23
CASS
A week and a half later, the second window is here.
Raymond drives us upstate. I sit in the passenger seat with my hands folded in my lap and my expression tuned todemure wife on a quaint country weekend.It’s a long journey to spend pretending, but as with most things in my life lately, I don’t have a choice. I just need to hold out for a little while longer, and then we’ll make it to the light at the end of the tunnel.
He’s not making it easy, though. He’s been keyed up all morning. He had three espressos before we left the apartment, so his right knee has been bouncing against the gear shift since the GW Bridge.
I have a nasty feeling as to why that is, which is confirmed or at least reinforced when his phone buzzes again. It’s been going nuts the whole way. He’s got the Bluetooth synced to the car, but he hasn’t been answering through the speakers. Every time it goes off, he glances at the screen propped in the center console, swears under his breath, and lets it go to voicemail. Then thirtyseconds later, he picks it up and types something fast and angry and sets it down again.
I haven’t asked. Asking is not in my job description today. My job description is to sit pretty, don’t fidget, don’t comment on the driving, don’t look at the phone, don’t bring up the vitamins.
For the most part, I’m fine with that. We haven’t talked about the vitamins and, if I have it my way, we never will. Raymond came home late that night. By then, I’d already done what needed doing: cleaned out my hiding spot, washed my hair properly, put on the cream cashmere pajama set he likes, and made his short ribs from scratch.
He walked in, looked at me standing at the stove, and didn’t say a word about it. Whatever phone call dragged him out of the apartment was apparently enough to bumpInterrogate wifefar down the to-do list. He took his food into his study and worked until two in the morning.
I’m not stupid enough to think he forgot. I’m hoping he just decided he was wrong, or that the Hailey Bieber line sounded more plausible than I gave it credit for, or—my favorite theory—that the shady business thing he’s gotten himself involved with is eating his attention from all directions and there isn’t enough brain space left over to come after me right now.
Whatever it is, I’ll take it.
In the meantime, I have eaten six saltines for breakfast and am holding very still so that the curves of upstate New York don’t make me throw up in his Bentley. Raymond’s phone buzzes again. He grabs it and reads. His knuckles go white on the wheel.
“Everything okay?” I venture hesitantly. I feel like I have to speak up at some point; saying nothing for two hours is as suspicious as prying.
“Fine.”
“Anything I can?—?”
“No.”
I fold my hands tighter and look out my window.
The trees thin and a long stone wall emerges, then a wrought-iron gate withTHE CRISPIN HOTEL AND HUNTING LODGEworked into the metal in curling, old-timey script. The venue for this weekend’s firm retreat sits at the end of a mile of unplowed gravel drive, in a wooded part of the Hudson Valley where the cell service comes and goes like a toxic boyfriend.
Situated between winding labyrinths of frozen ornamental hedges and a koi pond with a sheet of ice on top is the building itself: a Tudor mansion with leaded windows and a slate roof, ivy climbing up to the chimneys, the sort of place you book for a wedding when you want everyone to act like they’re in a Shakespeare reboot.
A valet jogs out to meet as Raymond cuts the engine. Another opens my door. I step out, rearrange my coat, and accept the gloved hand at my elbow with my best country-club smile.
“Welcome to The Crispin, Mrs. Snyder.”
“Thank you so much.”
Raymond hasn’t bothered to wait for me. He strides ahead up the salted stone path, muttering on the phone now. Whatever the latest text was, it lit a fire under his ass. I follow at theappropriate distance, head up, chin tilted, every bit the wife-shaped silhouette he prefers in public.
The lobby is a prism of dark wood and tartan rugs, lit by a fire going in a stone hearth at the far end. There’s a Christmas tree still up by the staircase even though it’s nearly the end of January, hung with red velvet bows and gold pears.
Bill Oglethorpe is standing dead in the middle of all of it with his hands in the pockets of his green tweed jacket, beaming like he owns the place, which he does, or so the rumor goes. Then again, Bill Oglethorpe is rumored to own damn near everything in the Northeast. He’s the WASP of all WASPs; his family came over on the Mayflower and promptly bought everything they set eyes on.
“At long last!” Bill booms. “There’s my boy.”
Raymond pockets the phone in one smooth motion and switches faces, just like that, from snarling lockjaw to country gentleman. “Bill, you old bastard.”
“Takes one to know one, eh, Snyder?”
They shake hands and then do the half-hug, half-shoulder-thump thing that men of a certain generation always do. I float up next to Raymond, still maintaining a slight distancejust in case,and of course—it goes without saying—still wearing my most pleasant smile.
Bill’s wife, Susan Oglethorpe, materializes out of nowhere. She’s in her mid-sixties, blond, impeccable, and Botoxed to within an inch of her life. She’s wearing a camel cashmere coat over a green cocktail dress, along with a strand of pearls and the same diamond studs she has worn at every event I’ve ever seen her at.