Almost Lost

by Blake Pierce

  It was the manila envelope that the unpleasant, dark-haired man had delivered a few days ago. She recognized the handwritten address on the front. Ryan had opened it, but the papers were still inside. So this was surely nothing to do with any divorce.

  Suspicion crystallized inside her as she wondered why Ryan had hidden it away after opening it.

  Now she had found it, and Cassie resolved that as soon as she was alone in her room, she was going to look inside.

  She put the envelope in her jacket pocket and picked up Madison’s tray.

  Madison followed Cassie to her bedroom in sullen silence.

  Cassie had no idea why she was so moody, but she was starting to suspect it had nothing to do with the so-called divorce. On the spur of the moment, she decided to ask Madison some careful questions. She was desperate to find out what she knew.

  “Madison,” she asked softly, “do you know if your mum and dad have been planning to live in different places? Did they talk to you about it at all?”

  Madison frowned at her.

  “How do you mean?” she asked.

  “If your mum was moving out?”

  She didn’t want to put ideas into Madison’s head, and felt as if she was walking a tightrope. Madison could so easily pass this information on to Trish. Cassie clenched her hands tightly, realizing her palms felt damp.

  “No. She hasn’t moved out. She spends a lot of time at work though.”

  “You haven’t felt sad about that?”

  Madison looked confused.

  “No,” she said.

  Rage flared inside Cassie and she had to struggle not to show Madison, through words or gestures, how furious she was.

  This was not what Ryan had told her, not at all. He’d said the children knew about the divorce, and it had affected them so badly they weren’t willing to speak about it.

  Not true. In fact, they knew nothing about it and that was why they had said nothing about it. All the nuances she thought she’d picked up in their behavior had simply been coincidence. Even Dylan’s shoplifting had nothing to do with the mention of the children’s mother.

  God, what a fool she’d been. If she had asked them about this at the start, she could have gotten to the truth of the situation and not become embroiled the way she had. She hadn’t asked them because Ryan had told her how traumatized they were.

  He’d covered all his bases like a seasoned liar, and Cassie was starting to fear that was what he was.

  “I’m very tired, Cassie,” Madison said.

  Cassie climbed hastily off her bed.

  “Sleep well. I hope you will feel happy in the morning,” she said.

  She switched Madison’s light off and closed her door.

  Rage was still simmering inside her as she sat on her bed and took the manila envelope out of her pocket. She pulled out the papers, noticing that her hands were shaking, and then stared at them, appalled.

  This was no divorce document. It was a final demand for payment from a loan agency.

  Cassie read it carefully. It was for a substantial amount, and Ryan was months overdue with it. From the printed statement, it looked as if he’d defaulted on every single repayment. Either he hadn’t had money, or he’d ignored the payment requests completely.

  Now she realized why the delivery man had been so unpleasant to her—and she was the one who’d bear the brunt of his attentions if Ryan continued to default, and he came back again.

  “He told me it was divorce papers. This has nothing to do with any divorce,” she said aloud. “Is there even a divorce? I doubt there is!”

  Anger was making her reckless. She was entitled to know the truth. If it wasn’t being told to her, there were ways she could find it out.

  Cassie left her room and walked quietly to the master bedroom, where she eased open the door.

  Ryan had said that Trish was here to sign divorce papers. Those papers hadn’t been in the manila envelope, so if Ryan was telling the truth, they must be elsewhere.

  The logical place was in the wooden filing cabinet in the corner—it contained two large drawers, one neatly labeled “Work,” and the other “Children/Personal.”

  If divorce papers needed signing, they must be filed away for safekeeping. If they were there, Cassie was determined to find them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Cassie felt sick with tension as she stepped into the tidy master bedroom. She felt so angry, so violated and outraged by the lies she’d been told, that she was tempted to upend the files and rip through them. She warned herself that would only cause repercussions. She must keep control, and be methodical.

  She opened the first drawer, relieved that it wasn’t locked.

  Everything was in its place. Tax documents, the house plans, the papers for Ryan’s business. Birth certificates. Marriage certificates.

  Cassie paused when she saw that folder and anger filled her again.

  Reading the document, she saw that Trish and Ryan had been married ten years ago, but both parents’ names appeared on the children’s birth certificates. So they had lived together as a family before being married.

  Then Cassie checked the house purchase documents and saw, to her surprise, that Trish was the owner of the house, and had been for the past twelve years since she had bought it.

  That didn’t tie in with what Ryan had told her about the house being a reward from his business.

  Aware that this was taking time, and that the Ellises might already be heading home, Cassie sped up her search.

  She sifted through every folder without success. She didn’t find anything. Not an attorney’s letter, nor the papers Ryan had mentioned. Nothing.

  She did find something else, though.

  One of the folders in the Children/Personal drawer was labeled “Other.” Inside, there was a copy of an invitation that had been sent earlier in the year.

  Cassie read it and felt cold with shock as she stared down at the pretty, floral paper.

  “Dear…” the invite read.

  “On Spring Bank Holiday, Trish and Ryan request the pleasure of your company at a Luncheon Party and Family Celebration.

