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.