GLASS: A Standalone Novel

by Arianne Richmonde

  We arranged to meet for lunch by the pool there, and when she arrived at my table, I almost didn’t recognize her. She had a hollow look in her eyes—beautiful—but like a specter of a girl. She wore all black—skinny jeans and a sleeveless tank T-shirt, and her slim frame denoted a worked-out physique like someone who practiced martial arts. A tomboy, except her long brown hair, of no distinct shade, allowed her femininity to shine through.

  She dumped a backpack on the chair beside me. “Sorry I’m late, I got held up.” Her accent unmistakably French, but her confidence with the English language showed she’d mastered the nuances of meaning. “Let’s get a couple of Cokes and go for a walk. Can’t be too careful.”

  “Fine,” I agreed.

  She said little else, just made small talk about the warm weather, the pretty views of “the sea,” (they’re not used to oceans in Europe), and how much she had enjoyed getting to know Janie in Vegas. “You’re a lucky man.”

  “Beyond lucky,” I said, not letting on about the Leukemia.

  We drank our sodas and she got up. I took her backpack but she snatched it from me. “There’s a lot of cash in there,” she said coldly.

  Maybe what Janie suspected was true. That Elodie was a real-life, modern-day Robin Hood hacking into people’s bank accounts and transferring great sums of money into more deserving ones. She smiled at me as if what she’d said was a joke. I bet it wasn’t.

  After the beauty of Bora Bora, the beach seemed nothing special. Funny that; you can get so spoiled by luxuries in life. Bora Bora, I supposed, could never be matched, considering it had been thus far the highlight of my life, marrying Janie there.

  “So,” I began, “tell me where she is.”

  “She’s gone,” Elodie answered, her eyes fixed on mine.

  “What? What the fuck! I thought you knew exactly where she was!”

  “Oh, I do. Don’t worry, she’s not going anywhere.”

  This was crazy. One minute Kristin was “gone” and now she wasn’t “going anywhere.”

  “What exactly do you mean? Elodie, I need to see her.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Then why the hell did you bring me out here?”

  “I didn’t bring you out here, you brought yourself.”

  I was beginning to think something was getting lost in translation, after all. “Look, Elodie, I really need to talk to the woman. She’s dangerous, as you know. I don’t want to lose tabs on her. I need to get to the bottom of what she did and make sure she won’t . . . look, she’s a loose cannon, she—”

  “She’s dead, Daniel. And disappeared. Like, ‘evaporated’ disappeared. Melted, if you like, like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. She doesn’t exist anymore.”

  I remembered Alexandre’s words, “You’ll find Elodie has dealt with that.” I hadn’t paid any attention to their significance. I’d seen movies where they used acids to “melt” bodies. Hell, I’d even seen that on TV—Breaking Bad, for instance—but the idea of it actually happening to someone I knew, however monstrous they’d been, and the thought of someone as innocent looking as Elodie having anything to do with it . . .

  “You had her killed?” I asked, incredulous. I’d had fantasies of getting rid of Kristin, but now that Elodie was being so cold blooded . . .

  The corner of Elodie’s lip lifted as if of its own accord. “She won’t be bothering anyone again. You know what? She’d volunteered at the hospital here in Bermuda. Can you believe it? ‘Helping out,’ playing nursie. She was up to her old tricks again. Bad enough, but you know what really made me move my ass down here and do something about her, once and for all?”

  I shook my head. My imagination had already been stretched as far as I thought possible.

  “She took in a stray cat. Fed him with treats, lured him into trusting her with saucers of milk. And the next thing you know? The bitch had put electrodes on his head for her sick little experiments. I’ve got her on film. My spyware caught all sorts of shit. People like that, Daniel, simply don’t deserve to live.”

  I was speechless. I thought of Janie. And of my own narrow escape. And all Kristin’s patients over the years, including her very own sister. But now I’d never find out. Never have the chance to know for sure. All I could come up with was, “Where’s the cat now?”

  Elodie smiled. A real smile that showed her teeth and made dimples in her cheeks. It was the first time I’d seen her look genuinely happy. “I’m taking him back home with me. I’ve named him Luckster.”

  31

  Janie.

  I COULD GO into details about the next six months, but I won’t. People don’t really want to know about the nitty-gritty details of what it’s like to be a cancer patient. They pretend they do, nod their heads in sympathy, but are too embarrassed to ask questions and really talk about it, or they give you that look, which is even worse. As I said, pity was the last thing I needed—or wanted.