  “Venue: The Conservatory Gardens, Lakeside Hotel

  “Time: From 12 noon

  “Dress: Elegant

  “Occasion: Our 10 Year Wedding Anniversary and Vow Renewal.”

  Cassie stared down at the crisp, expensive paper and felt consumed by a murderous rage. For the first time she understood what the term “seeing red” meant, and if she’d been holding a weapon and Ryan had walked in at that moment, she knew she would have attacked him with it.

  Their marriage hadn’t been falling apart. Quite the contrary.

  Six months earlier, they’d renewed their promises at a public ceremony to show they were more in love than ever.

  Cassie wanted to tear up the invitation and scatter it like confetti around the room, letting the strewn fragments of paper show Ryan that she knew how he’d lied.

  Putting it carefully away and closing the cabinet without a sound made her head want to explode with frustration.

  Closing the door softly, Cassie headed back down the hall, but as she passed Dylan’s room she drew in her breath sharply.

  His door was open, and this time he was standing by his bed, facing her.

  Cassie froze, shivers running down her spine as she wondered if Dylan was awake or asleep. Perhaps he was prone to sleepwalking and opened his door every time.

  She realized he was awake when he whispered, “Pssst. Come here.”

  Reluctantly, because she felt spooked and had no idea what this was all about, she stepped into his room.

  “What is it, Dylan?” she whispered.

  “You were in my dad’s room,” he said.

  He must have heard her in there, rooting around in his father’s filing cabinets, even though she’d done her best to be quiet. How could she explain this? Knowing she’d been found out made Cassie feel suddenly ashamed.

  No poi
nt in denying it.

  Cassie nodded.

  She thought Dylan would demand to know why, but he didn’t.

  Instead, he muttered, sympathetically, “Sometimes you have to check up on what the old man says. He doesn’t always tell the right story.”

  Cassie didn’t even dare to breathe as she considered Dylan’s words. She was at a loss how to respond. Agreeing would feel disloyal and she couldn’t talk badly to a son about his own father.

  She settled for a nod.

  “I tried to warn you,” Dylan said. “The first night you were here, I got my mate to send you a message.”

  Cassie stared at him in consternation.

  “‘Be careful’?” she asked. “That message? You asked your friend to send it?”

  Dylan sighed.

  “Yes. I wanted my mate to say more, but he chickened out. It was something, but not enough, maybe.”

  “Why did you tell me that?” Cassie whispered.

  “Because my dad gets—weird—when you accuse him of not being truthful. So you just have to go along with it.”

  Dylan continued softly.

  “Like with Benjamin Bunny. That made me want to laugh. He went to a lot of effort there. What a story. He could have just said the bunny escaped. But then I suppose he knew Madison would spend the rest of her life searching for him.”

  Once again, Cassie felt uncertain how to respond.

  “He only did it to try and comfort you,” she said eventually. “So you wouldn’t be too sad.”

  Dylan nodded.

  “I know, I know. So I went along with it.”

  From outside, Cassie heard a car pass by, sluicing along the wet tarmac. The noise reminded her that it was getting late and Ryan and Trish might come home at any time.

  “You should get into bed now,” she told Dylan. “You don’t want to be tired tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, OK,” he agreed.

  He climbed into bed. As he pulled the covers up, a thought suddenly occurred to Cassie. How had Dylan guessed that Ryan had been lying about Benjamin? The story about the bunny had seemed plausible. The ashes had been a bit far-fetched, but how had that clued Dylan that the whole episode with the vet had been an invention?

  “How did you know it wasn’t true?” she whispered.

  He stared up at her, and in the soft light filtering through the curtains she could just make out his features, calm and strangely blank.

  “Because I killed Benjamin that morning, before I left for school. I broke his neck.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Cassie took in a horrified gulp of air.

  Was Dylan joking?

  She knew he wasn’t. He sounded perfectly matter-of-fact, and that only made his words more chilling. In any case, his version was the more plausible. A healthy rabbit, suddenly dead.

  Cassie remembered the way Benjamin’s head had hung, limp and disjointed. At the time she had wondered about it and now it made sense.

  Why had Dylan done that? Killing an innocent pet was a psychopathic act. No normal boy would do such a thing. What had his reasons been, or had he simply wanted to kill, to feel the bone break in his grasp, to snuff out a harmless little life?

  What kind of a creature was he? She’d thought him to be a normal boy, if rather shy and introverted. Now she was finding out that behind his quiet exterior, a monster lurked.

  His words had rendered her speechless, and she shuddered, as if a bucket of ice had been poured down her back. She had no idea what to say, what to do next. But Dylan seemed unconcerned.

  “Good night,” he said, and turned over in bed so that his back was facing her.

  Blindsided by this sickening revelation, Cassie stumbled out of the room. Back in her bedroom, she huddled under her duvet, in a state of shock at what she had discovered that night.

  Ryan was a liar. What she’d found, and what she hadn’t found, tonight had proven it. He’d been feeding her falsehoods, stringing her along, making empty promises that were based on nothing but his own warped imagination.

  His own son had confirmed he did this—and thinking back on the conversation with Dylan, Cassie buried her face in her pillow.

