Almost Gone

by Ophelia Night

  “Sure,” Cassie said, hoping that the call wouldn’t take too long.

  The doctor was only out of the room for a minute.

  “Thank you again for seeing me after hours,” Cassie said when he returned. “I’m so grateful.”

  She intended to use this as a lead-in to her comments, but the doctor’s reply silenced her.

  “Pierre Dubois is a close friend of mine. He has done a huge amount to support my practice over the years, and my brother is the cellar manager at his estate’s vineyard. I am always glad to assist any of his family or staff. So, Cassie, you were going to tell me how you are finding your stay here?”

  She was at a loss for words, lightheaded with shock at what he’d just said. The reply she’d formulated so carefully froze on her lips.

  The silence stretched between them, quickly becoming uneasy, and she guessed he must have guessed she had intended to speak badly of her employer, and now had nothing to say.

  “Regarding the amount of medication you are on, did you disclose it to the agency or your employer?” the doctor asked.

  “They didn’t ask,” Cassie said in a small voice.

  Another long silence followed.

  Then Dr. Lafayette got up and handed her the scrip.

  “If that is all, we can settle up now,” he said, formally. “The consultation will be eighty euros.”

  Cassie had hoped that she’d be able to pay with her credit card, but it wouldn’t go through, and she had no idea whether it was due to insufficient funds in her account or some other reason.

  That meant she had to dip into Pierre’s money. Now she truly was beholden to him, because she couldn’t give it all back.

  She left feeling sick with anxiety. Trustingly, she had told Dr. Lafayette too much, and she had no idea whether his question about the medications was a veiled threat. Would he disclose those details to Pierre? Did friendship and business alliances take priority over patient confidentiality in this town?

  From now on, Cassie realized she would have to keep the family’s secrets to herself, because she had no idea how far their influence, or power, extended.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It was a minute after six by the time Cassie got back to the pharmacy, but the pharmacist had kindly waited for her and he was able to give her a month’s supply of all the tablets she needed.

  Cassie was still reeling from the encounter she’d had with Dr. Lafayette. She’d come so close to innocently dropping a bombshell that would have landed her in the worst possible trouble. Even her first hint that there were difficulties with the family could still have consequences. She could only pray that the doctor’s close personal friendship with Pierre would not override patient confidentiality, especially given his shock at the amount of meds she was on.

  “This prescription is on a three-month repeat,” the pharmacist told her. “You can visit any time from the first of December for your next month’s supply.”

  To her relief, he was able to substitute more affordable generics for two of her medications, and even though the meds cost slightly more than the doctor’s visit had, her card finally cooperated and she was able to use it.

  The pharmacist let her connect to his Wi-Fi while she waited, and logging into her banking, she saw that a small payment had come through from the restaurant. It had been immediately swallowed by the pharmacy charge, so she was down to near-zero again.

  She researched local cabs and looked up what it would cost to change her flight. There was so much conflicting information online that she couldn’t be sure, but she thought she could probably afford it with her remaining cash, if she didn’t spend any more.

  However, she had to make one final purchase, which she was able to do at the pharmacy—buying a large voucher for prepaid minutes.

  With her minutes loaded and her Wi-Fi operational, Cassie saw a flood of messages and emails come in. There were several missed calls from her friends back home, and a text from Jess, the au pair she’d met on the airplane, asking how things were going and if she wanted to meet up on her day off.

  Cassie didn’t have enough time, or money, to answer all the messages now. They would have to wait, because she needed to conserve her minutes. However, there was one urgent call that she had to make immediately.

  She headed back to the car and dialed the number as soon as she climbed inside, doing mental arithmetic to work out what the time difference was back home.

  It was early afternoon, which mean on a weekday, Zane would be on shift at the factory where he worked. Even so, he answered her call in three rings.

  “Hang on, baby, I’m just clocking out for a break,” he said, and she had to wait for a few endless, expensive minutes while listening to him leaving the factory floor. She imagined him, dressed in his jeans and work jacket, striding across the concrete paving, heading for the side entrance where the smoking area was.

  The clangs in the background were replaced by the rush of wind, telling her he’d reached it.

  “OK,” he said. “I got ten minutes. Let’s talk.”

  Cassie hoped the conversation wouldn’t take ten minutes. She wanted to get this resolved as quickly as possible, without bleeding her precious minutes away.

  “Zane, how did you find out where I was? I didn’t tell you my employer’s phone number. I didn’t give it out to anyone.”

  “It took some detective work,” Zane explained in self-congratulatory tones. “You see, I noticed that agency name on your bag. So I called them up and pretended I’d lost your number. The first time I tried, I spoke to a lady who wouldn’t tell me. She said she could only give you a message. But the second time some other guy answered and he looked it up for me.”

  “Please don’t call there again.”

  “Why not, baby? Don’t you want to speak to me at all?”

  “It’s not that.” How could she explain without making Zane even more determined to keep calling the chateau? She didn’t want him thinking he needed to come to her rescue.

