Page 111 of Boardroom Ties
“They’re saying carbon monoxide does that. The brain swelling, I mean. She made it to the hospital, and her vitals are stable, but she’s just… she’s not awake. They have her on the ventilator.” Caroline laughs a tiny, wet laugh and rubs her nose again. “The doctors keep sayingwhenshe wakes up.When,notif.And I want to believe them, but I’m just really scared that being bitterly disappointed will hurt way more than expecting the worst until proven wrong.”
“Whenis good, Caroline,” I tell her firmly.
It’s not like I have much in the way of confidence to give, nor am I in any position to be weighing in on matters of life and death. But this woman looks like she needssomething,so I’ll lend her what I can, even if I have to fake it.
“Yeah. You’re right. It is, it is.” She looks down at the casket, then back at me, and something hardens at the corners of her eyes. “She’ll be able to tell us what happened when she wakes up. The fire marshal is— well. They’re saying gas leak, but I just don’t buy it. At that hotel? No. No way.”
My mouth goes dry and chalky. “I’m sure the investigators will figure it out,” I manage to say.
“I’m sure they will.” She tries on a smile that doesn’t seem to fit her right. “And until then, I’m just waiting. Any day now, she’ll wake up and tell me what she saw.”
I don’t know what I say next. It might not be English at all, more of a vaguely sympathetic mumble. I think I touch her sleeve and she thanks me again, but then a man behind me clears his throat because I’m holding up the line, so I move on.
I stubbornly refuse to look at the casket as I slink past. Nothing good can come from that.
Best case, I see Bill’s withered, frightened corpse.
Worst case, I’m remind of Giana’s coffin. No thanks. The choking, cloying scent of the lilies has already started to drown me as it is.
They’re everywhere. Even when I’m careful to breathe through my mouth, I can somehowtastethem. The thought comes in fast and violent: I need to get out of this place.
The line snakes back up the aisle toward the side door. I follow it into the reception in the parish hall, where trays of lukewarm crustless sandwiches await, already half picked over. Black wool swirls everywhere I look. How can it still smell like lilies in here, a room away?
I need out. Oh, God, I needout.
When someone taps me on the shoulder, I nearly scream.
“Cassandra, dear. Are you alright? You look pale.”
It’s Hadley’s wife. Or maybe Zimmerman’s, I can’t remember. The lilies are screaming in my nose now. I can taste them. I can taste the cake the church basement ladies brought to Giana’s reception five years ago, the dry yellow sheet cake with the white frosting that I couldn’t choke down because every bite tasted like flowers.
“I just need some air,” I gasp at her. I’m walking away, almost running, before she’s even done nodding sympathetically.
I shove through the heavy oak door at the back of the parish hall and out into the small stone courtyard between the church and the rectory. It’s bitterly cold out.
It’s raining, too. When did that start? It was snowing this morning. Now, it’s that nasty in-between New York rain, more sleet than water. Fat, icy drops that go straight down the back of your collar and linger longer than they should.
I stand under the eave for a second, and then I step out from under it. I need the cold on my face, I need it on my eyes, I need to wash the lily smell off my upper lip.
It’s been five years since I buried my sister. I’ve spent those years re-carving myself out of stone. I wasn’t Cassandra Madden anymore, free-spirited, happy—I became Cassandra Snyder, a murder robot with one mission: kill the man who took Giana from me.
All it took was one whiff of stargazer lilies to undo all that work.
I’m a soggy mess now, both inside and out. I’m crying for Giana. I’m crying for Bill, too, who died horribly and undeservedly, and for Susan, who is alive but not awake, and who might know something terrible if she ever opens her eyes again. I’m crying for poor Caroline. I’m crying for myself, and for the baby in my belly, and for the man who’s about to spend the rest of his life pretending I never existed just as soon as the job is finished.
I’m crying so hard I don’t hear him approach.
I just feel the air shift, and then a coat—warm, dry on the inside, smelling like rain on pine—settles around my shoulders. Hands pull me onto a nearby bench and an arm tucks me into his side.
“I’m here.”
“You shouldn’t be,” I gasp. “Mat, you can’t, there are people, they’ll see?—”
“As if I give a fuck.” He situates me even closer, and the slow seep of his heat into me starts to chew away the pain. “Besides, if anyone comes through that door, I’m just a colleague who found a colleague’s wife crying alone in the rain. That’s all.”
Nothing is ever that simple.
But I turn my face into his shoulder anyway. His suit is already going dark with rainwater. He doesn’t try to shush me. He simply holds me for as long as I’ll let him.
