Don't Scream

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Did you actually think you were going to walk right out the front door?” The voice is eerily close to her, and she still can’t see the face. She can’t see anything.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’s aware that her vision was snuffed out in that horrible blow to her head. She’s going to come out of this sightless.

  Come out of this?

  I’m not going to come out of this at all if I don’t do something.

  Oh, please. Somebody help me. Help!

  No. Not help …

  She opens her mouth, lips twitching, throat rasping.

  “What? Speak up, Matilda. I can’t hear you.”

  “Fire,” she whimpers faintly.

  An explosion of maniacal laughter, not her own, echoes through her brain…just before the next blow smashes her skull into it, obliterating her remaining four senses, and Matilda Harrington ceases to exist.

  CHAPTER 10

  Cassie awakens abruptly at the sound of a ringing telephone, takes one look at the unfamiliar surroundings, and manages to remember instantly where she is: at a Marriott Residence Inn somewhere in the Boston suburbs.

  And her skull is throbbing.

  And the phone is ringing.

  Oh, God, they’ve found me.

  Or, maybe not. Maybe it’s just her cell phone. It rang a lot last evening, before she turned it off somewhere north of Providence…

  And she never turned it back on, so it can’t be ringing now.

  She turns her head, painfully, to look at the room phone on the bedside table just as it rings again.

  Oh, God, they really have found me.

  Then she realizes that nobody on earth can possibly know where she is, unless someone was following her every move from the time she blew past her exit.

  When she stopped for gas at the Rhode Island state line, she checked the glove compartment and immediately found what she was looking for. The surprise party invitation was still there, right where she stashed it after it turned up on her windshield.

  But the details were sketchy. There was just a date—October 4—and a place: Tildy’s house, which is on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. Oddly, there was no time, and no phone number for an RSVP.

  Figuring it must be an oversight, Cassie decided to just show up and hope for the best. With luck, she would arrive well before, or well after, the guest of honor.

  But when she reached Tildy’s address, she found only Lena Schicke, the housekeeper. She answered the door wearing her coat, a scarf tied over her whitish-gray bun, obviously on her way out.

  “I’m here for the surprise party,” Cassie whispered to her, wondering if everyone was hiding inside, waiting for Tildy.

  Confusion settled in Lena’s slate-gray eyes. “Surprise party?”

  “For Matilda.”

  “Oh, that’s not a surprise. She’s the one who’s throwing it.” The housekeeper’s firmly set mouth told Cassie precisely what she thought of women who threw parties for themselves.

  Not to mention what she thought of women who impulsively turned up on Back Bay doorsteps looking for surprise parties where there were none.

  Now it was Cassie’s turn to be confused. “But…I mean…Is the party tonight?”

  Lena nodded.

  “Is it…here?”

  “No, at some big fancy hotel. I can’t remember which one,” she added, as if sensing Cassie’s next question.

  Maybe she was telling the truth about that, maybe she wasn’t. But her all-business demeanor made it obvious that she wasn’t interested in elaborating.

  There was nothing for Cassie to do but leave.

  So she did, promptly.

  She never gave the housekeeper her name, and, anyway, her name alone couldn’t give away her current location.

  Meaning, it’s safe to assume that whoever might be calling this hotel room, it isn’t Alec, or, God forbid, her mother.

  Still, she holds her breath as she lifts the receiver with a hoarse, “Hello?”

  “This is your seven AM wakeup call,” a computerized voice announces.

  Relieved, Cassie vaguely remembers that she called for one just before falling asleep.

  “Have a pleasant day,” the recorded operator advises her from the telephone pressed hard against her ear.

  A pleasant day. Yeah, right.

  She opens her eyes abruptly and plunks the receiver back into its cradle.

  Okay. She’d better get up, get on the road…

  Wait a minute.

  Why?

  So she can return to her life, and the utter shambles she’s made of it?

  How could you have done this to yourself? What were you thinking?

  She wasn’t thinking. If she had been, she wouldn’t have done it.

  Any of it.

  Oh, God.

  Oh, God.

  She should have just gone to her bridal shower and smiled and thanked everyone and told them she’ll see them all at the wedding.

  Instead, for the first time in her life, she acted on sheer impulse.

  And now look at you. Pounding headache, upset stomach, waking up in a strange hotel room, in Boston, of all places.

  But she supposes Boston is as good a place as any, if you’re going to run away from home.

  Wow.

  She finally, actually did it.

  After a good twenty years of daydreaming about it, she finally ran away.

  Actually, in her fantasies, she always galloped away, on Marshmallow.

  Still, driving away felt pretty good, too.

  While it lasted.

  Now it’s time to drive back and face the consequences.

  Isn’t it?

  Cassie’s gaze falls on the television remote lying on the table beside the phone.

  She can either get up, get dressed, drive back to Connecticut, and pick up the pieces of her life…

  Or she can stall it by lying here watching morning television, pleasantly anonymous for a little longer.

  What to do, what to do…

  As if there’s any choice.

  She snatches up the remote and aims it at the open armoire across from the bed. The television clicks on.

