“When I get this thing with Althea finished, then maybe you and I can be together, but not now. And I know that’s not right because you’ve waited so very long.”
“Waited so long for Althea?”
“No, of course not. Waited so long for me . Sometimes I think about it and I marvel that a little girl could make up her mind and never deviate from it. I could see it if you were born with a talent—say, to play the piano—and you grew up to be a concert pianist, but to see some man and set your heart on him and never let up even when you were an adult…” He looked at her with admiration in his eyes.
At last, at long, horrible last, Cassie was beginning to understand what he was saying. “When did you and I first meet?” she whispered.
Jeff squeezed her hands and smiled. “When you were twelve. It was just before Lillian and I got married and we found you facedown in a swimming pool. Do you know that you almost died?”
Cassie pulled her hands out of his. “And you’ve always known that I was that girl? Ever since you hired me?”
“Yes,” he said, but the smile left him. “Cassie, I kept track of you after that day at the pool. It was like I was responsible for you, so I kept in touch. Well, not in touch, exactly, but I kept tabs on you. I even had a copy of your grades in college sent to me.”
“My grades sent to you,” she said softly.
“Is something wrong? You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine. So you had my grades sent to you, then what?”
“Nothing. After Lillian…died, I lost touch with you for a while, but then you started calling me about the nannies.”
“I called you about the nannies?”
“Sure,” he said, smiling again. “When they didn’t show up, that sort of thing. I can tell you that I was impressed that you’d managed to get a job at Elsbeth’s nursery school. You have a degree in American history but there you were, wiping snotty noses.”
“But you knew that I’d done it to be near you,” Cassie said quietly.
“Yeah,” Jeff said. “I knew it and I was pleased by it. It was good of you. But I didn’t know why you’d done it until you asked me for the job of taking care of my daughter.”
“Then you understood everything.”
“Yeah. Cassie? Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. Tell me about the part where you love me.”
Again, he took her hands. “Of course I fell in love with you right away. How could any man not love you? You’re—”
“Trustworthy and sweet,” Cassie said.
“Yes,” he said hesitantly. “But you make it sound as though those are bad traits. I think they’re wonderful.”
“But of course you’d want someone trustworthy and sweet to take care of your daughter and your father. Tell me, I’m just curious: Why didn’t you tell me that you loved me when you decided you did?”
“The time wasn’t right.”
“I see,” Cassie said, moving just a bit away from him. “And why should you tell me? You had a great life as it was. I was taking care of your home, your daughter, your father, and Skylar was taking care of your body. What more could you want in life?”
“Ah, I see. You’re angry about Skylar. There’s more to that than I can tell you about.”
“I know. Something about her father. But then, you didn’t have to explain things to me, did you? I was just good ol’ Cassie, quietly living in your home, baking myself into a stupor to take care of your life and your family. Why should you have to explain anything to me? Sweet, trustworthy Cassie, who had been in love with you since she was twelve years old. Tell me, Jeff, now, when you told me you were in love with me, what did you expect me to do?”
“Cassie, you’re taking this wrong. What was I supposed to do when I first saw you at Elsbeth’s school? Embarrass you by telling you that I knew you were the girl who’d hidden in the bushes and followed me around when she was a kid? I couldn’t do that to you.”
“So, instead, you let me call you, not Dana, as it was on Elsbeth’s cards, and tell you about the nannies. Then you let me ask you to give me a job that entailed living in your house. And you let me move in and take care of every aspect of your life. Tell me, Jeff, how hard did you laugh on those nights when I went downstairs when I knew you were down there alone?”
“Cassie, it wasn’t like that. If you knew how much I wanted to take you in my arms and tell you what I felt—”
“But you didn’t, did you? You let me do your laundry. You even let me mend your clothes. You let me do everything for you, all while you knew what I had done. I made you my lifelong goal, isn’t that what you said? I was like my mother and set myself out a goal, then I went after it. I’ll have to call her and tell her that I am just like her. I’m sure she’ll be so proud. She may not agree with my goal, but she’ll certainly understand that I went after it without so much as a thought about my dignity or my self-respect. The truth is that I never thought about myself at all.”
“Cassie,” Jeff said, reaching for her as she got up. He stood up and tried to take her arm, but she pulled back. “Let’s talk about this. We’ll talk this through and maybe we can work things out.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, glaring at him. “That in order to keep your maid, nanny, and cook, you’ll what? Decide that you can find time for me? Or maybe you’re going to tell me that you aren’t in love with Skylar after all, that you were just hinting that you were going to marry her for some reason that has to do with her father?”
“It’s a great deal bigger than that,” Jeff said, his hands at his side. “There are things in my life that you know nothing about. Cassie, you can be angry with me all you want, but I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Okay, so tell me all about your life,” she said.
“I can’t. I can’t tell you anything. I made a mistake in allowing you to get involved with Althea, and I made a mistake allowing you to come here.”
“‘Allowing me?’ Is that what you said? Oh, I see. You think that since you’ve known me since I was a kid that you need to take care of me. But then you said that, didn’t you? What was it you said? You’re responsible for me.”
