"Get out, Teddy. You're not keying anything."
Teddy groaned and dragged himself out of the backseat. "Okay, okay."
They all got out and stretched. The stone house had two turrets and huge leaded windows in the living room and dining rooms. French doors beckoned to patios without furniture. In spite of the Jag out front, it had a forlorn and empty look about it. They walked slowly around the house, and Marsha's breath caught at the view down to the pool, the guest house, and tennis court. She was dead silent when she walked back to the French doors and pressed her nose to the glass.
"Jesus." Her Steinway piano, unmistakable with its cherry case, and complete with the matching leather tufted seat, was angled in a corner next to an antique harp. A rococo chair was placed behind the harp to create the illusion that someone actually played it. Maybe a decorator's joke, because it was missing several of its strings.
The furniture that held the place of honor in front of the cavernous fireplace, however, was not Marsha's piano. It was the Napoleon III settee and two armchairs with women's breasts and animals' claws that had been Cassie's mother's. At the time of her death, Cassie had wanted to put the furniture in storage for Marsha, or even herself someday. But Mitch had said no. He'd called the pieces "horrors," and like the piano, they, too, had disappeared. A quarter of a century ago, he claimed to have given them to Planned Parenthood with the rest of Cassie's mother's junk. Compounding the insult, he'd complained that he'd gotten only a small deduction. But he hadn't given it away. He'd stored the pieces in one of his temperature-controlled warehouses and kept the secret just to hurt her. Then they resurfaced, and Mona had them reupholstered.
Teddy put a hand on Cassie's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Mom."
Cassie was moved by her son's sudden compassion. She let her head fall to his shoulder, and he patted it. The three of them closed ranks for a group hug, the first in a long, long time.
"Look on the bright side, maybe she'll move when he dies," he muttered.
"Ira says she won't have the money to keep it up." Cassie blew her nose and pulled herself together. She was ready to go now. Her children had seen the betrayal, and now she had cremation arrangements to make.
"Well, yes, she does have money," Teddy corrected.
"What are you talking about, Teddy? I told you the will is unchanged. We'll have something. And, of course, I'll have the life insurance."
Marsha's face flushed an angry red. "He gave her my piano."
"Mona has the life insurance," Teddy said, deadpan.
"No, Teddy, you're mistaken. I'm the beneficiary on Daddy's life insurance."
Teddy pressed his lips together. "Uh-uh."
"What?" Cassie clutched her heart.
"He changed it years ago. There were new papers. I checked. When he dies, she gets the life insurance. Mom!"
Cassie's knees buckled. Oh, shit. She'd worked so hard to allow him to die just so Mona would get the life insurance and half the company? Mona won? She won?
"Mom!"
Cassie was sitting on the ground. She didn't know how she'd gotten there. Her chest was heaving. Both kids were trying to haul her to her feet. Mona was peering out at them from an upstairs window. Cassie didn't see her. She had only one thought. She had to stop the termination. "Get me to the hospital," she gasped. "Hurry."
CHAPTER 39
RUNNING, they were running through the hospital entrance, Cassie in the lead, st umbling along in her black sheath and heels. It was two-thirty in the afternoon. Outpatients, doctors, staff, visitors crowded the lobby. Cassie was panting, weeping. All the betrayals were too much, just too much.
Mark had told her that the Mitch they all knew and loved had gone the day of his stroke. As they had prepared for his end, Mark had assured her, cool as could be, that Mitch's spirit was at peace and no one was home inside of him anymore. But the truth was, Mitch had never had the slack appearance of serenity. With the tubes in his mouth and nose, one eye at half-mast, the grimace on his face, and finger scrabbling desperately at the sheet as if he had something urgent to impart, Mitch had been all along the picture of a tortured man.
Cassie stumbled through the halls to save him. Why should he be released and find peace so easily when she had to live on? Correctly assuming that a catastrophe had occurred, people moved aside as she plowed through. Marsha came next in her prison garb, with a backpack hanging open over one shoulder. Teddy shuffled along after them, looking embarrassed. Cassie had given him quite the tongue-lashing for not having told her about the life insurance before, weeks before.
"It's not my fault," he was talking to himself, getting more agitated the more he said it. They crossed the lobby and entered the glass corridor, passed the contemplation garden with its rocks and pebbles and evergreens that remained exactly the same in every season.
"Mom," Marsha cried, trying to catch Cassie's arm. "Mom, you're going to fall."
"This is crazy," Teddy muttered to himself. "I didn't do anything wrong."
"Teddy, shut up," Marsha flung over her shoulder.
Cassie was the first to pass through the arch to the wing that housed the Head Trauma Intensive Care Unit. She charged on, then stopped short, clutching her chest when she saw the curtains drawn over Mitch's picture window.
"Oh God, Marsha. It's over."
Marsha caught her mother's arm, but Cassie's knees gave way. Her body twisted as she fell, and her whole side convulsed with excruciating pain. She was lying on the floor again and didn't know how she'd gotten there. Startled, she saw the ceiling. Then she began to cry.
"Mom!" Marsha dropped to her knees.
Cassie had tried to protect her face when she'd gone down. And now her hands clenched over her eyes to halt the deluge of tears. "Oh God, oh God. It's over."
"Mom, are you all right?"
Cassie's body curled into a fetal position around her pain, and a deeper, keening wail rose from her chest. She heard the sound, a wild animal's cry, and was unaware that her grief had turned into a primal scream. The stress of the last month's revelations and her struggle for balance after a lifetime of denial finally felled her. Her vigil and fight with Mona for control of Mitch's mind and body was finally over, and she collapsed. Mitch was gone, and Cassie was overwhelmed with grief.
She'd shown her children his sins against them, proven all the lies, if not to the lawyers at least to them. In the end, he'd won all the little battles and lost the big one. And now Cassie felt as if she'd been gutted. She was a widow, but not the way she'd hoped. Not a widow with honor-a widow who'd been adored in life and respected in death. She was a middle-aged woman crushed by the loss of love she'd never dared to acknowledge.
Marsha was on her knees, crooning to her softly. "It's okay. I'm here."
Teddy joined her. "I'm sorry, Mom," he said. "I'm really sorry."
Cassie couldn't respond. She wanted to be there on the bed, instead of Mitch, with a sheet over her head. Dead not for a few minutes, but dead for all time. "I don't give a shit anymore," she muttered.