Don't Scream

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Trust me, it’s very good for business. Anyway, I won’t be back until really late, so…”

  “Why won’t Pat take Ashley?”

  “Why do you think? Spite. I asked him right in front of her last night, and he said he’d have to check his schedule and let me know. I just woke up to a text message from him saying he’s busy.”

  “Maybe he really is.”

  “Doing what? Watching Law & Order reruns?”

  Brynn yawns, checking the clock. Almost time to go wake the boys. She wishes Fiona would just get to the point…And she’s pretty sure she knows what it is.

  “I even tried calling Sharon in Albany to see if she’d come down, but her daughter said she’s away on some casino trip with a busload of old farts from the senior center.”

  “Her daughter said that?”

  “More or less. So can you, Brynn?”

  She decides to feign ignorance. “Can I what?”

  “Take Ashley for me tonight? She’s really no problem—”

  “I know she isn’t—”

  “And she’d help you with the boys, and the dishes, and she could clean up around your house a little.”

  “For God’s sake, Fee, you don’t have to sell her domestic skills to me. Of course I’ll take her. I love Ashley.”

  And I know you do, too. I just wish you’d figure out how to show it more often.

  “Thanks, Brynn.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Brynn watches as, facing the mirror, Garth drops the towel. She can’t help but admire her husband’s muscular shoulders, buttocks, legs. Experiencing a wanton stirring in the pit of her stomach, she casts another glance at the clock.

  No, she has to get the boys moving.

  Then she looks back at Garth, still standing there naked, and his reflection grins and bobs a suggestive eyebrow at her.

  “Can you keep her overnight?” Fiona is asking.

  “Sure, she can have my bed and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that, Brynn. I don’t want to put you and Garth out of your room. Ashley can sleep on the couch.”

  Brynn shrugs, not bothering to tell Fiona that Garth probably won’t even make it to their bed. It’s a Thursday. He won’t be home until late.

  “Listen, it’ll be fine. I’ll take all the kids out for pizza or something,” she says distractedly, as Garth turns away from the mirror with a lascivious grin.

  “Great. I owe you a huge favor, Brynn.”

  “No problem. See you later.”

  She hangs up as her husband descends on the bed. She wishes she had time to quickly brush her teeth and comb her bed-head. And she’s wearing one of his old thermal long-sleeved shirts and a pair of Old Navy flannel pajama bottoms circa 2000.

  “I’ve got to get the boys up,” she protests, giggling, as Garth wraps his arms around her and kisses her neck.

  “They can wait a few minutes.”

  “A few minutes? Is that really all I get?”

  “Hey, it’s all about the quality, not the quantity.”

  Sinking back against the pillows in her husband’s embrace, Brynn puts all thoughts of the boys—and Fiona, and Ashley—right out of her head for the time being.

  Resting up for her bash tonight, Matilda Harrington is sipping Splenda-laced espresso and lazily flipping through Vogue in her sun-splashed living room when the florist truck arrives.

  She sits up in her chair and leans forward to look through the tall bay window.

  There’s her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Stallsman, tapping her way along the block with her white cane and guide dog. Tildy wonders, as always, why she doesn’t just hire somebody to do her errands for her. Not that she herself has ever offered to help. But you’d think that someone who can afford to live in this neighborhood would be able to afford a gofer.

  The deliveryman emerges onto Commonwealth Avenue carrying a tall bouquet.

  Uh-oh. It isn’t tulips, is it?

  No, thank goodness.

  Even from half a story above the street, she can see that it’s roses. Red ones. And only a dozen.

  “Lena! Somebody’s coming to the door,” she calls.

  The housekeeper’s footsteps dutifully venture from the kitchen to the front hall.

  Tildy turns her attention back to her magazine. There’s a darling Marc Jacobs cashmere twinset that would be perfect for her trip next weekend with—

  “Ms. Harrington? These are for you.”

