“Tell me,” she said.
He did, telling her, too, about how he’d called Lucas at home, confronted him, and how Luke had hung up. When he finally checked his watch, he realized he’d been talking for more than five minutes.
“I never understood that,” Cassie said.
“Understood what?”
“Kid gets suspended for three days, meaning what? They don’t have to go to school for three days? They stay home?”
“Right.”
“And get into more trouble? That’s supposed to be a punishment? I mean, a baseball player gets suspended for five games for fighting with the umpire, that’s a punishment. But telling a kid he can’t go to school, which he hates, for three days?”
“Maybe it’s like social humiliation.”
“For a teenager? Isn’t that more like a badge of honor?”
Nick shrugged. “Wouldn’t have been for me.”
“No, you were probably Mr. Perfect.”
“No way. I got into the usual trouble. I was just careful about it. I didn’t want to get kicked off the hockey team. Hey, where’s that tea?” he asked.
“That stove takes forever. Electric, and underpowered. Dad wouldn’t allow gas in the house. One of his many ‘things.’ But we won’t go there.” She craned her head, listening. “I’m sure it’s ready now.”
“Just that all this talking makes a man thirsty,” Nick said.
Cassie came back with two steaming mugs. “English Breakfast,” she said. “Though I saw that you also bought me a box of Blue Moon Kava Kava and Chamomile mix. I’m guessing that’s not Nick Conover’s usual cup.”
“Maybe not.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’ve got me figured for some sort of New Age nut?” She shrugged. “Possibly because I am one. How can I deny it? You make chairs, I teach asanas. Hey, when it comes down to it, we’re both in the sitting industry, right?”
“So you’re not going to tell me about my aura.”
“You can take the girl out of Carnegie Mellon—and believe me, they did.” A smile hovered around her lips. “But you can’t take the Carnegie Mellon out of the girl. Never really got into chakras and shit. There’s a lot of my dad in me. I’ve got an empirical streak a mile wide.”
“And I took you for a nineteen waist.”
“Thanks.” She took a careful sip of her tea. “So you’ve got problems. You’ll deal, because that’s the kind of person you are. When life gives you lemons, you make lemon Pledge.”
“I was expecting something more Zen, somehow.”
“I see you haven’t touched your English Breakfast. So what kind of tea do you like?”
“Any kind. So long as it’s coffee.”
She found a bottle of Four Roses bourbon on a low table beside the sofa, handed it to him. “Put a slug of this in it. It’ll cut the tannins.”
He sloshed a little into his cup. It definitely improved the taste.
Cassie was looking at him with cat eyes. “So are you here for me or for you?”
“Both.”
She nodded, amused. “You’re my caseworker?”
“Come on,” Nick said. “You’re not exactly a charity case.”
“I’m doing okay.”
“Well, I want you to know that if you’re ever not doing okay, you’ve got me here to help.”
“This is starting to sound like adios.”
“No. Not at all.”
“Good.” She got up, tugged at the cord on the venetian blinds, closing them and darkening the room. “That’s a relief.”
He came up to her from behind, slipped his hands under her knit top, and felt the silky warmth of her belly.
“Why don’t we go upstairs?” Nick said.
“We don’t go upstairs,” she said at once.
“We don’t, huh? Okay.” Slowly he began moving his hands upward until he found her breasts, teased her nipples as he kissed and licked the back of her neck.
“Yeah,” she said throatily.
Still with her back to his, she brought her hands around to his butt and squeezed each cheek, hard.
He entered her from behind this time.
“Jesus,” he said, and she looked up at him, her eyes gleaming.
It took him several minutes to catch his breath.
“Wow,” he said. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
“Well, mine, I think.”
She took a sip of tea, curled up next to him on the sofa. She began singing along with the CD, which must have been set on repeat mode, something about “best friend with benefits.”
“You’ve got a nice voice.”
