With her left foot, she rocked Connor in his infant seat, and she answered Ophelia’s questions. In the end, Ophelia had cried for her, and had called up the friend of a friend who had connections to an up-andcoming hotshot divorce attorney. When Cassie tried to refuse, Ophelia had looked at her pointedly. “You may not want a cent from him,” she said, “but you’ve got something Alex wants desperately. His son.”
Ophelia had been the one to go to the five banks where Cassie and
Alex had joint accounts, and using Cassie’sATMcards, she systematically withdrew a generous sum of money from each. She bought diapers and baby bottles for Connor, since Cassie had left without enough of these.
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. “Toni´ktuka hwo? 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.”
JUST PAST FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON, WHEN OPHELIA 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,”