  She looks up to see Lena standing in the doorway with a tall, cut glass—perhaps crystal?—vase.

  Yes, a dozen red roses.

  He gets ten points for sentimentality; none for creativity or expenditure.

  Unless they aren’t from him.

  “You can put them right here, Lena.” She indicates the polished cherry end table beside her chair.

  The housekeeper sets the vase on a coaster and exits, leaving Tildy to examine the card propped amid the blossoms on a tall plastic prong.

  It’s plain white, preimprinted with “Happy Birthday” scrolled in gold type.

  Below, in unfamiliar script, is the message:

  See you tonight!

  Nothing more. Not even a name.

  He isn’t even supposed to be at her party tonight.

  She told him that if he couldn’t come alone, she didn’t want him to come at all.

  “You know I can’t come alone, Mattie.” Only he calls her that. He has from the start.

  “Well, I don’t want to watch you dancing with her all night,” Tildy said, knowing she sounded petulant, and not caring. It’s her party.

  So what does this note mean? Has he changed his mind? Is he possibly going to surprise her there—without his wife on his arm?

  It wouldn’t exactly be a surprise now that he’s tipped his hand with the flowers, but…

  Can these flowers be from somebody other than him?

  Could be. A dozen red roses? He’s sent her flowers often enough for her to realize these aren’t his style.

  But then who…?

  Not Ray Wilmington.

  God knows he’s sent her flowers before, but not roses, and, anyway, he knows he isn’t invited to the party.

  Unless this is his way of letting her know he’s planning to crash? Would he really be that bold?

  Somehow, she doesn’t think so.

  God, she hopes not.

  But if the flowers didn’t come from either of the two men who come most readily to mind, she’s got a mystery on her hands. She can’t think of a single person who would anonymously send her birthday flowers…

  Nobody she’s expecting to see tonight, anyway.

  This would be so much easier to pull off if Kylah was traveling out of town this weekend, but she isn’t.

  Which means Isaac had to make up something about why he won’t be home until late tonight. After midnight, probably.

  He told her he was invited to a bachelor party for one of the guys from work. She didn’t ask which guy, or where the party is being held, or why anyone would have a bachelor party on a weeknight.

  That she trusts him and respects his privacy makes him feel even guiltier for lying.

  But, as usual, he has no choice.

  He can’t tell her where he’s really going…again.

  Nor can he tell her, when she calls his cell phone just past four o’clock, that he’s sitting not in his office, but in a rental car, in a traffic jam well north of midtown Manhattan.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  Without missing a beat he replies, “I’m in a cab going to a meeting. What are you doing?”

  “Same exact thing. Where’s your meeting?”

  “Uptown. Yours?”

  “Downtown. And never the twain shall meet,” she says with a sigh, and he emits the obligatory laugh.

  “I wish you were coming home after work tonight, Isaac. I feel like getting pizza and seeing a movie.”

  “Well, why don’t you do that? With one of your friends?”
>
  “Maybe I will. But I’d rather do it with you.”

  “Tomorrow night,” he promises her, inching forward beneath the green road sign that reads NORTHBOUND NEW ENGLAND THRUWAY.

  “Okay, sounds good.”

  He glances at the clock, then at the map on the seat beside him, wondering if there’s an alternate route.

  Rachel’s face smiles up at him from an 8 © 10 photo lying next to the map.

  “What don’t you want me to see?”

  So startled is he by Kylah’s question that he swivels to look over his shoulder, almost expecting to see her peering through the window somehow, watching him.

  What don’t you want me to see?

  Rachel. I don’t want you to see Rachel…not even her picture.

  But, of course, Kylah isn’t here, spying on him. There’s no one behind him, other than the frustrated occupants of a string of other cars at a complete standstill.

  What don’t you want me to see? she asked. And Isaac comes swiftly to his senses as he realizes Kylah is talking about movies. Movies are their thing, together.

  What don’t you want me to see?

