Magdalene (59 page)

“So how’s the little chef?” I asked once
they returned. “Vanessa. And that stud of a politician of hers?
They’ve dropped off the tabloids’ radar.”

“Oh!” Eilis said, suddenly animated. “OKH
Enterprises is about to become the full owner of a five-star resort
with a PGA-rated golf course.”

I stared at her. “What?”

“Vanessa,” Knox rumbled, “has chosen love
over her career.”

“Ah, but so has Eric,” Justice said smugly.
“We’re about to play a very dirty trick on them.”

“Sheer genius, sweetheart,” Knox murmured as
he leaned in to kiss Justice.

Nigel, Gordon, and Clarissa were completely
lost at this turn in the conversation. While Knox told us the tale
of his star-crossed wards, we sat around the table drinking wine
and eating Whittaker House pastries. Hilliard was a good
storyteller, and kept us rapt for the better part of two hours as
he spoke.

“That’s sweet,” Clarissa sighed when he
finished.

“It’s so O. Henry,” Gordon said with a
laugh.

I looked at Justice. “You’re taking Eric’s
place, then? The new county prosecutor?”

She nodded.

“How old are you?” Clarissa asked abruptly,
bringing the goodwill of the conversation to a halt.

“Twenty-eight,” Justice said kindly.

“Oh.”

I looked at Clarissa. I knew what she was
thinking. This young woman, not even thirty and only three years
older than she, would be the head law enforcement officer of an
entire county while Clarissa had never had a job.

Apparently, Knox understood, too.
“Clarissa,” he murmured, “the nice thing about UMKC is that half
the people there are older than you. It’s not a party school.”

“I graduated from law school when I was
thirty-seven,” Giselle added.

“But as Giselle can tell you,” Knox
continued, “I’m a lot harder on people I care about than I am on
anybody else.”

Clarissa stared at him, gulped, then blinked
rapidly to get rid of the sudden sparkle in her eyes that this man
she’d worshipped from afar for so long had said he cared about
her.

“Actually,” Giselle said, “he’s an asshole,
so fair warning.”

We spent most of the evening talking,
laughing.

Forgetting.

Getting to know each other the way I’d
wanted to, with good food and good wine and good conversation.

But as the evening went on, I enjoyed myself
less and less, sitting there at the table alone, surrounded by
everyone but my love. I ached with missing him. Granted, he was
only upstairs, but I wanted him here, with me, with our families,
participating actively in our good time.

I stood during a lull in the conversation.
“I’m going to bed,” I said abruptly, unable to partake any longer
while Mitch slept. “You all know where your suites are.”

There was a chorus of “Good night, Cassie”s
all around as I left the kitchen, but a hand on my arm halted me
just as I reached the stairs. That bad-tempered bitch Giselle—who
had flown halfway across the country to give me what I needed to
understand Mitch, a predator my equal who had matched me insult for
insult, with whom I’d had more fun shopping than I’d ever had with
anyone—hugged me tight.

And I returned it, just as tightly.

“Good luck, Cassie,” whispered my frenemy,
her voice trembling. “He’s going to need all the love and strength
you can give him, and it’s going to take a long time. Trust
me.”

* * * * *

Nisan 15

April 23, 2011

I’m not sure any of us slept well that
night, except for Mitch, who snorted occasionally as he changed
positions and pulled me to him in his sleep.

Most of us were up early Saturday morning,
dragging, and decided to go to the local hash house for the
breakfast buffet. We spoke little. Hilliard and the Kenards had
dark circles under their eyes. Even Sebastian looked a little
haggard and he shrugged when I pointed it out.

“I’m not
happy
about it, Cassie,” he
muttered. “He’s my best friend, my brother. Why wouldn’t I hurt for
him?”

It was like someone had died, and maybe, in
a way, Mitch had, sleeping off his grief like a frat boy after a
week-long bender.

“Shit, still in bed,” Sebastian muttered
when we all arrived home and I checked on him.

“Midas,” Eilis said sweetly, “we can’t all
function indefinitely on two hours a night. Sometimes people have
to make it up.”

