“I do,” she said. “But I still want one.”
“I kinda do, too,” Cassie admitted. She looked at her watch. In Virginia, Alex Sokolov’s funeral was under way. She conjured in her mind a southern brick church with a clean steeple, and a sloping, manicured lawn that was a deep green. She thought of his parents and his extended family in the front pew, the wood polished and gleaming in the sun through the stained-glass windows. She saw black clothes and white handkerchiefs. She saw the old and the young, and in her head she heard their occasional, choked sobs. She heard laughter when someone shared a story about Alex that was charming or funny, or hinted at whatever it was that made him special.
Whatever it was…
How was it that she knew so little of the man who had died beside her in bed? How was that possible? But she knew the answer. Of course she did. The proof, as she was wont to joke, was in the proof. All that wine. All that vodka. All that arak.
By now, she supposed, the Sokolov family had been informed that the presumed killer—that alleged black widow—was not an expat American living in the Emirates, but a flight attendant living in the United States. She imagined the father demanding news and progress from the FBI, and someone from the Bureau reassuring him that the noose was tightening. An arrest was imminent.
But was it? The United Emirates couldn’t arrest her here. Unless this was deemed a terrorist act, neither could her own country. An extradition could take years. Was it possible that everyone in the world who followed this story would believe she was a killer and there was absolutely nothing they could do?
No, not nothing. There was still a civil sword of Damocles dangling by a thin thread above her. And the FBI was interested. That was a fact. That was why Ani was so worried about her.
She looked at her phone once again. Still nothing from either Frank Hammond or Ani Mouradian.
“Who in the world are you expecting to call you?” Rosemary asked. “You’re like a teenager, you’re checking your phone so much.”
“The airline,” she said. She figured she might as well use the same lie on her family that she had used on Buckley last night. “They might need me on the flight to Rome this evening.”
“I thought we were all having dinner together.” Her sister’s lips grew pursed.
“We are,” said Cassie. “It’s a long shot. I’m sure I’ll be here with you.” But she wasn’t sure. Despite the silence from both her lawyer and the FBI, she in fact wondered if she’d get to have dinner with them tonight. She had a canvas bag over her shoulder, and in it was the Romulus and Remus bookend she had stolen from the hotel in Rome and a pair of her own earrings. They were small gold cats she had bought years ago in an antique store in Frankfurt but had decided when she was back in America were too precious for a grown woman. This morning she had repackaged them in a little box from the greeting card store near her apartment and had brought them as a gift for her niece. She’d decided that she shouldn’t wait until Christmas to give her nephew the bookend—today might be her last (her only) chance—and so she wanted to be sure that she had a present for Jessica, too.
The word present gave her pause. A memory. Her mother reading aloud to her before bed in Kentucky. Her mother was sitting on the mattress beside her, and Cassie was perhaps six years old and curled against her in the narrow twin bed. They were leaning against Cassie’s headboard, and Cassie was already in her pajamas. The story tonight was one of Beverly Cleary’s books about Beezus and Ramona.
“Now, you sit here for the present,” her mother read aloud. In the book it was the first day of school, and a schoolteacher was telling Ramona to remain in her seat…for the moment. And so Ramona absolutely refused to move because she mistakenly believed there was a gift—a present—waiting for her if she sat perfectly still. Cassie recalled being so happy that evening. She had been roughly Ramona’s age, she was enjoying her own first days at school, and her mother was wearing a floral perfume that smothered the coppery scent that usually stuck to her when she came home from the wire factory where she was the receptionist.
Cassie heard the crowd around them laughing. One of the sea lions was using its flipper to shake the trainer’s paw and then gently slapped at the woman’s open hand as if giving the trainer a high-five.
“I’ve got something for you,” Cassie said to Jessica. The girl looked up at her. She was beaming. Clearly her niece loved the animals. Cassie noted that today she was wearing the starfish studs that Rosemary had given her when she had gotten her ears pierced at the start of the summer. “Consider it a back-to-school present,” she added, handing the girl the small box.
Tim turned toward his sister and smiled. “Oh, good. More stuff you can lose in that mess you call a bedroom.” Already the way her niece left her bedroom looking like it had been ransacked by drug addicts was legendary in the family. Apparently, she considered at least three or four outfits before school every day, leaving the rejects scattered on the rug or her bed or the window seat.
“I have something for you, too,” she told the boy, handing him the small, wrapped sculpture. “Jessica, I got your gift in Frankfurt. Tim, I got yours in Rome.”
“It’s heavier than it looks,” he said.
“God, your life sounds glamorous. Frankfurt. Rome. If people didn’t know better,” Rosemary murmured. Over the years, Cassie had shared with her sister dozens of the experiences—some appalling, some merely degrading—that came with the job, so she did know better.
“It does have its moments,” she admitted. Tim waited chivalrously for his younger sister to open the box before pulling apart the red tissue paper that swaddled his gift. The girl cooed when she saw the earrings, and Cassie bent over so her niece could hug her.
“I love them!” she said. Then, the words at once strange and precocious coming from a girl so young, she added, “They are perfectly elegant.”
Over her shoulder, Tim rolled his eyes.
“I’m glad you like them,” Cassie said. “Your turn,” she said to her nephew.
Tim pulled off the blue ribbon and then tore off the red tissue. “A sculpture,” he said simply, and for a moment Cassie thought of that old joke: When someone opens a gift and says aloud what it is—a juicer, a car vac, napkin rings—they hate it. And she felt bad. But the moment lasted only a second, because then he went on. “I know this story. It was in a book about the myths that was on my summer reading list. No one connects the twins to werewolves, but I think that’s the coolest link.”