“Cassie, please don’t do this. There are things that I can’t tell you. Things about Lillian’s death that influence every decision in my life.”
“I’m willing to listen,” she said.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
“Well, that’s that, then,” she said.
“Cassie…,” he began as he reached for her. “I think I made a mess of everything. I’ve hurt you when I never meant to. I’ve worked hard to keep it light between us. I can’t begin to tell you how difficult it’s been to have you in my house and not be able to touch you. I wanted to do things like tonight.”
“Dance?”
“Yes. That and more. You’ve been good to all of us. You’ve made our lives pleasant and easy. You’ve—”
“Saint Cassandra who does a strip on the countertop.”
“I could have done without that,” Jeff said, grinning, but she didn’t smile back.
“This has been a lot of information,” Cassie said. “I’m going to have to think about it all.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jeff said. “Cassie—”
She put up her hand. “I’ve heard more than I can process tonight,” she said, then went into the bedroom, shut the door, and began to quietly pack her bag.
Thirty minutes later, she heard the shower running. She picked up her bag, tiptoed out of the room, and took Jeff’s keys off the top of the dresser in his bedroom. She slipped the car key off the ring and left the others. Silently, she left the cabin, got into his car, and drove away into the night. There was only one place and one person who she knew to go to: Althea.
15
Six Months Later
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
CASSIE STEPPED OFF THE TREADMILLand mopped the sweat off her face.
“One hour?” her trainer, Xavier, said,
and she nodded, then made a face at his back. He was a man who was very aware of his clients. If they ate a muffin, he could tell. When Cassie first enrolled in his program, he’d been very polite and had listened to all her likes and dislikes about exercising. She’d told him the truth, that she was a woman who would much rather spend the afternoon baking than doing lunges. She told him the exercises she hated and the ones she enjoyed.
What she didn’t understand was that he was asking her so he knew what to give her to do. If she hated an exercise or was afraid of something, then that’s what he assigned her to do. She was afraid of heights, so he spent six weeks making her climb a rock face. When she’d managed to make it up the side of his plastic mountain in five minutes, he took her to a bigger rock.
For six months she’d done little but work out. She’d started with two thirty-minute sessions a week with Xavier, and alone on the treadmill three times a week, feeling like she was going to faint after a mere ten minutes. After a month, she was able to increase her sessions to three times a week and spend forty-five minutes at a time running. By six weeks, she’d added a yoga class and kickboxing.
After three months, Cassie started taking advantage of Fort Lauderdale’s divine weather and going outside. A man from the gym asked her on a date, and she spent a day on a boat with six other people and had a great time. She took along some cupcakes she’d baked, and the others raved about them so much that she enrolled in a cooking course.
After four months, Cassie had lost a lot of weight and her body was toned and hard. And she was beginning to think that she could have a life without Jefferson Ames.
But she still thought about him. And she thought about Thomas and, most of all, Elsbeth. Althea kept Cassie informed about what was happening in Williamsburg, and she was now able to look at it from a distance.
That hadn’t been so on the night she’d fled the cabin in Jeff’s car. She’d driven straight to Althea’s house, arriving there just as the sun was coming up. On the long drive, she blasted the radio and sang along with it, trying to be loud enough to hold off crying. If she cried, she wouldn’t be able to see where she was going, and she didn’t relish having a car wreck.
Althea was in bed, but Rosalie, the housekeeper, took one look at Cassie and led her back to her mistress’s bedroom. Althea was wearing a gorgeous gown of champagne silk. Without makeup, she looked years older, but infinitely sweeter than Cassie had ever seen her—like everyone’s image of the perfect grandmother. Althea pulled back the comforter, and said, “Tell me what he’s done.” There seemed to be no question that a “he” was the cause of all the problems.
Cassie climbed into the bed and told Althea everything, from the beginning to the end, all while crying and blowing her nose on Althea’s scented tissues.
“I want to make sure I understand what you’re telling me,” Althea said. She had put on her makeup while Cassie unburdened herself, and now she was again the Great Lady. “Let me see if I have this correct. You tried to get a man by dedicating your life to him?”
“Sort of,” Cassie said, sniffing.
“And of course you’ve spent a long time trying to show him how good you are by being a dutiful wife and mother. And you were always there when he came home.”
“Yes.”
“And you were completely reliable?”
“Jeff called me trustworthy.” Cassie blew her nose loudly.
Althea shook her head in disbelief. “Truly horrible. You know, don’t you, that you went about everything in exactly the wrong way.”
“I don’t know any other way,” Cassie said.
Althea leaned toward her. “Don’t you know that men haven’t moved on from the cave? Oh, they may wear tuxedos and pretend they’re civilized, but they’re not. In their minds, they still live in caves and eat meat all day and love to fight. Only now they watch it on TV.”
Cassie gave a little smile.
“You think I’m joking, but I’m not. Men are still hunters. No matter that they say they’re tree huggers, they aren’t. What you did to Jeff was a horrible thing.”