  I lost the baby. Nobody would confirm whether or not it had anything to do with the chemo. I also lost my hair and looked uncannily like Natalie Portman in V Is For Vendetta, because I shaved my head completely, joking that I should audition for a part in a Sci-fi movie or join Star as her lesbian boxer sister.

  The Dark Edge of Love was postponed indefinitely. I begged Daniel to “rehearse” with me—I’d learned all my lines—but he always refused. Thought me too fragile. I wanted to be strong and fearless, but my body was pale as mottled marble, and weak.

  Daniel had bought us a house, not far from Star and Jake’s, overlooking the ocean in Malibu. I watched surfers from my bedroom window, my bruised legs and arms wishing they could ride with the waves like the limbs of those I lived through vicariously every day. My attention span got shorter and shorter, and simple things like reading a book became a huge chore. Daniel would read to me: poetry, and my favorite children’s books, but even his melodious, rich voice had me falling asleep mid sentence. I couldn’t concentrate on TV . . . everything and anything became exhausting. I hadn’t eaten for days. Something as basic as swallowing felt like climbing Everest. Daniel would lie with me, his warm body trying to heat up my icy feet, in vain. He joked that I was his favorite flavored popsicle, but sometimes I caught him with tears in his eyes:

  He knew I was dying.

  There had been the never-ending question of his dinner date that he still hadn’t given me an answer to. It was time for him—and he knew it—to let me know, once and for all.

  I tried to say something, but my voice was so wafer-thin, Daniel had to bring his ear to my lips. “So, tell me,” I whispered, “tell me who your dinner date is.”

  “You’re the only dinner date I want. You, Janie, will always be the queen of all dinner dates.” I felt a tear trickle down his cheek, and as he brushed his face toward me, I tasted its saltiness on my parched lips.

  “That’s cheating,” I croaked. Letting him choose me as his dinner date was admitting death. I had to be strong for him. “You promised, you—”

  “Shakespeare, then. Or Leonardo da Vinci . . . I don’t even care anymore. Please, baby, I just want dinner with you.” His voice was cracking. He took me in his arms—I felt like a loose sack of brittle bones—and he hugged me close.

  “You have to choose,” I whispered on a sigh, not letting him off the hook.

  “Jesus,” he said, finally. “Because he can work miracles.”

  I allowed my eyes to flutter shut. I had my answer, at least. Clever choice . . . Jesus could do a Lazarus on me.

  “Do you know what it’s like to love so much you think your heart is actually going to burst?” he asked me the next morning. Light was filtering through our floor-to-ceiling windows. I tried to sit up but all I managed was a little lift of my head. Daniel lay a large hand behind my bony skull, the other on my coat-hanger shoulder and hitched me higher. I sank back into the cushions he’d put there for my comfort, heaving an almost breathless sigh.

  “No,” I whispered, only just getting my words out
, “because my heart is made of glass. Glass doesn’t burst, it breaks.” I let my eyes fall closed. Prisms of morning rays filtered through my lids . . . to my brain.

  It was the last time I saw such a blindingly bright light.

  So white, so brilliant, it . . . quite literally . . . took my breath away.

  EPILOGUE.

  Daniel.

  I SAT STARING at the ocean, my eyes straying to the horizon. Staring out the window where my beautiful Janie had lain dying. Life goes on, I told myself. Life goes on.

  Four years had passed since then. Four years, where so much had changed.

  Our cat Luckster purred like a Porsche as he pawed my new wife’s long brown hair, now tangled in his claws. I hadn’t imagined a wedding could be more perfect than my union with Janie in Bora Bora, but I was wrong. I was in love, and getting married again to the woman of my dreams had made me feel more alive than ever. Especially as she was pregnant.

  My wife laughed, prizing the cat’s paws from her thick, healthy mane. It was good to see her really laugh, nothing made me happier.

  Janie.

  MY GLASS HEART didn’t break after all. And Daniel’s also remained intact. I found out that glass can be pretty tough.

