Despite her warm coat and hat, Cassie shivers the second she steps outside. The cold air is like a slap in the face, although she’s not certain if that’s the reason a chill went through her body. Somebody’s been following her. Someone’s been writing slurs about her at both her store and her apartment. And that someone isn’t the person she’d believed it to be.
“Cold, ain’t it?”
Cassie looks up and sees Maureen the Homeless Lady grinning at her from her usual spot on the sidewalk. Maureen’s bundled up in her thick winter coat, paired with a scarf and hat, but to be fair, she wears all that year round. Even on the hottest day of August, Maureen’s got that coat on.
Cassie glares at Maureen, a bubble of frustration rising in her chest. “What did you see?” she rasps at the woman sitting on the sidewalk. “You must have seen something!”
Maureen throws back her head and lets out that familiar cackle that makes Cassie’s skin crawl. “I ain’t seen nothing!”
“But you must have!” Cassie cries. “You must! You were right here!”
The smile abruptly drops off of Maureen’s face. And then she’s just staring, her jaw slack, her eyes empty. Cassie remembers when she saw Maureen at the window to the hardware store—it had really freaked her out. She never figured out what Maureen had been doing there.
“Maureen?” Cassie’s voice wavers on the name.
Maureen the Homeless Lady doesn’t say a word.
I’ve got to get out of here.
Cassie turns away from Maureen, who is still in that catatonic state. She hugs her coat tighter to her chest and hurries in the direction of the subway.
Except Cassie somehow finds herself going to a different station than her usual. She doesn’t make the decision exactly—her feet take her there on their own accord. But she recognizes she’s at the train station that will take her in the direction of Francesca’s restaurant.
She doesn’t know why she’s doing it. She just knows she has to go there.
Cassie rides the subway until she reaches the stop for Angela’s Ristorante. The sun has vanished from the sky and her footsteps crunch against bits of snow in the pavement as she makes her way to the tiny restaurant with the red, white, and green awning.
Cassie looks at the sign over the restaurant. The word “Angela” is written in beautiful script. Who was Angela? Was Angela someone close to Francesca? A relative she loved or respected? Or just a name she liked?
Cassie suspects she’ll never know the answer to that question, since she will never meet Francesca.
A cold wind whips around the corner and Cassie shivers, hugging herself. She walks closer to the restaurant—close enough that she can see inside at the small establishment that Francesca built in the years before her death. She peers through the glass at the strangers enjoying their meals. Well, they’re not all strangers. There’s one person she recognizes all too well:
Joel. Sitting at a table in the back, his head bowed.
She shouldn’t be surprised. Of course, he’d come here when he’s thinking of Francesca. She remembers catching him here months ago. She wonders how often he comes here. It must comfort him. Remind him of the woman he had loved.
She has a feeling that the characters in his own Wuthering Heights are Joel and Francesca. Certainly not Joel and Cassie. After all, Francesca is the one who haunts him, even after she’s gone.
In any case, she hurries away before he can catch sight of her.
It’s nearly eight by the time Cassie gets off the subway by her apartment building. It’s very dark by now, and the streets are deserted. She walks as quickly as she can down the pavement, trying to push away the feeling that somebody is behind her. She can almost hear footsteps.