“And you believe it? You seem like a skeptical woman. I mean, these reasons seem plausible.” He shrugs. “But there are always other interpretations.”
This pisses me off. “Like what?”
“First, the Quinns don’t need your money, so Lawrence’s argument is weak. Unless, of course, he and Eleanor divorce.” He pauses. “Second, if Eleanor wanted to adopt you, you would’ve been adopted. She isn’t a woman who defers to anyone. Especially a man who failed to fulfill his duties as husband and provider.”
“Lawrence hasn’t failed—”
“Cassie, the guy’s been sponging off her for thirty years, and seems to have forgotten the money isn’t his. I have to assume this makes Eleanor very angry. So, maybe the Quinns didn’t adopt you because they didn’t want you in their family. Not really. Not the same way you wanted them.”
As Haggerty baits me, panic sets in. My body grows numb, my throat closes. I’m splintering. I can hear and see Haggerty but he’s far off and fuzzy.
“That’s not true.” I choose my words carefully. I must be precise. If I’m not, Haggerty will realize I’ve checked out. “They took care of me.” I feel an aggressive need for a fight, for sex, anything to block the drilling in my ears.
“Cassie, they never claimed you as their own.”
A wave of cold sweeps over me. Haggerty has to stop talking. Another wave hits me. The cold is coming up through the ground into my bones.
Haggerty is studying me. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“Billy’s story doesn’t add up.”
“Doesn’t make him a rapist.” It’s October, and this diner is overheated, but I can’t stop shivering. “Doesn’t make him a criminal.”
“Billy Quinn raped Diana Holly. He will be held accountable. Every man should be held accountable for his crimes.” He smiles. “Don’t you see? I’m on the side of the angels, Cassie. I want to get the monsters.”
Standing up, I knock the edge of the table. “I have to go.”
“We’re just talking, no need to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid. I’m just sick of the sound of your voice.” Heading out, I turn around. “Maybe I’m the monster, Greg. Maybe it’s been me all along.” Admitting this makes the coldness recede. Finally, the truth is out. I brace myself for Haggerty to agree.
Instead, he says no, I’m wrong. “No one believes that but you, Cassandra.”
36
I STAY AT SCHOOL. I ATTEND CLASSES, PARTICIPATE IN STUDY sessions, and consider my dissertation. I don’t read the paper or watch the news. Billy is in a separate chamber of my brain; a chamber I seal off for all of October. But as the days shorten and the nights get chilly, I know I need to go home. I tell my professors I have a family emergency and will miss a month of classes. I promise to make up the work. You have to go, they insist. Family matters most.
*
My second morning back in New York, I wake up to an empty house. Now that I’m here, everyone is gone. No one has left me a note. Billy’s trial begins Monday, three days away, and the press has returned en masse. Reporters swarm the Valmont, lobbing questions at anyone who passes by. It’s a mess for everyone coming or going. Where the hell could my family be?
I text Lawrence:
Where are you guys
No reply.
The silence in this house is a beating heart, alive and pulsing with darkness. It weighs me down, makes me sluggish even as my mind races.
Why didn’t you wake me up? Where’s Eleanor?
I’m jangly being in my childhood bed. Paranoid about Haggerty. There’s a low-grade buzzing in my head.
I text Nate:
Where are you?
Nate has inherited his father’s self-absorption. They both lure me in then cast me out.
What are you doing? Where are you? Please reply!
Nothing, nowhere, silence.
I can’t stop thinking about Haggerty. Same question: I know what he wants; I just don’t know why. Why is it such a crusade? Why now? I look at the question from every angle, but the answer is encrypted, and I can’t crack the code. I have no one to ask except— “Hey, kid.” It’s Lawrence, upbeat and self-assured. His voice fills me with relief. He stands at my door, chewing on a straw like a man without a care in the world.
“Where were you?” My mind slows down, my body ramps up.
“Out for coffee.” He’s still chewing.
“And Eleanor?”
“With Billy and Nate, suit shopping.” He leans on the doorframe. Glances behind him. “Cassie, listen. DeFiore is coming over later, and we’ll take you through everything. I know I’m a broken record, but you have to prepare.”
I stop listening. I’m alone with Marcus. We’re in his house. His family is gone for the weekend. He’s drinking, and his mouth fills with whiskey. First, I smell it. He pats the couch. “Move closer.” Then I taste it. Whiskey burns on the tongue. It’s for grown-ups, a smell and taste I’ll forever associate with him, with wanting and needing and illicit secrets.
For an hour, Marcus’s sole focus is my pleasure. He touches and strokes until I am limp, until I am crying and begging, please, Marcus, please.
“Please what?” he wants to know.
Please, I think. It’s too much. “Please don’t stop” is what I say.
Marcus kisses me until there is nothing else, just his mouth, his tongue. His voice brings me along, steady and reassuring. His eyes are half-closed like he’s drugged. His fingers slide inside me. My own eyes close; I, too, am drugged.
Cassandra. His voice changes. It’s deeper, stronger. The voice of a man who isn’t amused, a man considering serious business. “Stay with me,” he says. I stay, of course I stay. Where else would I go? He is urgent. “I need you; I need you.” His palm hovers over my nipple. He brings it down slowly. He barely skims the surface, but the feeling the feeling the feeling. When he looks at me, there are tears in his eyes. There is nothing else; there is only this; only us. The stillest point of the turning world.
My body is between us, young, agile, flexible. I can’t live without you, he says. You own me, he says. Your tits, your pussy, your ass. I can’t live without these feelings, he says.
Suddenly, the therapist makes sense. Feel your feelings, she advised.
Our feelings dominate us, push us forward, make us dizzy, desperate. Our feelings reduce us to want. Our feelings clarify there is no turning back. We spend one night together. But for me that night is my whole future. That night, my life with Marcus is laid out, glamorous and heady, like a long red carpet unfurled in our honor. Together, we race toward the rest of our lives.
The story of Marcus + Cassie is a story of true love. It’s the story of a beautiful man’s beautiful voice; a voice that says, come be with me, come, Cassie. A voice I will follow to the ends of the earth then over the side. I wait and wait and wait, and now he is sliding into me, so strong and so hard. We are moving so closely. This is how you build a girl from the ground up, from the inside out; you give her a voice she can follow and then lead her forward. Wherever you go she is there because she is becoming a woman, she is becoming herself. I am coming, Marcus. I am, I am, I am.