  The sound is on MUTE, she realizes, as the picture fades in: Matt Lauer silently laughing with a woman who isn’t Katie Couric. Oh, that’s right, she left The Today Show awhile back, Cassie recalls—not that she ever watched it anyway, other than catching the occasional fleeting snippet of morning news in the hospital lounge.

  Unaccustomed to lying around in bed, staring at the tube, she tells herself to relax, reminding herself that this is what regular people do.

  Really? Do regular people also run out on their wedding showers?

  Not to mention abandoning a fiancé, parents, assorted family members and friends…

  And my job, she remembers guiltily, glancing at the digital clock next to the bed.

  She was supposed to be at the hospital two hours ago.

  Well, it’s too late for that, isn’t it? It’s too late to salvage anything.

  You’re here, in Boston, with no one to answer to but yourself, for once in your life.

  So relax and watch TV, dammit!

  She idly stares at the screen for a moment, where a weather map shows a tropical depression forming in the Caribbean. As she idly presses random buttons on the remote, trying to find the volume, she accidentally hits the POWER button.

  The screen sparks and goes dark.

  Cassie sighs.

  I can’t do this, anyway. I can’t just lie here and ignore my life.

  She gets up, winces at the ache in her skull and the rising tide of nausea, and looks around for her purse.

  It’s tossed on a nearby chair, unzipped, the contents spilling over the cushion and the floor.

  Relieved that her wallet, keys, and phone are accounted for, she turns on her cell phone.

  Over a dozen new messages.

  Cassie sinks heavily into the chair and reluctantly goes through them.

>   Most are from her mother, speaking above chattering female voices in the background, clearly calling from the bridal shower. At first she sounds irritated, then angry, and, finally, in calls that are interspersed with Alec’s, worried.

  Her fiancé’s recorded voice, too, is laced with concern.

  “Please call me, baby, and let me know that you’re all right. Nobody knows where you are. If we don’t hear from you soon we’re going to call the police.”

  Which they did, at two AM, according to her mother’s final message.

  “Cassandra, I have a gut feeling that you’re all right.” Regina Ashford’s tone has almost regained its crisp control, but with an undercurrent of distress. “Alec suspects that you might have cold feet. He says you’ve been less enthusiastic about the wedding than he had hoped. If that’s the case, you really need to get over it and remember that a lot of people have gone out of their way to attend your shower, and it’s…inappropriate, and impolite… not to show up at all.”

  Inappropriate.

  Impolite.

  That it is, Cassie thinks, fighting back the strange urge to laugh at her mother’s understated choice of words.

  One more message.

  She braces herself to hear once again from her mother, or Alec.

  Instead, she hears a chorus of female voices. Singing.

  What the…?

  We’ll always remember

  That fateful September

  We’ll never forget

  The new sisters we met

  We’ll face tomorrow together

  In all kinds of weather

  ZDK girls, now side by side

  May travel far and wide

  But wherever we roam

  Sweet ZDK will be our home.

  A chill slithers down Cassie’s back as she recognizes the lyrics…and the voices, including her own.

  Rachel’s distinct soprano soars highest and sweetest on the last note.

  Brushing her teeth at the sink in the hall bathroom, Brynn spots a shadowy figure looming in the doorway.

  She screams.

  “Shhh! You’ll wake up the kids.”

  “You scared me!” she hisses at Garth.

  “I’m sorry. I called you but you didn’t hear me.”

  She turns off the tap with a jerk of her hand; the rush of running water gives way to the hush of the still-slumbering household.

  “Listen,” Garth whispers, “I just walked into our room to change. Somebody’s in our bed…And it isn’t Goldilocks. What’s going on?”

  “That’s Ashley. Remember I told you she’d be spending the night here?” She plunges the toothbrush back into her mouth and resumes scrubbing. The minty toothpaste, usually so refreshing, seems vaguely distasteful this morning.

  “No, I don’t remember anything about it, but I’ve been so crazed lately I’m lucky if I manage to remember what time my next lecture starts. Which I can, and it’s in exactly an hour and twenty minutes, and Papa Bear’s got to get showered and dressed, so…”

  Brynn leans over the sink to spit out an unpleasant mouthful of foamy Colgate. “I’ll wake up Ashley in a minute.”

  “Thanks.” Garth’s gaze meets hers in the mirror. “What’s wrong? You seem upset.”

  She is upset…And she isn’t even entirely sure why. Something is still just…off with her this morning.

  It might have something to do with Ashley being here last night, confiding just how absent a parent Fee has been lately.

  It might also have something to do with Garth not being here last night.

  Yes, she’s aware that Thursday is his late night on campus. And that he’s been working on his book every chance he gets in preparation for the symposium.

  Still…

  “You never came home,” she hears herself telling him in an accusatory tone.

  He raises his eyebrows. “I was working on the book…which you forbade me to do in the house, remember?” His tone is as accusatory as hers. “I need to have this chapter wrapped up.”

  “Well, you should call me if you’re not coming home at all.”