“Sang in the church choir. Mom was a real holy roller, used to drag me there. It was the only thing that got me through. So, boss man, you can’t give up the fight, you know.” An odd sort of vehemence had entered Cassie’s voice. “You’ve got to play the game balls out, with all your heart. Everything matters.”
“That’s the way I always played hockey. Gave it my all—you have to.”
“Always kept your head up while you skated?”
He smiled. She obviously got hockey too. “Oh yeah. Put your head down for a second, and you’re signed, sealed, and delivered. The game’s fast.”
“You been keeping your head up at Stratton?”
“Not enough,” he admitted.
“I suspect people maybe underestimate you sometimes, because they sense you’re eager to be liked. My guess is that people who push you too far live to regret it.”
“Maybe.” Memories swirled in Nick’s head, dark ones that he didn’t want to reexamine.
“You’ve already surprised a lot of people, is my bet. Dorothy Devries—she’s cooled toward you in the past several years. Am I right?”
Nick blinked. It wasn’t a conscious realization he’d had, but it was true. “Yes,” he said. “How did you know?”
Cassie looked away. “Don’t take this the wrong way. But when Old Man Devries’s widow appoints a successor, there are a lot of things going on in her head. One thing she’s not looking to do is to bring in someone who’s going to show up her beloved Milton. A reliable hand on the tiller, sure. The kind of reliable guy about whom you could say, ‘He’s no Milton Devries, of course, but who is?’ They could have poached some hotshot from the competition—I bet that would have been the usual thing. But it wasn’t what she wanted. You were meant to be Milton’s mini-me. Then you came in, and you kicked ass. You weren’t Milton’s protégé anymore. And even if she benefited from that financially, the whole Nick Conover show had to bother her too.”
Nick just shook his head.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“The trouble is,” Nick said slowly, “I do believe you. What you say never really occurred to me before, and it’s sure not doing anything for my ego, but when I listen to you talk, I’m thinking, Yeah, that’s probably what went down. The old lady wasn’t expecting what she got. Truth is, I wasn’t either. I got in there, made three or four critical hires, let them do their thing. It could have played differently. I’m not that smart, but I know what I don’t know. What I’m good at, maybe, is bringing in smarts.”
“And so long as they’re loyal to you, you’re going to be okay. But if they aren’t family-first people, you could have problems.”
“Family-first?”
“The Stratton family.”
“You really are the woman with X-ray eyes,” Nick said. “You see right through people.” Suddenly he shivered. How much did she see? Did she see the blood on his hands? He swallowed hard. It wasn’t a good time to start losing it.
“You know what they say.”
“Who?”
“They. Anaïs Nin, maybe, I forget. ‘We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.’”
“Not sure I get that.”
“And the hardest people to see, sometimes, are the people we love. Like your son.”
“A complete mystery to me these days.”
> “What time did you say your kids would be home?”
“Less than an hour.”
“I’d like to meet them,” she said.
“Uh, I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Nick said.
Cassie got to her feet, ran her fingers through her hair. “Jesus, what am I saying, it’s a terrible idea,” she said. The change in her was abrupt, startling. “What was I thinking? I’m not part of your life. I don’t make sense in your life. Listen, I’d probably be ashamed of me too.” She tugged at her paint-flecked jeans. “So let’s leave things here. After all, we’ll always have Steepletown. Goodbye, Nick. Have a good life.”
“Cassie,” Nick said. “That’s not what I meant.”
Cassie was silent. When Nick turned to look at her, her eyes were wells of sorrow. He felt a wave of guilt, and longing.
“Would you like to come by for dinner?” he asked.
52
Cassie was subdued as the Chevy Suburban waited in a queue in front of the Fenwicke Estates gatehouse. Nick suppressed the urge to drum his fingers on the steering wheel.
“Evening, Jorge,” Nick said, as they slowly passed the gatehouse.
Cassie leaned over so she could see him. “Hi, Jorge, I’m Cassie.” She smiled and gave him a little wave.