I stared at him. “Two hours a night? I never
could figure out how you got so much done.”

“Now, see, if you’d called me while you were
putting your thesis together, I would’ve told you that.”

Bryce opened the doors of the library and
stood in the threshold, surveying the damage.

“And this is after Cassie and I got it
cleaned up,” Trevor murmured.

“I’ve never known him to lose control like
that,” Sebastian said as he brushed past Bryce to enter it. “It
worries the hell out of me.”

“It was...frightening,” I whispered.

Mitch hadn’t been able to hold back his
nature one more minute, once I’d touched him in the middle of his
rampage. He’d shocked me with what had come out of his mouth, that
feral look on his face, the raw sexuality I’d seen evidence of on
the dance floor.

It had taken a knife cutting his heart out
to elicit that response, a response I could’ve lived without the
rest of my life if it meant he wouldn’t have had to suffer that
kind of soul-deep pain. I would rather give him up completely than
watch that again, those big muscles under that fine suit coat
gathering magnificently as he swung a fire poker like a baseball
bat at his precious bookcases, his precious books—only a cipher for
what he
really
wanted to destroy.

Oh, I loved the sex and I wanted more of
that from him, wanted that passionate, unfettered young Mitch to
rise up and devour me—but not at
that
price.

“Okay, well,” Morgan boomed, “let’s get that
window boarded and tidy up as much as we can.”

Prissy and Steve and their tax deductions
dropped by that afternoon amidst the sawing and hammering to check
on Mitch. As Mitch’s first counselor, Steve would be effectively
serving as the bishop until a new one could be called.

(Poor Prissy.)

“He’s sleeping,” I said without preamble.
“It’s been a hard couple of weeks for him.”

“I wish he’d said something,” Steve
murmured. “Asked for help. We would’ve gone to bat for him.”

“He was waiting for
the Lord
to go to
bat for him, and at the moment, I am not impressed by the way
the Lord
treats his employees.” They both flinched. “Does
Louise know about this?”

They exchanged glances, then Prissy looked
down at the floor, her hands in her back jeans pockets. “Louise is
too...occupied right now to think about it.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, wondering if
another person Mitch trusted had abandoned him.

“She is dealing with a sudden death in the
ward. That’s one of the things the Relief Society president does,
you know, especially when there’s no family. Arranges funerals and
burials. You know.” She continued to spew nonsense.

“Prissy,” I growled.

She took a deep breath and dashed tears away
with one hand, but it was Steve who offered, “Inez...overdosed.
Yesterday. Louise is dealing with it, making the arrangements.”

“We didn’t know if Mitch would want to
know,” Prissy muttered. “Figured it would be best to let you make
that call.”

I stood there stunned.

But not.

“Did she leave a note?”

Prissy looked away, rubbing at her nose.

“She did,” Steve said when Prissy didn’t
answer. “It just said, ‘I’m past desperate.’”

Whatever that meant. “Excuse me,” I
murmured. It only took a minute to find what I was after, but when
I returned, I found the Seaton tax deductions hanging from
Clarissa’s arms, the three of them giggling madly as she swung them
around the large foyer.

It was like seeing the first yellow crocus
of spring pop up through the snow.

I handed my credit card to Prissy. “Spend
whatever you need. Just make it nice and call me with the date.
And, oh,” I said after we’d exchanged hugs, “I thought you should
know. Your hunch was right.”

Her mouth tightened.

“But don’t worry,” I said with the kind of
cheer displayed only in laundry detergent commercials. “I’ll deal
with it.”

She nodded and they all left, the Seaton
children waving frantically at their new friend.

When Sebastian, Bryce, Eilis, Justice,
Nigel, and I decided to play Monopoly, Gordon announced his
intention to drop in on a nearby rare book dealer.

“I’ll go with you,” Giselle said, and after
quick kisses to their respective spouses, they were out the
door.

I looked at Nigel and said, “I thought the
library in your house was yours.”

He shook his head. “All Gord’s. He’s turned
into something of an expert at spotting valuable books. Spends a
lot of time at estate sales, used book stores. Goes online and
helps people figure out what they have.”

