“Don’t sound impressed. It’s lazy on his end. The point is the ticking clock. Six weeks. That’s our window.”
I’m nodding so much I probably look like a bobblehead. But I’m doing some other, very important math in my head as I do it, and my brain is screaming at me, because six weeks is also approximately the amount of time I have left before my belly stops being a secret I can continue to hide under a backless emerald gown.
I haven’t gone to a doctor yet; I haven’t dared. But I know that, give or take six weeks from tonight, I’ll be past the point where Spanx can save me. And there is no excuse on God’s green earth that explains a pregnancy to a husband who hasn’t touched his wife in months.
Six weeks it is, then.
If Raymond isn’t dead by that point…
…I’llbe dead soon afterward.
“Six weeks,” I repeat. “Got it.”
“Good.” Matvei’s thumb brushes the inside of my wrist, and I almost forget to breathe. “One more thing. We can’t be seen together. Not like this. Not ever, if we can help it.”
“Pity.”
“Which means we need a way to talk that isn’t running into each other in coat closets.”
“Not that I haven’t enjoyed the ambiance,” I interject. “Sorry. Bad habit. Defense mechanism, as my therapist tells me. Anyway, continue.”
His brow is furrowed and serious. “So I’ll get you a burner phone.”
“How? Raymond goes through my purse. In a frisky mood, he’ll check my coat pockets. He’s been known to go through my tampon boxes when he’s feeling especially paranoid. A real prince amongst men, in other words.”
“I’ll figure it out,” Matvei says. “I’m good at this, remember? I’ll find a way to get it to you. You won’t see me coming. One day soon, it’ll just be there.”
“Okay,” I say. “Vague and ominous, but okay. I’ll wait.”
“When you find it, keep it hidden. You hear me?”
“Cassandra, goddammit, where the hell are you?” Raymond’s voice is closer now. There isn’t much time left.
Matvei’s eyes go to the door, then back to me. “Go,” he says.
“Matvei—”
“Go. Now. Out the door, turn left, walk back like you got lost looking for the bathroom. Don’t run. And whatever you do, don’t look back at this door.”
“What about you?”
He still hasn’t let go of my hand. I look down at our fingers, knotted together in the dim, and I try to memorize the feeling, because I don’t know when I’ll get it again.
Then Matvei lifts our joined hands, presses his mouth to my knuckles, right on top of Raymond’s awful diamond, and lets me go.
“Smile,” he says. “Big and pretty. Like you’re not plotting anything at all.”
Only then does he finally let me go.
I crack the door an inch, peer down the empty hall, and slip out. The corridor is mercifully deserted, occupied by nothing but brass sconces on the wall and a runner so thick it eats the sound of my heels. I walk out the way Matvei told me to, smooth and unhurried, like I’ve simply gotten turned around looking for the powder room.
I step back into the ballroom on a wave of confetti and tinnyAuld Lang Syne.Popping champagne corks and giggling, drunken wives.
“There you are! For Christ’s sake, where have you been?” Raymond swarms at me from the right, his face flushed pink with whiskey and irritation. I plaster on the smile Matvei told me to wear and turn toward him with both hands lifted, palms up, helpless and apologetic.
“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, darling,” I tell him. “The line for the ladies’ was a mile long, and then I couldn’t find my way back. This place is a labyrinth.”
He looks me over. Top to bottom. Searching. I keep my hands loose at my sides, my chin up, my smile small and embarrassed, every bit the silly, empty-headed, docile little lamb he expects me to be.
