Don't Scream. Wendy Corsi Staub
downside of having Garth move most of his research away from home is that it takes him away, too.
Too bad, Brynn was thinking just now, that her husband couldn’t be here to hear Caleb’s happy kindergarten chatter. As he plowed through his favorite meal of macaroni and cheese with ketchup, her older son regaled her with breathless details about snack time, potty time, lunchtime, nap time, construction-paper art time…
Waiting to share a more adult meal with her husband later, Brynn sat with her children at the table in her pretty blue and yellow kitchen. She was multitasking as usual: listening to Caleb’s ongoing account of his first day, overseeing Jeremy in his booster seat, and opening the day’s mail.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY…TO ME.
XOXOXOXO, R
She actually gasped aloud when she read it, dropping the card on the table like a red-hot coal. Then she snatched it up again…as if it mattered. Even if the boys could read cursive, they wouldn’t understand the seemingly innocuous message.
Nor would Garth, if he stumbles across the card—which he won’t, because she plans to hide it, just as she’s hidden the dark truth about Rachel all these years.
“Mommy, what’s wrong?” Caleb asks as she reaches for the phone.
She stammers some kind of reply, her thoughts reeling.
Her hands shaking so badly she can barely hit the right buttons on the dial, she can only think thank God, thank God, thank God Garth isn’t here.
Her husband doesn’t know what happened that night.
Nobody knows.
Nobody but her three sorority sisters who were there.
Or so Brynn always tried to convince herself, despite the nagging memory of that twig snapping in the forest.
Was somebody really spying on them?
Did—does—somebody know?
As Alec pulls into the parking lot of her condo complex after a quick dinner at Mama Rossi’s, Cassie cradles on her lap the still-warm foil-wrapped package that contains her barely touched lasagna.
She’d have been content to leave it behind on the plate, but Alec insisted that she bring it back.
“I’ll eat it later, baby,” he told her, “as a midnight snack.”
Now she debates whether or not to tell him she’d rather be alone tonight. She could just come right out and say it—that she’s tired, and she has to be up early, and she’d rather he didn’t stay over.
Then again, maybe she shouldn’t be alone. Maybe she’s too spooked by that card she got in the mail. Maybe she’d feel more comfortable with Alec there, just in case…
Well, in case the bogeyman shows up.
She smiles faintly, remembering how Marcus used to torment her with bogeyman tales when they were kids, still living at home.
That was before they were both enrolled in fancy Connecticut boarding schools located well over an hour from their home in the city, and more than two hours from each other.
She was eleven when her parents sent her away. After that, she saw them and her beloved big brother only on holiday breaks and the occasional long weekend.
Summers were spent at sleepaway camp, which was fine with Cassie, actually. There were lots of horses at camp, and she would always rather ride than do anything else in the world.
She still feels that way.
“Alec,” she says abruptly, “I think you should sleep at your place tonight. I’ve got an early day tomorrow and…I’m just beat.”
He’s silent for a moment, busy steering into a spot in front of her building. Then he says, “Okay, baby, no problem.”
Her momentary relief that he didn’t argue is followed quickly by regret that he didn’t argue.
If he did, she would relent.
Because, looking up at the dark windows of her condo—she didn’t leave lights on; why didn’t she leave lights on?—she doesn’t want to venture inside alone.
Just in case she finds that she isn’t. Alone, that is.
“Do you want me to walk you in?” Alec asks, but he doesn’t shift the car into PARK.
He thinks I’m going to say no. He probably senses that I just need some solitude.
Her fiancé likes to brag that he’s getting pretty good at reading her moods. “By the time we walk down the aisle, I’ll be able to read your mind,” he often says lately.
But he isn’t reading it right now.
If he was, he’d come inside with her, and he’d turn on all the lights and look under the bed and inside all the closets.
Well, I don’t need him for that. I can take care of myself.
“No, you can go,” Cassie tells him. “Thanks for dinner.”
“See you tomorrow?”
“What’s tomorrow?”
“Friday,” he says, as if that’s all the answer she had in mind.
Oh. Right. He said “see you tomorrow” not because it’s any special occasion, but because they see each other every day now.
That’s what people do when they’re getting married. And after they’re married.
They see each other every day for the rest of their lives.
Till death do us part, Cassandra thinks, and suppresses an involuntary shudder as she plants a light kiss on her fiancé’s cheek and walks slowly up the path toward her darkened condo.
And so it’s begun.
I only wish I could be in four places at once tonight.
Yes, it would be a pleasure to personally witness their reactions to the day’s mail—to see the looks on their faces now that they know the secret isn’t theirs alone.
Listening to them is the next best thing.
The bugs have been in place for a long time now, in anticipation of today.
At first it was titillating to eavesdrop on even the most inane conversations: Fiona barking orders, Brynn reading to her children, Cassandra unenthusiastically planning her wedding, and Tildy…
Ah, Tildy’s private life yielded the most interesting gem of all.
Still, even that became tiresome after awhile.
It was all just mind-numbing chatter.
But not anymore.
“Fiona Fitzgerald Public Relations.”
Brynn is momentarily caught off guard by the unfamiliar voice. She was expecting Fee’s longtime office manager. Then she remembers that Sharon moved away last week—thus “abandoning” Fiona, as Fee so dramatically put it.
“Is…Is Fiona there?” she manages to get out to whoever just answered the phone.
“May I ask who’s calling, please?”
She clears her throat, but her voice still comes out sounding strangled. “Tell her it’s Brynn.”
“Brenda?”
“Brynn!”
“One moment.”
She flashes a reassuring smile at her sons, both of whom have stopped eating and are watching her worriedly.
“It’s okay, guys…Mommy just has to make a quick call, that’s all. I’ll be right with you.”
“Ketchup!” Jeremy bangs the table with his fists.