Picture Perfect (46 page)

While Ophelia was gone, Cassie rocked Connor to sleep and set him on the bed that had been hers four years earlier. Then she went into the living room and pulled down the shades, as if people might already be looking in. She reached for the telephone and dialed the number of the pay phone at the feed and grain in Pine Ridge; the place managed by Horace; the place from which she had called Alex a month and a half before.

“Cassie!” Horace said, and in the background she could hear the shuffles and grunts of elderly Lakota men bent over the barrels of rolled oats. She heard the cries of children running to the counter, asking for the free spiced gumdrops. “
 How are you doing?”

For the first time since she'd taken a taxi from Alex's house, Cassie let her courage waver. “I've been better,” she admitted in a small voice. “Horace,” she said. “I need a favor.”

 

J
UST PAST FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON
,
WHEN
O
PHELIA WAS OUT AT
the park with Connor, the telephone rang. Cassie picked it up with a shaking hand. “Hello?” she said, a little more loudly than she had intended, wondering what she would do if Alex's voice responded. But then she heard Will, tinny and hesitant over a bad connection, praying her name. She bent over, relief having kicked all the air from her lungs.

“Cassie?” Will repeated.

“I'm here,” she said. She paused, trying to string together her words.

“What did he do?” Will said into the silence. “I'll kill him.”

“No,” Cassie said calmly. “You won't.”

In Pine Ridge, with a teenage kid stacking oats to his left, Will banged his fist against the wall. He knew, without being told, that Alex had gone after her again. He understood that the phone number Horace had tracked him down to give him was not Cassie's. He was powerless, a thousand miles away, and he waited to see what, exactly, she wanted from him. He did not let himself hope, and he would not let himself offer, but he knew that if she asked he would come for her and hide her forever.

“I'm getting a divorce,” Cassie said. “I'm going to hold a press conference.”

Will leaned his forehead against the sharp corner of the pay phone. The Hollywood media would rip her apart on their way to destroying Alex. “Forget about it,” he heard himself say. “Come with me to Tacoma.”

“I can't keep running away. And I don't want you to rescue me.” Cassie took a deep breath. “I think it's high time I rescued myself.”

But even as she said the words, her shoulders began to quiver and her body slid deeper into the cushions of the sofa, as if she could no longer muster the support to keep herself upright.

“Cassie, honey,” Will said gently, “why did you call me?”

She was shivering so violently she did not think she'd be able to speak. “Because I'm scared,” she whispered. “I am so damn scared.”

Will thought about telling her she wasn't alone; about hopping on a plane to L.A. and driving to wherever she was and kissing her until her body stopped trembling with fear and flowed into his. He wondered how he could be such a fool that he'd trade his heart to a woman who would probably love someone else for the rest of her life.

Instead he forced his voice to be steady and clear. “Cassie,” he said, “you got a mirror around there?”

Cassie smiled ruefully. “Ophelia's got three in the hall alone,” she said.

“Well, get up and stand in front of one.”

Cassie made a face. “This is stupid,” she said. “I need more than some dumb dramatic exercise.” But she stood up and walked to the mirror, looking at her swollen eyelids, her bruised jaw.

“Well?”

“I look awful,” Cassie said, rubbing her eyes and her nose. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“The bravest person I've ever met,” Will said.

Cassie pulled the receiver closer to her ear, sinking into his statement like a cat in the sun. She was reminded of how, when she had first married Alex, he would call her at her office and, like teenagers, they'd whisper for hours behind the closed door about their future, their passion, their uncanny luck in finding each other.

Cassie stared at her face in the mirror. “I've never been to Tacoma,” she said, and with her best attempt at a smile, she tucked Will's words inside her and took from them his strength.

 

“W
HEN DID THE BEATINGS START
?”

“Did you know about this before you got married?”

Cassie let the questions puddle at her feet. She glanced behind her, at Ophelia and Connor, for support.

“Are you in love with him?”

She didn't have to answer; she knew that. But she wanted to. If she was going to make the world see Alex as some kind of monster, it was also up to her to make the world see him as the wonderful, warm, caring man who had made her feel complete.

The best approach, she rationalized, would be to make a joke of the question, as if it had been ridiculous in the first place. “You can ask that of nearly any woman in this country,” Cassie said lightly. But her voice broke gently over the words. “Who
isn't
in love with him?”

She looked up, searching the rows of reporters as if she was seeking someone out in particular, and then she saw the man in the back corner. She hadn't noticed him before, but then again she hadn't been looking. He was wearing a wool peacoat with the collar pulled up, something far too warm for the day. His face was buried close to his chest, and his eyes were hidden by aviator sunglasses.

Alex looked directly at Cassie and tugged off his sunglasses. He stuffed them into the breast pocket of the coat. Cassie could not tear her gaze from him. He was not angry. Not the slightest bit. It was as if he understood. She caught her breath, checking again to see what she had missed, what he was trying to tell her.

“One more question,” she whispered, her eyes locked to the spot where Alex stood.
Why this way? Why now? Why us
?

She feebly pointed to a man in the front row of the conference room. “If you could say anything to him now,” the reporter asked, “without any fear of retaliation on his part, what would you tell him?”

She thought she saw tears glittering in Alex's eyes, and his hand came up from his side as if he was going to reach out to her.
Don't
, Cassie pleaded silently.
If you do, I might follow
. And just like that, his arm fell loose again, his fingers stroking the rough wool of the coat. “I'd say what he always said to me,” Cassie whispered to him. “I never meant to hurt you.”

She closed her eyes to compose herself before she dismissed the media crowd that had gathered at her request. When she opened them again, she was still staring at the spot where seconds ago Alex had been standing, but he was no longer there. She shook her head as if to clear it, and wondered if he had really ever been there at all.

Without another word, she turned away from the podium, carefully tucking the back of her blouse back into her skirt. The reporters continued to take pictures and videos of her leaving the hotel conference room: picking up her baby, slinging the diaper bag over her shoulder, moving forward woodenly.

She made her way through the red velvet lobby with people already beginning to stare. Pushing through the revolving door, she stepped onto the sidewalk, drinking the air with huge, heaving gulps.

I did it, I did it, I did it
. The heels of Cassie's shoes tapped this refrain on the concrete as she walked to the end of the block. She moved quickly, as if she were late for an important appointment. Downtown L.A. was busy at lunchtime. Standing at the corner, Cassie clutched Connor to her chest as they were dodged by businessmen and bicycle messengers and beautiful women carrying shopping bags.

There was nothing specific, really, that made her look up. No noise, no bright light, no inspiration. But at that moment, slicing through the heat and the smog overhead, was a circling eagle. She waited for someone else to point at the sky, to notice, but people only shoved and jostled past, wrapped up in their own lives.

She turned Connor's face, so that he could see it too.

Cassie shielded her eyes from the sun, watching the bird fly east. Long after the eagle had disappeared, she stared at the unbounded sky; and even when the flow of human traffic increased and funneled around her, she did not lose her footing.