“Evening,” Jorge said, more animatedly than usual.
Okay, Nick thought. Chalk one up for the girl’s humanity. She noticed the guys in uniform. So long as it wasn’t the start of some big worker’s solidarity trip, that was probably a good sign.
He wondered how the kids would react to his bringing a woman home. More than wondered: he was, he had to admit, nervous about it. She was the first woman he’d been involved with in any way since Laura’s death, and he had no idea how they’d react. Lucas, he could safely predict, would be hostile. Hostility was his default mode. Julia? Now, that was a question. There was the Freudian thing where the girl wants Daddy all to herself, and there was that powerful strain of unthinking loyalty to her mom: how dare Daddy date someone other than Mommy?
It could be ugly. But the one who’d really suffer the brunt of it was Cassie. He felt bad for her, for what she was about to experience. As he drove to the house, he began to regret his impulsive invitation. He should have introduced her to the kids more gradually.
As they approached the driveway to the house, Cassie gave a low whistle.
“Sweet,” she said. “Wouldn’t have guessed it was your style, I have to admit.”
“Maybe it isn’t,” Nick admitted, but he felt self-conscious about saying it. Like he was putting the blame on Laura.
She squinted at the yellow Dumpster that was stationed underneath a basketball hoop. “Construction?”
“Always.”
“Portoncini dei morti,” she said.
“You’re in America now,” Nick said lightly. “About time you learned to speak English.”
“I take it you’ve never been to Gubbio.”
“If they don’t manufacture casters there, I’ve probably never been.”
“It’s in Umbria. Amazing place. I spent a whole year there—painting, busking, you name it. Great place, but spooky too. You go through the old part of town, and you start to notice that a lot of the houses have these areas that look oddly bricked up. Turns out that they had this old custom, like a sacrament. They bricked up the doorway where a dead person was taken out of a house. They’re called portoncini dei morti. Doors of the dead. Ghost doors.”
“Must have kept a lot of masons busy,” Nick said. It’s the front door, Nick. That’s the one place you don’t cheap out. Doors of the dead.
“This was Laura’s house, wasn’t it?” Cassie asked.
That wasn’t how Nick would have put it, but it was more or less true. It was Laura’s house.
“Sort of,” he said.
Marta was at the door when they came in. “I told you we’d be having company,” Nick said. “Well, she’s the company.”
Marta didn’t shake Cassie’s hand, he noticed, just said, “Nice to meet you,” and none too cordially. Same expression she reserved for telephone solicitors.
“Where’s Julia?” Nick asked Marta.
“Watching TV in the family room. Emily just left a little while ago.”
“And Luke?”
“In his room. On the computer, maybe. He said he can’t stay for dinner.”
“Oh, that right? Well, he’s going to stay for dinner,” Nick said, icily. Christ. The whole suspension thing—they would have to have a Very Serious Talk. Which probably meant a Perfect Storm of an argument.
Just not tonight.
Nick took Cassie over to the family room, where Julia was engrossed in Slime Time Live on Nickelodeon.
“Hey, baby,” Nick said. “I want you to meet my friend Cassie.”
“Hi,” Julia said, and turned back to the show. Not rude, but not exactly friendly. A little cool, maybe.
“Cassie is going to be joining us for dinner.”
Julia turned around again. “Okay,” she said, warily. To Cassie, she said, “We usually don’t have company for dinner.”
Then she turned back to the flickering screen. Someone was getting doused with green slime.
“Don’t worry,” Cassie said. “I eat like a bird.”
Julia nodded.
“Two and half times my body weight in earthworms,” Cassie said.
Julia giggled.
“Are you a baseball fan?” Cassie asked.
“Yeah, I guess,” Julia said. “You mean my jersey?”
“I love the Tigers,” Cassie said.
Julia shrugged dismissively. “The girls in school keep calling me ‘tomboy’ because I wear it all the time.”
“They’re just jealous of your jersey,” Nick put in, but Julia wasn’t listening.
