Don't Scream

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Go to the police.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “You know I won’t. Not behind your backs.”

  Cassie doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know Brynn. Not anymore. She was part of another life, one she left behind—or so she hoped.

  “Just…” Brynn reaches out and gives her a quick hug. “Have a beautiful wedding, okay? I’m happy for you.”

  Cassie nods, suddenly unable to speak, and watches her walk out the door.

  Stepping out onto the porch of the inn, Fiona lights up and takes a deep, satisfying drag.

  There. She feels better already.

  Peace and quiet, fresh air—okay, and smoke.

  After all the tension inside the restaurant, Fiona savors the momentary solitude.

  The only sound is the stream of smoke exiting her lungs and the faint hum of a car passing out onto the highway.

  She should check her messages on her office voice mail again. She did just a few minutes ago, while they were waiting for the check, but the call she’s expecting from James Bingham hasn’t come in yet.

  He should be at his weekend house: once the Gilded-Age “cottage” of a New York financial magnate, the place has forty rooms and sits on a hundred wooded acres high above Cedar Crest.

  Fiona is aching to visit it—and she’s sure she will, if she plays her cards right.

  Patience is the key. Patience and professional decorum, with just a slight hint of flirtation. And restraint. Definitely restraint.

  Surely James has called and left her a voice mail by now. And maybe her sister has finally called back, too. Fee has been trying to reach her, needing to talk…

  About the card. Just in case—

  A large winged creature flutters on a branch overhead before swooping toward the dense thicket surrounding the parking lot. Fiona’s eye follows it as she inhales her cigarette, and she sees a bulky shadow of movement amid the trees.

  She blinks, startled.

  What is that?

  Nothing. No big deal.

  But the shadow is moving; someone is definitely there.

  Or maybe just something. Can it be a large animal?

  It could be…except a glint of some shiny object just caught the sunlight out there, a few feet off the ground and animals in the wild don’t reflect light. Nothing like…

  There it is again.

  Jewelry? Eyeglasses? What the heck is that?

  Is somebody out there, watching her?

  Peering into the trees through narrowed eyes, Fiona feels her heart begin to race.

  The door to the inn opens suddenly and she jumps at the abrupt sound.

  Brynn.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks Fiona.

  “Nothing. It’s about time,” she mutters, stubbing out her cigarette beneath her pointy-toed shoe. “Let’s go.”

  As they cross the wide porch toward the steps at the far end, closest to the woods, Fiona’s heart is pounding painfully.

  You have to calm down. It was nothing.

  But she stares into the trees, certain someone is lurking there.

  Isaac can hear the music coming from behind the apartment door as he approaches.

  Did he leave the radio on before he left?

  No, it can’t be. He was listening to Z100 that morning. They play popular music.

  This is John Coltrane.

  Kylah loves jazz.

  “I love it almost as much as I love you,” she said before dragging him off to the Newport Jazz Festival last month.

  That bothered him. He couldn’t tell her he loved her, too.

  He does like her. A lot. Much more than he likes jazz.

  But nowhere near as much as he likes—loves—Rachel.

  He shifts his overnight bag to his right hand and checks his watch on his left.

  What is Kylah doing here?

  Right now, she should be at least 35,000 feet above the Ohio Valley, flipping through a magazine and sipping a tiny paper cup of bad airline coffee.

  She shouldn’t be in New York, in her Ninth Street apartment—no, our apartment, now—listening to jazz.

  His heart sinking, Isaac stands in the corridor outside the door, wondering what he’s supposed to do now.

  He can turn around, walk away, and…

  What? Never come back?

  Just leave her?

  No. He can’t do that. Not yet, anyway.

  There’s only one option.

  Lie.

  Watching Fiona aim the remote at the BMW to unlock it, Brynn notices that Fiona’s hand is trembling.

  She catches her once again looking nervously toward the woods on the far side of the parking lot as she gets into the car.

  Following Fiona’s gaze, she sees nothing unusual.