  His words, and the casual way he’d spoken them, had terrified her. He’d talked about killing in cold blood as if it meant nothing to him. If he could do that to a rabbit, what else could he do? What might he do to her?

  With fear and anger warring inside her, sleep was impossible for Cassie, and she was still awake when, much later, she heard the sound of Ryan and Trish returning home.

  As they walked down the hallway, laughing softly and whispering in their efforts to be quiet, she checked her phone.

  It was after eleven. They must have stayed at the pub till closing time. This hadn’t just been a polite get-together, it had been a festive evening.

  Listening to their giggles as they passed her door, she imagined they must be walking close together, perhaps even arm in arm. What would happen when they got into the room, and into that immaculately made bed?

  Cassie shut her eyes as tight as she could, squeezing them painfully closed to try and block out her imaginings.

  Then she got up and opened her window. Even though it would make the room freezing cold, she wanted to hear the scream of the wind and the roar of the sea as it foamed over those dark, glossy pebbles, and she wanted to drown herself in its rage.

  She knew the alternative—hearing any whisper of lovemaking from the room down the hall—would push her over the edge.

  “You bastard,” she whispered viciously as she climbed back into bed.

  “I hate you for what you’ve done.”

  *

  Cassie hadn’t thought she wouldn’t sleep at all, but she must have at some stage during that terrible night, because she woke abruptly to the sound of laughter from the kitchen.

  She sat bolt upright, gritting her teeth as she heard Ryan’s guffaw and Trish’s piercing, bell-like laugh. She threw on clothes, and then although her hands were shaking with anger, she did her makeup carefully to conceal the paleness of her face and the dark shadows under her eyes. She was going to show Ryan that she wasn’t in pieces about this and, in fact, didn’t care at all.

  She checked the time on her phone, and to her consternation, she saw that she had an email from Jess.

  The happy letter she’d written just yesterday explaining that she and Ryan were an item felt like it came from a different lifetime. How stupid, how gullible she had been.

  She was mortified by the confession she’d made, but at least she could now vent her anger to Jess in a caustically worded reply.

  She opened the email and as she read it, she felt her heart sink.

  “Hi, Cassie,” Jess wrote.

  “I think we might have a situation here! I am totally confused and feel I have done the wrong thing.

  “You know I told you I worked for friends of friends. That’s how I met Ryan and his family. Well, his friend, whom I know quite well, is named Olive and she lives in one of the nearby towns.

  “Anyway I told her the good news and she emailed me back. She said that you were lying because they attended Ryan’s birthday party two weeks ago and everything was perfect. Ryan and his wife were making plans for a family holiday over New Year.

  “I don’t know what to say or do! I feel terrible that I might have given the wrong info or misunderstood your email. Would these friends not know if they were divorced? I need to know what to say to her because she’s demanding answers. Please can you help me!

  “Love, Jess.”

  Cassie stared at the letter in panic.

  Jess had innocently spilled the beans, and now there was every chance that the angry friend would tell the Ellises.

  Crimson with shame, she reread the email she’d sent Jess. There wasn’t much room for doubt in it. Cassie had said there was a spark, she’d mentioned the nonexistent divorce, she’d used the word “dating,” and worst of all, she’d told Jess about the overnight stay at a hotel.r />
  There was no way to back out of this; it was totally incriminating. She’d been truthful and now her own honesty had come back to bite her.

  She could ask Jess to lie, but that would be unfair and Jess might refuse.

  As Cassie frantically considered her options, she realized there might be another way out of this that wouldn’t put such an unfair burden on her innocent friend, especially since she didn’t know where Jess’s loyalties lay.

  That would mean telling Jess that she, Cassie, was a liar.

  Cassie’s hands shook as she composed a hasty reply.

  “Jess, I feel so embarrassed. I ended up saying things that weren’t true.

  “I thought there was a spark between Ryan and me. I believed that helping him out on a business trip meant we were dating. Look, we had an amazing dinner and we chatted and shared lots of stuff and he gave me the biggest hug before I went to my room.

  “And I ended up assuming the rest!

  “Luckily he took me aside yesterday and reminded me he’s happily married and although he’s a friendly guy, he knows that I’m lonely and that I might be reading too much into the friendliness.

  “I cried buckets afterwards but it was mostly out of embarrassment, as I knew he was right and I’d been such a fool.

  “Please tell your friend it was a misunderstanding. I’ll be leaving soon and I’d hate to think that my own silly imagination had caused any damage to such a wonderful family!”

  Cassie looked down at the screen and felt nauseous.

  It wasn’t true. What she had said in this letter was a total lie. She was lying to protect a man who didn’t deserve it, who was in all probability a serial liar, and who was still doing his utmost to string her along.

  On the other hand, if Trish found out, there’d be no sympathy from her, Cassie was sure of it. Sleeping with a married man, in his marital bed, in the house where his two children lived, was unforgivable, and nobody would believe her if she said she hadn’t known.

  She couldn’t risk this situation blowing up in her face, especially since she didn’t have the correct visa to be working at all. If Trish found out that Cassie had been having an affair with her husband, she would be looking for any excuse to stick the knife in.