  “When? At three-thirty in the morning? Because that’s when I realized I needed to download at least another hour’s worth of research before I could even finish the page I was writing.”

  “No…” Deflated, she turns to look him in the eye, face-to-face. “I’m sorry, I was just worried about you.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know…I couldn’t sleep.”

  “I saw your pillow and that old blanket on the couch. Take it from me, it isn’t the most comfortable piece of furniture we own.”

  “Sadly, it is the most comfortable piece of furniture we own,” she tells him, turning on the water to rinse out the sink.

  “Then let’s get new furniture.” He rests his hands on her shoulders and tilts her back to lean against his chest, setting his chin on her head as they stare at each other in the mirror.

  “Are you kidding? We can’t afford that.”

  “Let’s get it anyway. We need something good, Brynn.”

  “Debt isn’t good.”

  “Maybe I’ll sell this book. I have a gut feeling that something great is right around the corner.”

  Why does Brynn have the very opposite gut feeling?

  She leans forward, away from Garth, and abruptly opens the medicine cabinet.

  “Let’s go furniture shopping this weekend,” he suggests as she takes out the plastic case containing her birth control pills.

  “Can’t. I’m working Caleb’s school’s booth at the arts and crafts festival Saturday, and Zack’s birthday party is Sunday. Remember?”

  Clearly, he doesn’t.

  Nor does he know who Zack is.

  “Maggie’s son,” Brynn explains, wondering how he can be so out of touch with the daily life she lives with the kids.

  “Oh. Right. Next weekend, then?”

  “Can’t,” she says again, poking a pill from the packet into her hand. “I’m taking the boys to the Cape and you’re going to that symposium in Arizona. Don’t tell me you actually forgot that, too?”

  “I told you, my memory isn’t functioning well these days.” He presses a thumb and forefinger against his forehead, looking exhausted.

  “Well, a total lack of sleep will do that to a person.”

  “Sleep? Who has time for sleep? When did our lives become so scheduled?”

  “My life isn’t all that scheduled,” Brynn points out, shaking her head and staring down at the little white pill in her hand. “I’m always here.”

  You’re the one who’s been overscheduled, overworked, overtired. Even more so than usual lately.

  “As I recall, that’s how you wanted it,” Garth tells her. “You said you wanted to stay home with the boys while they’re young.”

  “What are you saying? That you want me to go to work?”

  She plucks that out of oblivion and flings it at him, stupidly.

  And she regrets it the moment it’s out there, because that isn’t what he was saying at all, and she knows it.

  Then again…

  That might have been what he was thinking.

  Not that he would ever admit it.

  He doesn’t. He rubs his temple for a minute, looking tired, before saying levelly, “Brynn, you know I support your choice to be a full-time mom, so don’t put words into my mouth, okay?”

  “Okay,” she says quietly.

  Then…

  “If we can afford new furniture, why not a new baby?”

  Oh, no. Did she actually say that aloud?

  She must have, because a parade of expressions is marching across Garth’s face like a news crawl: from weary to confused to incredulous to fuming.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am serious.”

  “I thought we resolved this months ago.”

  “Well, we didn’t.”

  Glaring at her, he reaches for the knob and jerks the bathroom door shut.

&n
bsp; She knows it’s because he doesn’t want to wake the boys and Ashley, but suddenly, she’s frightened. She doesn’t want to be alone in this tiny room with him.

  Not when he’s looking at her as though…

  No, that’s crazy.

  Garth is angry, yes…angrier than she’s seen him in a long time. But she’s not afraid of him. He’s her husband. They love each other.

  Just not so much, at this particular moment.

  So drop it, she warns herself. Drop the subject.

  “Never mind,” she tells Garth. “Forget I said anything.”

  “There are some things even I can’t forget,” he shoots back as she puts the tiny pill on her tongue and bends over the sink. “You know damned well that affording a new couch and a new baby are two entirely different things.”

  “Not just a couch.” She runs cold water into her cupped hand and tilts it into her mouth to get the pill down, then straightens to look him in the eye. “You said new furniture. That costs thousands of dollars. What does a baby cost? The first year, I mean. Not thousands.”

  “You know this isn’t just about money. And what about the second year, and the third? And the sixteenth, when the baby wants to drive, and the eighteenth, when it wants to go to college?”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “No, you’re being ridiculous.”

  He’s right. She is. He already told her in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t want a third child.

  Why did she even bring it up again?

  Maybe because the prospect of a third child has been simmering in her mind ever since, refusing to be snuffed out by Garth’s adamant refusal.

  Yes, the whole thing got back-burnered in the flurry of strep throat and Caleb starting school and…

  And Rachel.

  But now all of that has faded, and life has settled back into a routine, and Brynn wants another baby.

  And it isn’t fair that Garth is taking that away from her.

  Feeling like a kid whose PlayStation privileges have been permanently revoked, Brynn folds her arms and lifts her chin. “Why do you get to decide? What about what I want?”

  “What about what I don’t?”

  They stare at each other for a long moment.

  Then a terrified scream erupts from down the hall.

  Caleb.

  Both Brynn and Garth bolt in that direction.