  “Fee?” she asks uneasily. “Is something out there?”

  “What?” Startled, Fiona swivels her head toward Brynn, then shakes her head. “No, sorry, I’m just…distracted. I’ve got a lot of stress right now with work, and…you know.”

  Yeah. I know.

  It isn’t just about work.

  Brynn fastens her seat belt as Fiona turns her neck to back out of the parking lot, dialing her phone with one hand as she steers with the other.

  Something white on the windshield catches Brynn’s eye.

  “What’s that?” she asks.

  “Wait, hang on a second.” Fiona presses a key on her phone, then props it against her ear with her shoulder so that she can shift into DRIVE.

  “There’s a flier or something stuck under the wiper,” Brynn says in a stage whisper as Fee steers toward the entrance, apparently not noticing the white rectangle on the windshield.

  “Shh!” Fiona is still listening to the phone, though not talking into it. She must be playing her messages; Brynn can hear the uninterrupted rumble of a male voice on the other end.

  Shaking her head, Brynn turns away, gazing out the passenger’s side window at the passing greenery. The car picks up speed quickly, heading onto the highway.

  Something white flies past the window, interrupting Brynn’s train of thought. She swivels her head to see that it was apparently the white paper that was stuck beneath the wiper.

  “That thing just flew off the windshield,” she informs Fiona, who is just snapping her cell phone closed.

  Fee shrugs, looking distracted by the call. “Oh, well. It was probably just some advertisement. You’d think a nice place like that would make sure people don’t go around sticking fliers on cars in their parking lot.”

  Right. And you’d think people who find fliers on their cars would take them off before driving, rather than leaving them there to blow away in the wind.

  Shaking her head, still feeling unsettled, Brynn folds her arms and leans back. It’s going to be a long ride home no matter how fast Fiona drives.

  Cassie notices the white rectangle on the windshield just as she’s opening the driver’s side door. Curious, she lifts the wiper blade to remove it and realizes it’s an envelope.

  Just like the other day.

  Only that one arrived in the mail, addressed to her.

  This one is blank.

  It’s probably just some kind of menu or maybe a promotion the inn is doing, she tries to reassure herself.

  Still, as she slips behind the wheel, she finds herself looking nervously around the parking lot, almost as if…

  Well, as if she expects to see somebody lurking nearby, watching her.

  Her hand shakes slightly as she opens the envelope flap.

  Calm down. You’re starting to get all freaky again, over nothing.

  She pulls out what looks like a card…

  No, it’s an invitation.

  On the front is a cartoonish guy holding a finger to his lips. A dialogue bubble extending from his head reads, “SHHH!”

  Inside is the line “IT’S A SURPRISE PARTY!” Below that, a series of preprinted headings have been filled out in what looks like old-fashioned typewriter type.

 
FOR: Matilda Harrington’s Thirtieth Birthday

  WHEN: October 4

  WHERE: Matilda’s House

  GIVEN BY: A Friend

  Relieved, Cassie smiles. A surprise party. Fiona must be throwing it. Or Brynn.

  She wonders why they opted to leave the invitation on her car rather than hand it to her after Tildy left. They probably put it here earlier, not realizing Tildy would be the first to leave.

  Cassie tucks the invitation into the glove compartment and starts the engine.

  Too bad she won’t be able to make it. October 4 is the day of her wedding shower—to which Tildy was going to be invited.

  Well, she’d better not send her an invitation and risk throwing a wrench into the surprise party plans.

  Uh-oh. Cassie’s mother will be disappointed. She has long known that Tildy’s godfather, “Uncle Troy,” is also known as former Massachusetts governor Troy Allerson. His handsome face is everywhere lately, along with the requisite beautiful, two-decades-younger blonde wife, Lisa, and their beautiful blonde school-age triplets.