  “They’re a very private family,” she said. “They don’t allow staff to receive any personal calls in the house. Normally they don’t even pass on messages. You were just lucky that the housekeeper happened to answer.”

  Hopefully that would convince Zane it was pointless trying again.

  “So, when are you coming home?” He sounded daunted, but not defeated, by what she’d said.

  Cassie checked the car clock. It was already half past six. She needed to hurry back, but she couldn’t start driving until she’d dealt with this, as she had no idea how long the signal would last.

  “I’m going to be overseas for at least a year,” she told him, and heard his exclamation of outrage.

  “Do you really think it was fair to me, to leave for such a long time without at least saying a proper goodbye?”

  “Zane, we’d broken up by the time I left.” Exasperated, Cassie realized the conversation was going around in circles. She started the car and turned up the heater, hoping that she’d be able to find her way back to the chateau in the dark.

  “No. You walked out on me. We never broke up. I came back one day and found you’d packed your things and gone.”

  “There was a reason for that, and you know what it was.” Cassie could hear the edge in her own voice. She hadn’t forgiven him for what he’d done.

  “I have no idea, baby, and I really mean it. No clue at all.”

  He was lying. He must be.

  “Zane, you got angry with me when we fought. You lost your temper and grabbed me so hard you nearly yanked me off my feet. Then you punched my arm. The bruises took weeks to heal. You meant to hurt me. As I told you at the time, I’m not putting up with that and I’m not willing to give you a second chance.”

  There was a short silence.

  “I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you mean when I pulled you out of the way of that car? Baby, we were arguing in a parking lot, and you were upset, you weren’t looking, you were litera
lly going to run right into the path of some SUV. I just wanted to keep you safe.”

  It hadn’t happened that way. Not at all. His version was miles away from the truth. Listening to him was only making Cassie more determined to stay away from him forever. She knew that if she’d been there, watching how he spread his arms innocently as he talked, and raised his eyebrows, looking almost comically defenseless, she would have wanted to buy into his story. Part of her would have longed to believe that he’d been right and she’d misinterpreted the situation.

  “I’m not fighting with you any more, Zane, but I’m not coming back.”

  “Please, Cassie. You don’t understand how much I miss you. All our friends are asking where you are. Oh, and I wanted to tell you, there’s a job opening at the factory. Not on the floor, in the offices. They’re looking for an assistant to the marketing team. It’s a good salary and really good prospects. I said I’d tell you. Do you want me to send the details? Applications have to be in by Monday.”

  Cassie tried to close her ears to his words. Zane had a knack for guessing exactly what it would take to change her mind, and right now she had to admit that a job with prospects was a serious lifeline.

  She told herself that the marketing job probably didn’t even exist, and if it did exist the applications had probably closed already, and even if the job was still open, why would they give it to her?

  It wasn’t like Zane, a factory floor worker, could do anything to influence the outcome.

  “Not right now, thanks. I’m committed to staying here so I can’t come home.”

  “But baby, you don’t sound happy. I can hear it in your voice. You sound stressed out of your mind. You don’t want to stay there if it’s not right for you.”

  Cassie gritted her teeth.

  “I’m stressed because I’m running late. I have to go now. Please don’t call me again. I won’t answer and I won’t speak to you. Goodbye, Zane.”

  She stabbed the disconnect button, cutting off his shouted protests.

  Then she turned her phone off and drove out of the parking lot, seething with frustration over the pointless conversation, and how weak she ended up being with Zane. Why was it so hard for her to stand up to him? Even when she’d finally gathered the strength to hang up on him, she’d said please don’t call me again. Please! Like she was asking him for a favor. She kept putting all the power into his hands. No wonder he believed there could be another chance with her.

  At any rate, thanks to that conversation, she was going to be even later getting back. She might not even be in time to put Ella to bed, and she knew she would have to explain why she’d spent so long in town.

  While racking her brains for a valid excuse, she ended up missing the turning to the chateau. It all looked so different in darkness. Although the way to town had been well signposted, she hadn’t thought to notice any signage going the opposite way. Now she realized her mistake. Town was clearly signposted, the chateau was not. She was disoriented, and had no idea which direction she should be heading. She pulled over and tried to connect to GPS, but to her frustration, she couldn’t get a signal.

  When she realized a few miles later that she’d definitely gone too far, she tried to turn back, but instead of turning right to drive round the block, she ended up taking a highway on-ramp by mistake. She found herself on the auto-route heading to Strasbourg.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she whispered, realizing the extent of the mistake she’d made. On this highway, which was more like a raceway, she couldn’t go slowly and try to get her bearings. Traffic was flying along, and she had to accelerate just to avoid causing an accident.

  Grasping the steering wheel tightly, Cassie realized she might be forced to drive for miles along this hellish route—the road was as light and bright as the country roads had been dark, but it was speeding her along in entirely the wrong direction. Would she ever find the chateau again? And if she did, how would she explain her unforgivable lateness, after she’d been expressly told to come back in time to put the children to bed?

