If itishim, though, I’m ready to rip him a new asshole. I’ve given a lot of speeches in the day-and-a-half I’ve been here, mostly to the wall above my cot. Most of them are about how I am nevergoing to forgive him. They’re pretty convincing, if I do say so myself.
But somewhere between the third checkpoint and the fourth, a door in my head that I’ve been holding shut with both hands swings open, and out pours every selfish wish I’ve been pretending not to make.
Please be him. Please be him. Please, please, please be him.
I’ll forgive you anything if you came.
Just be on the other side of that door.
Collins keys us into a short, narrow corridor I’ve never seen, with doors set on both sides at uneven intervals, like a hotel that has been added onto a few too many times.
Some of the doors have little brass numbers, but most don’t. One of them, near the end, has a card slotted into a sleeve that reads:IN USE.
Collins stops in front of it. “Here you go.”
“What’s going on?” I ask.
She just grunts and swipes her card on the terminal. The lock thuds back, freeing the handle. She opens it up and gestures for me to enter.
I look at her one more time. Her face is hard and expressionless. She’s had years to learn how to iron it smooth, and there’s no trace of sympathy left. I won’t get any more answers out of her, that much is certain.
She is not, in any way, my friend.
I don’t have any of those left.
So with a swallow to steel my nerves, I turn and step inside, caught halfway between hope and horror.
This isn’t an attorney room—those come with tables and chairs, business spaces, places for serious talks to happen.
This is a conjugal visit room.
A double bed rests against one wall, with a maroon polyester coverlet pulled tight enough to bounce a quarter on. A laminate nightstand waits alongside, and in the corner is a single chair upholstered in industrial gray-blue tweed.
In that chair, with his ankle crossed over his knee and his hands folded on top of it, sits Senator Josiah DeMaris.
He wears his suit well. It’s a neat navy with a red tie knotted under his Adam’s apple in a perfect dimpled half-Windsor. Very presidential. His salt-and-pepper hair is freshly cut, his chin and cheeks freshly shaved. He smells, faintly, of the cologne he wore at his daughter’s wedding.
He smiles at me pleasantly. “Good to see you, Cassandra.”
The door clicks shut behind me. I hear the beep of Collins’s keycard and the clunk of the bolt dropping home into the frame. I’m locked in.
“Why don’t you sit down, sweetheart?” He gestures at the edge of the bed. “We’re going to have a chat, you and I.”
For obvious reasons, I have no intention of sitting on the bed. If the bed is where he wants me, it’s the last place on earth I want to go. I’ve had four years to earn my degree inWhat Happens When Men Like This Issue Bed-Related Commands,and let’s just say I graduated with honors.
Instead, I prepare myself for war.
The screaming in my head fades out slowly. I roll a fresh coat of emotional lacquer over all the tender parts of me.
Mama, I tell the baby,is gonna take a nap. Mommy needs to be the other one for a minute. The mean one, the violent one. The one who watched her sister get buried in a closed casket and swore then and there that she’d slaughter the man who did it if it was the last thing she ever did.
I let my mouth curl into a fanged smile. “Senator,” I purr, “you’ll have to forgive me for not dressing up. They didn’t tell me I had a gentleman caller.”
He laughs. “Oh, sweetheart,” he says, “I do like you. It’s a pity about what has to happen next.”
49
MAT