  The quintessential Boston Brahmin, Allerson, like Tildy’s father, is Harvard-educated, immensely wealthy, has New England roots dating back centuries, and is politically connected. In fact, he’s rumored to be a future presidential candidate—which is, of course, right up Regina Ashford’s networking alley.

  But the shower is supposed to be about the bride-to-be, not about the mother-of-the-bride-to-be rubbing shoulders with the politically connected Matilda Harrington.

  Cassie’s thoughts are so preoccupied with all she still has to do before her wedding that she’s almost at the Danbury exit before she realizes the invitation lacked a specific time for the party…and RSVP information.

  Probably an oversight.

  Whatever.

  She’ll have to remember to send Tildy something nice for her milestone birthday. What do you get the woman who has everything?

  A bottle of champagne? A bouquet of roses?

  Roses…

  That reminds her, she really has to set up a meeting with the florist.

  And get the shower guest list to Tammy.

  And speak to the caterer.

  And do a million other things, none of which she has time to do. None of which she wants to do.

  I’m sure I’ll feel more excited about it when some of the planning stress is behind me, she tells herself, trying to ignore the increasingly familiar hollow feeling inside.

  Lying should come easily now. Isaac has been doing it long enough. Not just with Kylah, but with Lindsey before she left, and, for that matter, with just about everyone else in his life.

  But it doesn’t come easily at all to unlock the door, paste on a smile, and casually call, “Babe? Is that you?”

  Smoochy the cat, alive and well and napping on the couch, opens one eye, then closes it again.

  “It’s me.” Kylah steps out of the bedroom, hanger in hand. Blonde, blue-eyed, slender, pretty. The kind of girl who never had a problem finding a boyfriend, even in Manhattan.

  If we broke up, she wouldn’t be alone for long, Isaac finds himself thinking.

  He says, casually, “I thought you weren’t coming back till tonight.”

  “I caught an earlier flight. I left you a couple of messages this morning to tell you.”

  “On my cell? Because I didn’t—”

  “No, not on your cell. You’re always home on Saturday mornings.”

  Emphasis on the word always, which buzzes his ears like a cloying mosquito. Has she really known him long enough to apply always to anything about him?

  “I called here,” she goes on. “I wanted to let you know I was coming early, just in case you might be planning to surprise me at the airport.”

  “I was planning to,” he says as smoothly as the saxophone gliding along in the background. “In fact, I was just stopping home before heading over there.”

  “Stopping home to drop off your bag?” she asks, eyeing his duffel.

  “Right.” Here we go…

  “Where have you been? Because, obviously, you haven’t been here the last few days. Your toothbrush and shaving stuff aren’t in the bathroom. Smoochy’s water dish was empty, and so was his dry food. His milk bowl was sour, and there were no empty Purina cans in the garbage.” She pauses for effect, then bookends that detective work with, “Where have you been?”

  Kylah has every right to investigate and ask questions, he reminds himself, after coming home to an empty apartment. She has every right to stand there looking at him with that disillusioned look on her face.

  Lindsey wore that same expression, perpetually, when she began to suspect there was another woman.

  “I’m sorry, babe.” He drops the duffel and crosses the room to hug her.

  She’s stiff in his arms, but she lets him do it.

  Still, she persists, “Where were you?”

  He can’t tell her the truth. Kylah doesn’t know about Rachel. If he has his way, she never will. Look what happened when he told Lindsey.

  “One of our clients up in Boston had a system crash yesterday and I had to drop everything and go.” She knows as little about his business—computers—as he does about hers: pharmaceuticals.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”

  “I couldn’t reach you,” he says simply.

  She shrugs, looking thoughtful. Looking as though she thinks it could actually be true…

  After all, she spends little time in her room during conferences, and she always turns off her cell phone when she’s giving seminars.

  Of course, he could have left her a voice mail…

  But she doesn’t even bring that up.

  Maybe because she desperately wants to believe him, regardless of how credible she actually finds his story.

