some time off,” he’d told her early that morning as they lay together in her bed. “Maybe you can get a week away yourself … and we can all just escape to the country. Really relax.” His grip had tightened as she turned to him and ran her index finger lightly across his heavy brow.
“I’m not sure you’re relaxable,” she told him as she kissed his chin, then his lips. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen you asleep.”
“Wonder why,” he murmured as his hands drifted down her shoulders and cupped her breasts. “Oh, Cassie…” She shivered, feeling his touch still … the memory of his mouth on her nipples making her weak with longing.
“Snap out of it, kid,” Sheila said, watching her from across the room. “Christ, I wish you’d get some sleep one of these days.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cassie replied evenly. “I’m perfectly fine.” And she was. She put in long tough hours, commuting back and forth to the Bronx with Sheila and the crew, and yet she still had more than enough energy left for Jason at night. She was too happy to sleep, too excited. There was also a part of her that was afraid to stop. Things might catch up with her if she did. Like Miranda. They had not mentioned her name since that night in the Berkshires when they had been alone together. It was an unspoken pact between them to let the subject drift. In fitful dreams, Cassie would push Miranda’s memory away. Later, they would face her together. Later. But for now, all she wanted was to feel his arms around her again: safe and strong.
The morning he was scheduled to take the Concorde to London, Jason didn’t sleep at all. When Cassie woke up after drifting off around four in the morning, he was watching her, his head resting on his elbow, a half smile lingering on his lips.
“Don’t tell me,” she whispered, “I was snoring, right?”
“No.” He smiled at her, and he suddenly looked years younger than when she’d first met him. Could she really be responsible for this change in him? Her whole heart longed for it to be true. “I was just lying here worrying that I don�
�t have a decent picture of you. I’ll need something I can take to London with me. God, it’s going to be hell being away from you for two weeks. Maybe I should cancel.”
“No,” she said, putting her finger to his lips. “I won’t be held responsible for bringing down the Darin empire. Anyway, there’s some jam I’m particularly fond of that you can only get at Harrod’s. You see, now you have to go.”
“Okay,” he said, “but I’m going to buy cases of it … so I don’t have to go back too soon. I’m going to miss you, Cassie.”
In the end, because she had nothing else, she’d given him her graduation photo, the one that had been in the frame that Miranda had left her, the one that had smashed on the floor the first night they’d made love.
“Here,” she said, tugging it out of the bent frame, “I have to take this in to be fixed anyway. I’m the washed-out one in the middle,” she added uncertainly. For there, once again, was beautiful Miranda, standing a little apart from the rest of her family and yet somehow, in Cassie’s mind at least, dominating the photograph.
“Thank you, Cassie,” Jason said, carefully and quite conspicuously folding the photo so that only Cassie was visible. He slipped the edited photograph into the first plastic sleeve of his wallet.
The evening after Jason left, Cassie spent several hours in her room, sorting through the documents that Miranda had left her. Though she’d tried to push Miranda from her thoughts when she was with Jason, now that he was gone she found herself thinking about her sister almost obsessively. After all, she was now working in Miranda’s office. Taking care of Miranda’s daughter. Having an affair with her husband. Though the word “affair” seemed all wrong—or not half enough—to describe what Cassie and Jason did together. They simply were together. They belonged together. They were…
In love. Cassie knew it was far too soon after Miranda’s death for Jason to fall in love again. Anyone would tell her this obvious truth, and that was one reason why she so jealously guarded the secret of their relationship. She didn’t want to hear that she was nothing more than a substitute for Miranda, or that Jason was clinging to Cassie in order to stave off the task of facing his wife’s death. Of course that’s what everyone would think. But they were wrong. Weren’t they?
With Jason beside her, she didn’t have to ask herself these questions. When Jason was with her, she was sure of herself … and them. But now, with Jason away less than a day, she felt a relentless uncertainty take hold. She wandered around the room, trying to imagine Jason there, sitting on the corner of the bed, laughing, talking, brushing back her hair.
She stopped at the night table where the broken, photoless frame lay in several pieces. She picked up the oddly bulky backing and turned it over a few times. It consisted of two pieces of cardboard taped together on all four sides. On closer inspection, it seemed clear that the two pieces of cardboard weren’t just backing for the photograph; they were protecting something wedged between them. Cassie found a nail file and slid it under one of the taped edges. A 3½″ computer disk slipped into her hand. It was unlabeled and looked perfectly harmless. But it had certainly been put there for one reason: to keep it hidden.
Though Cassie slept soundly that night, she jerked awake at dawn from a recurring nightmare that had plagued her since childhood. She was drowning, going down for the third and final time. Fully awake now, she decided to dress and go into work early, leaving a note for Heather, telling her she’d pick her up after school as usual.
Not even the receptionist had arrived before Cassie. She turned lights on as she made her way down the corridor to Miranda’s office, trying to shake off the spooky feeling that had colored her morning since the nightmare. Before she even took the plastic cover off her coffee, she turned on Miranda’s computer and watched it beep into life. Various icons flashed on the screen, naming the software programs and protective devices installed on the hard drive. She clicked on the hard-drive icon, rummaged through her shoulder bag for the broken picture frame and the 3½″ disk she had brought with her, and inserted the disk into the drive. A document icon appeared on the upper-right-hand corner of the screen: it was titled FOR CASSIE ONLY.