“Well, at least now Giselle has somebody to
talk to about that stuff,” Bryce murmured absently as he played his
turn. “Her training’s in literature, so maybe he can take the heat
off me and I won’t have to act like I know what the hell she’s
talking about.”

“I don’t like playing games with her,
anyway,” Sebastian muttered. “She’s a sore loser.” Bryce nodded in
agreement.

Morgan, Knox, Trevor, and Clarissa availed
themselves of the billiards room adjacent to the library.

While the others set up the game table, I
headed upstairs to check on Mitch, who lay on his side snoring
slightly.

Glass of water on the nightstand...

Open bottle of Tylenol PM on the bathroom
counter...

A smear of toothpaste in the sink and a wet
toothbrush on the shelf...

Wadded-up towel on the floor...

I breathed a sigh of relief that he was not,
in fact, comatose, and could take care of himself. He simply needed
time for his mind, body, and spirit to decompress.

When I smoothed the coarse hair at his
temple and dropped a kiss there, his cheek wrinkled with a smile,
but he didn’t awaken.

Hours later, I was left alone at the
Monopoly table with Kenard, the two of us having become tacit
allies in order to have a chance at beating Sebastian, and now, as
the last players standing, we were playing against each other.
Everyone else had gone to bed.

“What happened?” I asked, point blank.

He looked up at me with those gorgeous green
eyes of his. “What happened when?”

“To you.”

He took a deep breath and then released it
slowly, sat back, and wiped his hand down his heavily scarred face.
He looked down at the floor and tapped his token on the arm of the
chair. “A lot of things converged,” he rasped finally. “What I’d
been taught about the Church, about what we believe—it wasn’t
right. Everything else was predicated on that, all the choices I
made, particularly the woman I married, who pretty much destroyed
me. It’s taken me a long time to relearn it all. To recover my
personality and my faith, to be okay with both and learn how they
work together, figure out they aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“And you believe?”

He pursed his lips. “If there’s a chance,”
he said slowly, “that I can be with Giselle and my kids forever,
I’ll take it. I’ll jump through whatever hoops I have to. If there
is no chance, then my jumping through the hoops won’t make any
difference. I will do whatever I have to do to make Giselle happy
and this is something she really wants. See, she— She gives me some
frame of reference for what’s important and what’s not. She’s the
only thing I’ve ever had to hold onto.” He stopped. Started again.
“If it weren’t for her, I’d have blown my brains out long ago and I
got pretty damned close a couple of times before I met her, got to
know her. She gave me hope, gave me a reason to keep going.”

I blinked. “So this is hitting a little too
close to home for you.”

“Oh, yeah. I spent years serving in the
Church. I hadn’t made it to bishop by the time my house burned, but
it probably wouldn’t have been long before I did. I know how it is,
spending all that time caring for other people when you’ve got a
bundle of your own problems at home you can’t tend to. Serving the
Lord. You’re told from the time you can walk that if you do
everything right, the Lord will bless you. Well, okay. The more I
served, the worse my life got. What’s the take-home message
there?”

Mitch and Bryce, two sides of the same coin.
Mitch had been driven to succeed at it despite the odds, and Bryce
had simply been trying to keep his head above water—but Mitch had
had a supportive and loving wife, while Bryce had spent those years
fighting an abusive spouse, protecting the children she bore.

“So here we are,” Bryce was saying, “the
same age. Both of us born and raised in the Church. Returned
missionaries. Married in the temple. Taught the same things.
Promised the same blessings. Served in most of the same positions.
But. I did the deed
and
I took my wife down with me, so the
least I can do is be gracious about it and say, hey. I deserved
what I got. Mitch, though— He kept his honor and this freak thing
happens and he gets hung out to dry? I don’t know what to think. I
don’t know what it means.
Again.
Giselle keeps telling me
it’s just naïve men trying to do what they think is right,
but...”

“That’s what Mitch keeps telling me, too,” I
murmured.

He looked around, at the broken barrister
cases and the books piled haphazardly on the hearth. “You know,
when you walk into a man’s house and he’s destroyed his library and
thrown an iron rod through a window, you kind of figure he doesn’t
believe that.”