“You ever been to Comerica Park?” Cassie asked her.
Julia shook her head.
“Oh, it’s amazing. You’d love it. We’ve got to go there some time.”
“Really?” Julia said.
“Definitely. And listen—I got called ‘tomboy’ when I was a kid too,” said Cassie. “Just ’cause I wasn’t into Barbie.”
“Really? I hate Barbie,” Julia said.
“Barbie’s kind of creepy,” Cassie agreed. “I was never into dolls.”
“Me neither.”
“But I’ll bet you have stuffed animals to keep you company, right?”
“Beanie Babies, mostly.”
“Do you collect them?”
“Sort of.” Julia was now looking at Cassie with interest. “They’re very valuable, you know. But only if you don’t use them and stuff.”
“You mean like, never take the label off, and put them on the shelf?”
Julia nodded, this time more animatedly.
“I don’t get that,” Cassie said. “The whole point of Beanie Babies is to play with them, right? Do you have a lot, or just a couple of them?”
“I don’t know. I guess a lot. You want to see my collection?”
“Really? I’d love to.”
“Not now,” said Nick. “Later. Right now it’s suppertime, and we’re having company.”
“Okay,” Julia said. Then she yelled, “Luke, supper! We have company.”
As Nick took Cassie back to the front hall, she said, “She’s a sweetie, isn’t she?”
“A regular Ma Barker is what she is,” Nick said. “For sweetness and light, we’ve got Lucas Conover.” He took her upstairs, gestured toward the hallway. There was no need to specify which was Lucas’s room. From beneath the closed door, thrash music pulsed, an avalanche of noise with someone shouting at the top of his lungs over a thudding bass beat. Something about outta my mind, something about ashes to ashes, something about all pain, no gain. A lot of incomprehensible screaming in between.
“As you can tell, he’s a huge Lawrence Welk fan,” Nick said. He decided against knocking on the door. Let Marta get him downstairs. Lucas responded better to her anyway.
/>
“How do you know so much about Beanie Babies?” Nick asked.
“My knowledge of Beanie Babies is limited to what I read in Newsweek. Am I busted?”
“You sure got Julia believing you’re a Beanie Babies expert.”
“Hey, whatever works, right? Though I get a feeling your son isn’t into Beanie Babies.”
“He’s a hard case, my son,” Nick said, not wanting to dwell on it. “I’m going to change, meet you downstairs in a few.”
When he came back down, Cassie and Julia were deep in conversation in the family room. “And there was blood everywhere,” Julia was saying in a hushed, serious voice.
“Oh no,” Cassie breathed.
“And it was Barney.” Julia’s eyes were moist.
“My God.”
“And Daddy said he would protect us. He said he’d do whatever he had to do.”
Nick cleared his throat; it wasn’t a conversation he wanted to encourage. “Hey, girls,” he called. “Suppertime.”
“I’ve just been hearing about what happened to Barney,” Cassie said, looking up. “Sounds horrible.”
“It was rough,” Nick said. “For all of us.” He tried to sound a little brusque, to let Cassie know he didn’t want the conversation to continue.
Luckily, Marta emerged from the kitchen just then and announced that dinner was ready.
“All right,” Nick said. “Let’s go, girls. Marta, would you go upstairs and ask Sid Vicious to join us?”
As Marta went upstairs, Julia asked, “Who’s Sid Vicious?”
“You know the Sex Pistols?” Cassie said to Nick, smiling.
“I think I saw part of some movie about them before I walked out,” Nick said. “I’m not a total geek, you know, no matter what my son thinks.”
“But who’s Sid Vicious?” Julia asked again.
Lucas’s heavy footsteps thundered as if a crate of bowling balls had been upended at the top of the stairs. At the landing he looked around, taking in Cassie’s presence with an unblinking stare.
“Luke, I’d like you to meet my friend Cassie Stadler,” Nick said.
“Cassie Stadler?”
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