A part of her knew even before she opened the word processor and retrieved the document that she had at last found what Miranda had wanted no one but her to discover. Her fingers shook as she clicked the OPEN command and a flood of numbers filled the screen. She had to scroll up and down on the document for a full minute before she realized it was divided into three sections. The first was headed “Darin.” The second, “Magnus.” The third, “Haas.”
How long did she study the document before she finally realized what she was looking at? An hour at least, because when she finally heard people talking in the corridor she’d already accepted the fact that the dream world she’d been living in for the past two weeks was gone. In its place was this field of amber facts glowing against a flat black screen.
Under the Darin heading, Miranda had made notes on Jason’s real estate transaction’s during the mid-seventies. She had bank account numbers, dated entries, and amounts that added up to slightly more than $100,000, all made out to “A. Haas.”
Under the Magnus heading, Miranda had kept track of Magnus Media’s phenomenal growth through the seventies as well as numerous payments to “A. Haas” amounting to more than a million dollars.
The “Haas” section was more descriptive, a capsule résumé of a young unknown state representative who would eventually become one of the most influential senators in the country. But not without help, Cassie thought sadly. Not without money. Kickbacks. Payoffs. It was obvious from Miranda’s notes that the very first building that Jason put up—the office complex in Manhasset he had been so reluctant to discuss—was given zoning clearance because of payoffs Jason made to Haas. The extent of Magnus’s kickbacks was broader and more complicated, though it was clear that Haas had secured favorable F.C.C. rulings for Magnus in exchange for cash.
Cassie stared at the bottom of the last “Haas” entry for several seconds before she saw from the cursor at the bottom of the screen that there was more to the document. She scrolled down the page, until she came to the following message:
Cassie:
I’m sorry if you ever have to read this because it will mean two bad things: 1) all my suspicions are confirmed and 2) I’m in trouble. All I know is what I’ve been able to outline above. Senator Haas has been on the take for years, and Jason and Magnus are both involved. You’ll find photocopies of papers supporting all this, in case you don’t believe me, out at the East Hampton place under the flagstone in the far right corner of the wine cellar. I figure if you find this and I’m not around to help, you’ll know what to do. But be careful. Trust no one.
M.
Nineteen
Her first impulse was to run. Out of the office. Away from New York. Back home to North Carolina. To Kenneth. Safety. She clicked on SAVE to store the information and ejected the disk from the computer. She slid the disk into the zippered pocket of her shoulder bag. She could leave right away. Leave everything behind. Heather. The job. Sheila. Magnus…
“I find it ridiculous to have to remind you, Miranda.” The very first words Cassie had heard Magnus utter had been in anger. The night of the party. “I dictate the parameters of your job. What I’m telling you is that this time you’ve gone too far. I want this silly so-called investigation stopped right now. Here. Do you understand?”
And Miranda’s response? It had seemed so harmlessly flippant at the time.
“Over my dead body.”
He had known she was looking into his financial relationship with Haas. He had wanted her to stop. But just how badly?
Her second thought was to forget the whole thing. What did any of it matter now? Miranda was dead. Cassie might never have found the disk. Or opened it. She could pretend she’d lost it. Misplaced it. Who would know? Miranda was dead.
Cassie could just l
eave. Say she’d changed her mind. Missed her old life … old friends. She could catch a flight to Raleigh that very afternoon. She could run. Away from Heather. Magnus. Haas. Jason…
“Why are you doing this?” She remembered Jason’s bitter tone late Easter night. The argument between him and Miranda had echoed loudly down the hallway. “Why do you want to ruin me?” Jason … she thought of his smile, the taste of his kiss, the almost unbearable tenderness of his touch. Jason, who didn’t even want to mention Miranda’s name now.
“No,” he had said. “I’m not ready. It’s too soon. Painful.” But hadn’t Cassie known even then there was something else? Jason was holding back. He had been hiding something from the moment they met. Jason and Miranda. The tension between them had been electric. You could just about see the sparks. Of passion … or hatred? A dark unexplored part of Cassie had always wanted to believe the latter. That there’d been only negative currents between them. That Jason was Cassie’s alone to love. But now that thought terrified her. Jason’s moods could darken in a second. His eyes would go cold. She didn’t want to think about his strength, the tight coil of muscles on his arms and back. She didn’t want to think about the feel of his hands on her skin.
She could just leave. Miranda was dead. Three months ago Cassie hadn’t met any of the people who dominated her life now: Magnus, Heather, Jason. She didn’t have to stay. This wasn’t her responsibility. She could go anytime. No one back home would be surprised. Kenneth would forgive her and take her back. She could forget about this. She’d pick up her old life. And then the truth of what she had seen on the screen finally hit her: Miranda was dead … but it wasn’t an accident.
“Actually, Cassie, I want you to stay,” Miranda had told her their last morning together. In the end, she almost begged her to take the job. “Maybe you’ve got it all backward,” Miranda had told her when Cassie assumed her older half sister was belatedly trying to help her, forward her career. It was Miranda who had needed Cassie’s help. And now, at last, Cassie knew why.
Heart and Soul Page 14