At the far end of the table, I feel it before I see it. The shift in atmospheric pressure. The tiny hum of attention.
Matvei has stopped eating.
I want so badly to look at him and beg for help. I have a horrible, horrible feeling that, if I leave with Raymond, I’ll never see Matvei again.
But I can’t look at him. It would reveal too much. Just because I might be about to die doesn’t mean I have to drag Matvei down to hell with me.
So instead, I dab my lips with my napkin. “Of course,” I hear myself say sweetly. I make my mouth pull up at one corner in a perfectly trained, hostess-issue half-smile. “Should I… Do I have time to finish my?—?”
“No.” He’s not even being mean about it. He’s just done with the conversation. “Now, Cassandra.”
I set my napkin beside my plate and stand. “Apologies, everyone,” I say to the table at large, in the lightest voice I can produce. “Sorry to abandon you mid-soup.”
“Lovely to see you, dear,” Susan murmurs.
I gather my coat off the back of the chair. The bones of my hands are buzzing so badly I almost drop it. Raymond is alreadystriding off the terrace, phone in his fist, not waiting to see if I’m following. I have to half-jog to keep up.
That’s when, finally, I look.
I just have to. Simply cannot help it. As I round the end of the table, my head turns of its own accord toward the far end, and my eyes find Matvei’s, and the entire terrace dissolves around us.
He is sitting very still. His blue eyes are absolutely, terrifyingly locked on mine.
I don’t know what’s in my face. I don’t have time to control it. I think it’s something like,Help.Or maybe,He knows, he knows, he knows, and I am about to get into a car with him, on icy roads, in the middle of nowhere, and I have a baby in my body, and I don’t know if I am coming back.
Matvei’s jaw flexes once. His chin dips, the smallest fraction of a nod.I see you. I see you, dikarka.
Then his eyes slide off me, and his hand uncurls from the water glass, and he goes back to listening politely to the tax partner’s wife as if nothing in the world is on fire.
I follow my husband off the terrace.
Raymond doesn’t speak as we cut through the lodge. I have to do a dangerous jog in my heeled boots over the uneven flagstones just to keep up.
We go through the lobby, striding right past bellhops and concierges fumbling over themselves to ask if there’s anythingthey can do for us. Every time I try to ask what’s happening or why we’re in such a rush, Raymond cuts me off with a grunt.
“Just pack. We need to leave in five minutes.”
My fingers find the banister at the foot of the grand staircase. The fear is all throughout me now, chilling every nerve ending into ice. I thought I was cold out in the woods, but in here, in the arctic blast of my husband’s wrath, I’m much, much colder.
I mount the stairs behind him. We get up to the third floor and turn toward our room, Raymond still hurrying ever-faster. He rips open our door and holds it open for me, clucking impatiently—when a voice from the corridor behind us calls out.
“Raymond! Raymond, just a moment, if you would!”
I look back to see…
Susan?
I curl up inwardly as the fear drags me all the way under.Please,I think at her, the way you’d think at a saint candle.Please, please, whatever you saw, whatever you’re about to say… please don’t.
Raymond stops with one hand on the doorframe. I watch him gather his face into something usable. By the time he pivots toward her, he has on a slightly edgy half-smile I know well.
It usually precedes violence.
“Susan. Forgive me, I’m in a bit of a?—”
“Yes, I gathered.” She glides up to us, the silk scarf at her throat barely stirring. “You poor dear. Whatever it is, I won’t keep you. I just had a thought, and I’d be a wretched hostess if I didn’t share it.”
“Oh?”