  After what seemed like an endless drive, Cassie managed to find an exit where she could turn around and retrace her route, but after the mistake she’d made, and the stress of the drive, she found her sense of direction was completely thrown out. She missed the off-ramp going the other way and had to start the whole process of turning around again, this time while heading to Paris.

  When she finally managed to take what she thought had to be the correct exit, she couldn’t remember any of the turns she’d made to reach the highway, and with a sense of doom, she realized she had gone completely wrong.

  Cassie felt as if she was stuck in an endless nightmare, turning down each of the quiet, dark country roads she came to, desperately peering into the darkness, hoping to find some sort of a landmark that she could use to orient herself. But the minutes ticked by, and no landmarks appeared.

  The houses in this area were set well back from the road, and only a few had doorbells or gate intercoms. In desperation, she tried ringing a few of those that did, but two weren’t answered at all, one person told her to go in a direction that led back to the highway, and the last person she tried, an elderly lady, eventually admitted after an exquisitely frustrating back and forth conversation that she had no idea where the chateau was.

  Eventually, through sheer luck, Cassie stumbled upon a road she thought she recognized. She couldn’t believe it when she realized she was approaching the chateau from a completely different direction, passing by the small village where the carnival had been held. By then, Cassie had given up all hope, because it was too late to redeem herself or even to properly explain herself. How could any normal person get so completely, impossibly lost as she had done?

  She’d stopped looking at the car clock while she searched, as it was only making her panic worse, but now Cassie glanced at it while she drove up the winding driveway. It was nearly eight o’clock, and she braced herself for a storm of criticism from Pierre. He would demand to know where she’d been, and she didn’t know how she would convince him she had been driving around the area for more than an hour.

  When she opened the front door, she was unprepared for the chaos she found inside.

  A decorative plate lay in smithereens near the staircase, and somebody—Marc, she guessed—was tunelessly bashing the piano keys in the music room. Ella was sitting at the top of the stairs crying, and further away, she could hear Margot and Antoinette screaming at each other from the dining room.

  “Sorry I’m so late. Is everything all right?” Cassie called, anxiety erupting inside her. Where was Pierre? What had happened? She doubted the children would be running amok like this if he was home.

  A brief silence followed her shout.

  And then Margot shrieked back, her voice high, shrill, and furious.

  “Come here immediately, Cassie! How dare you leave me alone with the children for the entire night! Where the hell have you been?”

  Margot didn’t wait for Cassie to reach the dining room. She confronted her in the corridor, her face flushed with anger, her beautiful blonde hair tousled.

  “You explain everything to me, right now,” she screamed, and Cassie could smell the alcohol on her breath—something stronger than wine; she reeked of spirits.

  “And you’d better tell the truth this time, you lying whore!”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Cassie stared at Margot in shock. She was horrified that the blonde woman was screaming these insults within earshot of the children, and she had no idea how she could defuse the situation when it had already escalated so badly.

  Margot had obviously been drinking heavily, and Cassie guessed she hadn’t coped with managing the children alone, and had quickly lost control. Now she was venting her rage on Cassie for having gone out and leaving her in this predicament. Perhaps that was partly why she was so angry—because she felt powerless.

  “I’m sorry I’m back so late,” she said, doing her best to speak calmly
. “I went the wrong way coming back from town, and got myself totally lost. Shall I put the children to bed now?”

  “Oh, you went the wrong way? Is that the real reason you’re so late?” Margot jeered. She stepped forward, leaning into Cassie’s space, so close that Cassie could see the intricate embroidery on her expensive-looking turquoise coat.

  “Don’t you want the children to know that their au pair is nothing better than a common, lying slut?”

  Cassie recoiled as she realized that Margot wasn’t just flinging random insults, but had jumped to entirely the wrong conclusion. Or maybe, she told herself with a pang of guilt, remembering the whispered threats and promises Pierre had made in her bedroom earlier, not quite as wrong as Cassie would have liked her to be.

  Looking past Margot, Cassie saw Antoinette peeking out of the dining room. For once, Antoinette’s usual poise had deserted her. Her face was pale and set, and Cassie guessed she had been crying.

  “Please, can we discuss this in private?” she begged Margot. “You have misunderstood the situation completely. I’ll explain everything to you but I don’t think it’s right for the children to overhear this.”

  Margot ignored her pleas and continued with her angry tirade.

  “You leave, Pierre leaves immediately afterwards! And then you return more than three hours later? He is still not back. You think I am stupid? I know what you have been doing! I have seen the way he looks at you.”

  “I don’t know where Pierre went,” Cassie insisted, aware how weak this sounded and what a coincidence it was that he had left immediately after her—he hadn’t even mentioned that he was heading out.

  “Show me your wallet. Go on, get it out of your purse and show me!” Margot pointed a crimson-tipped finger at Cassie’s shoulder bag.

  “My wallet?”

  What was Margot hoping to find? Cassie wondered. A hotel key card? A handwritten note? There was nothing like that in her possession. Confused, she opened her purse and handed it over, hoping it would prove her innocence, worrying too late that Margot might rip the entire wallet apart in her anger.