  He asked her the same thing just last Saturday afternoon, when he was headed to Loews Multiplex to kill a few hours while she had lunch with her sister.

  Her answer was immediate: “Nothing with a meet-cute, a good love scene, or John Cusack. Save those kinds of movies to see with me.”

  Now, trying to muster the same light-hearted tone, he instructs her, “Don’t see anything with a car chase, anything rated R for violence, anything with subtitles, or anything with a roman numeral after the title.”

  “I’ve never met anyone with taste as eclectic as yours,” Rachel said admiringly, having discovered bookmarked copies of both Albert Camus’ The Stranger and Howard Stern’s Private Parts on his bedside table.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t see any of those movies,” Kylah promises him now.

  Isaac attempts to switch off the vivid scene replaying in his head, but it persists, like an old movie that pops up on every channel.

  “In fact,” Kylah chatters on, as Rachel flashes a brilliant smile in his mental screening room, “I’m not even tempted to see anything like that. Especially the ones with roman numerals; you know I hate sequels.”

  “I know.”

  The old movie plays on in his head…

  Rachel (looking up from the newspaper): “Hey, let’s go see Free Willy 2 tonight.”

  Isaac (incredulous): “Free Willy 2? You’re kidding, right?”

  Rachel (laughing): “Wrong. You know how much I love whales.”

  Isaac (not aloud): You don’t know how much I love you.

  “Listen, you don’t have to worry—I’ll choose a nice chick flick to see without you. Okay?” Kylah, intruding again.

  Doesn’t she realize his thoughts are a million miles and a dozen years away? Doesn’t she realize he’s thinking about someone else?

  No. She won’t know unless you tell her.

  And he won’t make that mistake twice.

  “Okay,” he mutters, and lifts his foot off the gas pedal to travel another six inches of pavement before stopping again.

  Dammit. This couple-hundred-mile trip could take all day…and for what?

  So don’t go.

  It’s not too late to back out.

  Turn around, go back home, and…

  What? Forget about Rachel?

  “I need you, Isaac,” she said that day. “I’m scared, and I don’t know what to do. Please…Can you come up here tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” he said promptly, no additional questions asked, still reeling from what she’d just revealed and forgetting all the reasons why he couldn’t—or, at least, shouldn’t—drop everything and race to her side the next day.

  After all, it was her birthday. And she was in trouble, facing something so unexpectedly huge that he couldn’t even bring himself to ask the question whose answer would change everything.

  Not over the phone, anyway.

  He would wait until he saw her.

  And regardless of the answer, he would do anything for her.

  Anything…

  So he can’t turn around and go home now, and he can’t forget about Rachel.

  No way.

  “I should go,” he says abruptly into the cell phone.

  “Me, too.” Kylah sounds reluctant, though. “Do you want me to wait up for you, or are you going to be home really late?”

  His jaw clenches so hard the tension radiates painfully into his neck. “Don’t wait up.”

  On Thursday evening, Cassie finds herself driving along Interstate 95 to her bridal shower, alone—which is absolutely fine with her.

  Her brother Marcus’s wife, Reenie, is taking the train up from the city with Cassie’s aunt Kitty. Regina will pick them up at the station in New Haven, armed with concise directions to Tammy’s house.

  “Are you sure you won’t just ride along with us?” her mother asked earlier, as she jangled her car keys impatiently and kept looking at the clock.

  “No, I’ve got a big day at the hospital tomorrow. If I leave a little later it will give me a chance to go over some research materials my attending gave me yesterday.”

  And it will give her a much-needed reprieve from her mother.

  Spending almost twelve straight waking hours in the company of Regina Ashford has been enough to make Cassie wish she hadn’t opted to take off today after all.

  They went from breakfast to shopping to lunch to an early movie—an art-house screening of a foreign documentary Cassie wouldn’t have been interested in seeing even if it was in English. Which it wasn’t.