  The most dramatic scene I’d ever played in my life had a happy ending. By some miracle, I began to get better. Slowly at first, but soon at an alarmingly fast pace. My recovery happened as quickly as my demise. It was after Elodie came over to say goodbye when I was on my deathbed, bringing with her—and leaving behind—one of the cats that had been rescued from Kristin. One that hadn’t had his voice box removed. A wiry tabby Elodie had named Luckster. He stayed by my side night and day, purring in my ear, using his warm body to wrap around my neck like an exotic scarf.

  Luckster healed me. Nursed me back to health.

  I say it was the cat, but Pearl attributes her pearl choker to being the miracle cure. Daniel’s mother brought the necklace back, horrified that she’d been given stolen goods by Kristin, and Pearl made sure it lay under my pillow.

  As for Kristin herself . . . well, she had a poetically just ending. Eaten by sharks, the papers said. Her body was never found, but they discovered a pile of her clothes on the beach, near where she lived in Bermuda. Death by drowning, the news proclaimed, her body gobbled up by fish, they surmised.

  Daniel proposed to me again after I recovered. I laughed, but he was serious. Said I was like a “new wife,” and that he wanted to renew his vows. So we had a blessing in a church in Venice, Italy. My gown was medieval style, blooming just below the bust line to accommodate my swelling belly. Yes, I was pregnant. Three years and counting, with the cancer in full remission. The chance of it coming back was so slim my oncologist told me, that I was in the all clear to “procreate like a rabbit,” if I wished. Music to Daniel’s ears. He took the doctor at his word.

  For my wedding gift Daniel gave me a glass perfume bottle from ancient Egypt, which he bid for at auction against the top museum curators of the world. Iridescent blue—not so different from the color of his eyes—a priceless artifact to remind us both that glass can last forever. Glass can stand the test of time. Glass is not just beautiful, but resilient.

  Daniel set Will up in business, looking after some of his stocks and shares. With Will’s aptitude for numbers he’s done extremely well for us all. And the multitude of charities Daniel founded, telling me that he owed a big one to “That Guy Up There.”

  Dad comes to visit us in LA often and has even contemplated moving here, to be near his grandchild.

  I gave birth to our beautiful little boy last month. His name is Gabriel. Like the angel. He looks like a mini Daniel except he has my smile. He weighed a healthy eight pounds, and I now know what his dad was talking about; loving someone so much you think your heart is actually going to burst. Every time I look at Gabriel I feel this way. My family is my world. Eventually I will go back to theatre and movies, when I’m good and ready—I’ll work hard for that coveted Tony and Oscar that I know are within my reach. But for now, all I want to do is hang out with my loved ones.

  As for The Dark Edge of Love, it has been permanently put on hold. Daniel told me we need at least thirty years more “rehearsal time.”

  We’re still working on several scenes.

  If you would like to read Pearl and Alexandre’s steamy and passionate love story you’ll enjoy the five-part USA TODAY bestselling Pearl Series.

  CLICK HERE to begin The Pearl Series

  If you’d like to read Star’s story CLICK HERE

  Elodie plays a cameo role in the USA TODAY bestseller, Stolen Grace, a psychological suspense/family drama.

  CLICK HERE to read Stolen Grace

  For a chance to win prizes and get updates and news of Arianne’s latest sales and books, CLICK HERE to join her mailing list. It’s a great way to keep in touch (no spam or sharing of data, that’s a promise).

  To join her on Facebook

  Twitter.

  For more information on the author visit her website: www.ariannerichmonde.com

  or send her an email: ariannerichmonde@gmail.com

  Click here to follow her on Amazon and browse a list of her books

  The Pearl series:

  The Pearl Trilogy bundle (the first three books in one e-box set)

  Pearl & Belle Pearl (books 4 and 5 in one e-box set)

  Shades of Pearl

  Shadows of Pearl

  Shimmers of Pearl

  Pearl

  Belle Pearl

  Beautiful Chaos

  Stolen Grace

  A Thank You Note from Arianne

  This book has been a collaboration of sorts. My incredible beta readers helped me weave this tapestry of drama and intrigue with their clever observations and eagle eyes. Nelle l’Amour, my best writer friend, as always, has been my sounding board . . . what would I do without my Nelle?

  Thank you Sam, Cheryl, Paula, Lisa, Gloria, Kim, and lovely Letty, for your spot-on notes, and for being so incredibly supportive. And everyone who has bought my books and recommended them to friends and family, or blogged about them to their followers, another massive thank you. Because of you I keep writing.