“Me? What did I do? I took care of his home. I—”
“I know all that,” Althea said. “You took away Jeff’s right to hunt. Men want to stalk their prey. They want their prey to put up a fight so they can sit around the campfire and brag about what they had to do to kill it.”
“You’re saying I made it too easy for him,” Cassie said.
“You were a doe that walked into his cave, sat down on his lap, and offered up your throat to be cut.”
“That’s an ugly image.”
“You know what I think?” Althea said. “I think that your imagined love for Jeff got you through a loveless childhood.”
“But the real Jeff is a nice guy. Or I thought he was. But all this time he knew that I was…that I was…” Cassie’s tears began again.
“What he knew was that he didn’t have to fight for you. Do you know anything about his late wife?”
“According to Jeff, she was a saint.”
“No, not that. What about her circumstances in life?”
“She was rich. My mother said she was a class above Jeff.”
“There you go,” Althea said. “Getting her was a struggle. A hunt. A fight.”
“So you’re saying that I need to make Jeff fight for me?”
“I’m saying that you need to dump that idiot man and find one who wants to slay dragons to win you.”
“I think you’re right,” Cassie said slowly. “I know that if I ever have to see him again, I’ll die of embarrassment. But what about Thomas and Elsbeth? I can’t bear to think of not seeing them ever again.”
“Cassie, you need to think about you .”
“I’m not very good at that,” she said.
“Obviously,” Althea said under her breath. “I’m going to outline a new plan for you and you’re going to follow it.”
“I’m going to need a new job. I can’t stay here.” The thought of being far away from Thomas and Elsbeth made Cassie start crying again. “It’s so unfair. All I did was fall in love and—”
“Do stop whining,” Althea said. “It’s beginning to give me a headache. Do you have any money?”
“I have about four thousand in the bank.”
“That’s nothing. Tell me, this mother of yours, does she earn a lot of money?”
“I read in Forbes that last year she got a bonus of three million.”
“And how much of that did she share with you?”
“None. But then I wouldn’t dream of asking her for money.”
“Well, start dreaming, girl. Or in your case, stop dreaming and do something. You’re going to go to your mother and—”
“Oh, no, I’m not,” Cassie said firmly. “I would rather live on the streets than ask my mother for anything. I’d rather—”
“I’m going to give you some things to do and you need the freedom to do them. You can’t be trapped in a nine-to-five job.”
Cassie looked at her suspiciously. “What kinds of things do you want me to do?”
“A little acting, that’s all, but you need time to prepare for the role.”
“I can’t act.”
“Oh? And what have you been doing for the last year? Haven’t you been acting like you weren’t crazy in love with Jefferson Ames?”
“I guess so,” Cassie said, then looked at Althea. “If I’m to do work for you, then maybe I could get a salary from you. I could—”
“No, it doesn’t work that way. I’m no therapist, but I think it’s necessary for you to face that mother of yours.”
“I can do that, it’s just asking her for money that I hate.”
“Cassie, as far as I can tell, you never ask anyone for anything. And unless you want to spend the rest of your life being the girl everyone takes advantage of and no one loves, then you are going to your mother. And you’re going to do exactly what I tell you to.”
“What’s the difference?” Cassie mumble
d. “I’m being bullied by you or her.”
Althea took Cassie’s hands in her own. “There comes a time in every girl’s life when she must deal with her mother. You may not think so, but you need her.”
“Like you need your daughter?”
Althea tried to pull away, but Cassie held on.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Cassie said. “I’ll meet with my mother, I’ll even hit her up for money, but only if you agree to contact your daughter. And you have to invite the whole family here for Christmas.”
Althea pulled her hands away and stiffened. “I can’t do that. There are things you know nothing about and they—”
“Such as whatever part Roger Craig plays in your life? And Leo Norton? And of course there’s Brent, who has to be the worst gardener in the world.”
Althea laughed. “Keep your eyes open, don’t you? All right, I’ll do it. Rosalie will like having lots of kids to cook for—if they come, that is.”
“Even if your daughter isn’t interested in you, I bet her daughters are. “
“What a good idea!” Althea said. “I’ll send invitations to each one of them, not just my daughter. She can stay home and sulk if she wants to.”
Cassie laughed. “Okay, so now what do we do? Do I go groveling to my mother and beg?”
“Not by a long shot,” Althea said. “When I get through with you, your bully of a mother will grovel to you.”
“That would be something I’d like to see.”
In the end, Cassie did fly to New York and did meet with her mother. And she dealt with her in a way that Althea had made her rehearse. “There isn’t a personality type that I haven’t played or played against,” she said, obviously enjoying herself immensely. They went to the attic and Althea had Cassie dress as close to her mother as possible. The wool suit wouldn’t button over her chest, but it was enough that she felt as though she looked like Margaret Madden. Cassie pulled her thick hair back from her face and tied it in a severe bun.
For over an hour, she and Althea took turns playing the roles of Margaret and Cassie. Althea was a better bully than Margaret was in person, but Cassie was finally able to stare her down, to sit up and not be intimidated by her mother’s aggression.