  “I’m going to go finish unpacking,” she says, slipping from his grasp and heading back toward the bedroom. “Why don’t you do the same thing, and then we’ll go over to Dojo and get some dinner?”

  Dojo. Her favorite. She’s a vegetarian.

  Not Isaac. He’ll take a steak—cold-bloody-rare, Rachel’s preference as well—over hummus, sprouts, and tofu any day.

  But Rachel isn’t here with him now.

  Kylah is, and she’s waiting for him to respond.

  “That sounds good.” He forces a smile.

  “Good.” She returns an equally strained version.

  “I’ll be right there.” He waits until she’s disappeared into the next room before quietly unzipping his duffel bag and feeling around inside.

  Locating the packet of photos, he quickly crosses to the desk in the far corner. They both use it, but she won’t look inside the file drawer anytime soon.

  The moment he has a chance, he’ll return the photos to their usual spot: safely tucked into his own locked drawer in his own apartment near Gramercy Park.

  She doesn’t know about that, either.

  The apartment. She knew about it, of course—past tense. She thinks he let it go when he moved in with her. She believes he gave all the furniture to a new entry-level guy at work, and she assumes that Isaac stopped paying rent on that supposedly vacated apartment the month he started paying half of hers.

  Kylah doesn’t know he has no intention of letting the apartment go—that he can’t possibly let it go.

  Kylah doesn’t know about a lot of things.

  And what she doesn’t know, Isaac reminds himself, ignoring the guilty twist in his gut, can’t possibly hurt her.

  Isaac ignores the mocking voice in his head.

  You know, sometimes, things turn out quite differently from what you had in mind.

  Sometimes, you wind up hurting people.

  People you hate.

  And, yes, even people you love.

  PART II

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR TILDY

  CHAPTER 7

  “Do we go trick-or-treating tonight, Mommy?” Caleb asks over breakfast, same as he has every morning this week
, thanks to the wide world of kindergarten and his new Halloween-obsessed friend, Tyler Carmichael.

  “Not tonight, sweetie.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “No, not tomorrow.” Brynn sets a bowl of dry Cheerios in front of Jeremy, sitting in his plastic booster seat, and returns to the cupboard for a sippy cup.

  “Then when?” Caleb dips his spoon into his bowl, shoves some milky Frosted Flakes into his mouth, and continues around a still-crunchy mouthful, “The day after tomorrow? Or…Wednesday?”

  “Today is Wednesday.”

  He mutters under his breath, “Monday, Thursday, Wednesday…” Then he announces, “You’re right, Mommy! Today is Wednesday. And tomorrow is Tuesday!”

  Her back to him as she pours milk into the sippy cup, Brynn smiles and opts not to correct him again. He’s so pleased with himself, learning the days of the week. He just hasn’t mastered the order yet.

  There’s a lot for a first-time elementary school student to absorb, and Caleb has had his eyes opened to all sorts of new concepts in the past month.

  He’s definitely developed a growing awareness of organized time, even beyond a daily classroom schedule that includes his favorite, “snack time,” and “quiet time,” the probable favorite of his teacher, Mrs. Shimp.

  And he talked so often about the classroom’s monthly wall calendar adorned with seasonal icons that Brynn created a duplicate here at home. To Caleb’s delight, it now hangs on the wall in the kitchen, decorated with stickers she bought at the crafts store.

  For “Oct-oh-boh,” as Caleb calls it, there are autumn leaves and pumpkins, Christopher Columbus and his three ships, candy corn, and costumed children carrying plastic jack-o’-lantern buckets.

  “We still haven’t even figured out what you’re going to be for Halloween yet,” Brynn reminds her son.

  He thinks about it. “Can I be Gary?”

  “Who’s Gary?”

  “He’s SpongeBob’s pet snail.”

  “Oh…Well, isn’t there somebody else you can be?” As in, somebody who comes in a package at Target with a vinyl jumpsuit and plastic mask?

  “No, I want to be Gary. Tyler is going to be SpongeBob’s friend Squidward.”