  Or even if it had subtitles…

  Which it didn’t.

  “What’s the problem? You took several years of French in school, Cassandra,” her mother reminded her.

  That’s true. She took it. She just didn’t necessarily retain it.

  She tried to doze through the movie, but her thoughts kept wandering to the shower tonight.

  And to the wedding next month.

  And to the rest of her life.

  Her life?

  Hah.

  She turns up the volume on the radio—Bono wailing about something profound, not love—and looks at the green EXIT sign ahead. Is it this one? Or the next?

  She hopes it’s the next.

  It isn’t.

  So, here goes. She can do this. She has to do this. What else is there?

  Just take it one day at a time, she tells herself, and ignores the burgeoning seedling of an idea that was somehow planted in her mind weeks ago.

  She flicks on her turn signal to get over to the right lane, glances in the rearview mirror, and starts to merge.

  A deafening blast from a mighty horn startles her.

  She just nearly cut off a double semi.

  Swerving back into the middle lane, Cassie is shaken as the semi barrels past on the right, the trucker in the cab shaking his head.

  She could have been killed.

  Her hands tremble on the wheel.

  Her life pretty much flashed before her eyes in that instant.

  Not merely the life she’s already lived, but the life she’s got left to live.

  In one terrifying moment, she saw it all.

  Terrifying.

  Because of the truck.

  Yes, of course.

  Thank God she’s all right. Shaken, but all right.

  There’s another EXIT sign; only a half mile now.

  She has to get over to the right.

  This time, Cassie cautiously turns her head to see if there’s room.

  There isn’t.

  Rush hour. A steady line of cars blocks the right lane.

  The exit is coming up.

  In the rearview mirror she sees an SUV driver right on her bumper, flashing his lights impatiently. Oh. She’s going only 55. Much too slowly for this busy stretch of the northeast corridor, where the wealthy and important—and somet
imes merely self-important—drive fast, fancy cars in blatant disregard for the posted speed limit.

  Cassie picks up her speed a little, signal still on, but she can’t seem to merge right.

  Dammit. She’s going to miss the exit.

  And then what?

  Then you’ll turn around at the next one and go back. That’s what.

  Or…

  Or what? she asks herself impatiently. You’ll turn around and go back at the next exit. What else is there to do?

  A sedan to her right flashes its lights. Oh, for Pete’s sake. Now she’s going too slow for people driving alongside her?

  The driver waves at her.

  Oh…He’s letting her into the lane ahead of him.

  You’re not going to miss the exit after all.

  Go.

  GO!

  And she does.

  But not to the right lane, and the exit.

  The seedling has taken hold, its burgeoning tendrils winding their way into her soul.

  Her foot pressing down on the gas pedal as if of its own accord, Cassandra Ashford speeds on ahead in the middle lane.

  Heading toward Boston.

  CHAPTER 9

  As she steers the BMW sharply around the corner onto Tamarack Lane, Fiona is harried.

  So what else is new?

  Her mind is on the half dozen phone calls she needs to return before she runs home to change before leaving to meet James Bingham in Boston.

  First, of course, she has to stop at the Saddlers’ to drop off Ashley, who’s sitting beside her in the passenger’s seat.

  Ashley protested when Fiona told her to climb into the front; the backseat was crowded with client files and her laptop.

  “Daddy said I’m not allowed in front until I’m twelve. He said it’s against the law.” Ashley’s dark eyes, so like her father’s, flashed with accusation.

  “Yeah, well, Daddy also claims you’re still supposed to be riding around in a booster seat,” Fiona muttered.

  “I am. Till I’m bigger and taller.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re not a baby. You don’t need a booster seat.”

  “Daddy makes me use one.”

  Daddy’s an ass, Fiona wanted to retort.

  She’s been saying precisely that—if only to herself—all day, flying from meeting to conference call to meeting in her usual mad whirlwind. Damn Patrick for refusing to take their daughter tonight.