She reaches out, mittened hand to mittened hand, and gives my fingers one small, firm squeeze. A warning? A reassurance? I’m really not sure.
“So I suggest you be careful.”
Then she lets go and turns away, and walks, in her unhurried country-club glide, back toward the cluster of the other wives. By the time she rejoins them, she’s smiling again, asking somebody about a granddaughter in Greenwich.
I stand at the edge of the path with my mouth dry and my pulse thundering.
A whoop goes up from the men. Down at the tree line, the staff member has emerged from behind the hutches with one thumb up, which can only mean one thing.
Soon, the pheasants are coming.
27
CASS
At the cue from the Crispin Hunting Club staff member, all the men disperse to their shooting positions. The partners are giddy with glee; the associates look nervous.
Matvei, needless to say, is calm, cool, and collected. He’s literally the only one who doesn’t look like he’s about to Dick Cheney one or more of his colleagues.
The wives are not, of course, expected to shoot. As per usual, we’re decoration. Most of the women drift back toward the heated tent that’s been set up at the edge of the clearing—a canvas pavilion with portable space heaters, a coffee urn, and a tray of tiny cranberry scones to nibble on. Susan goes with them. She lifts the flap of the tent and disappears inside without a glance back.
A few of us stay outside, though. Some wives want to play along. Someone’s way-too-young second wife—blonde, named Tippi, I think, or maybe Bippi, or Pippi; one of those names that sound like an off-brand bath product—is being walked through the basics of holding a gun by her septuagenarian husband. Shegiggles over and over, which he seems to find charming. I’d put money on her wrist being broken by recoil before the morning is out.
I take the shotgun the staff hand me without comment. The wood of the stock is a warm honey color, polished to a shine, and the metal of the barrel has been chilled to a temperature that I can feel through my mitten. I break it open the way I saw Matvei do, peer down the barrels at nothing in particular, and snap it closed.
Clack.
Huh. That’s a satisfying little sound.
I’m directed to my position, a small, flagged spot at the edge of the clearing that’s been marked off with a length of orange tape staked into the frozen ground.
Raymond is somewhere down the line to my right; I can’t see him through the trees. Matvei is somewhere down the line to my left. I can’t see him, either. The other partners and associates have been spaced out along the edge of the woods, each in our own little zone of murderous possibility.
The world goes quiet. There’s just the wind in the birches. The crackling frost. Crows cawing, men coughing.
I stand there with my shotgun in the crook of my arm. I can’t stop thinking about Susan.
I won’t tell.But you should know something, sweetheart. There are no secrets in this firm.
What is that, even? Is that a kindness? A coded message? A fake-out?
Susan Oglethorpe has had forty-one years of practice in being underestimated by powerful men. What if I’m just the latest in a long line of idiots who looked at the diamond brooch on her lapel and decided she was harmless?
What if the entire potting shed monologue—Mr. Pell, the hay in the hair, the post-nup, all of it—was a carefully invented little aria designed to make me drop my guard while she’s off radioing the news to Bill from inside the heated tent?
What if right now, this very second, Bill is jogging through the snow toward Raymond’s position to lean in and mutter something into his ear, and Raymond’s face is going purple and pinched, and?—
I exhale into the cold air.
Stop it, Cassandra. You’re spiraling. If Susan wanted to torch you, she could have done it last night, in the doorway of The Ice Room.
She didn’t, though, did she? No. She walked away.
The least you can do is take the blessing without turning yourself into a basket case.
Below the Susan static, underneath all of it, my hand keeps wanting to drift to my belly. But even though it would be the exact kind of comfort I need right now, I don’t let it.
There are eyes everywhere out here, even the ones I can’t see. I picture Matvei standing on his mark, his coat swirling around his ankles in the stiff early morning breeze, his shotgun easy in his hands, his blue eyes scanning the line. I wonder if he can feel me thinking about him.
