SHUDDERVILLE (6 page)
“Why not?” Sophie gasped. “You love him, don’t you? Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“Who the hell knows?” She grabbed a paper towel and pressed it to her face. “It sort of feels like I’m giving up my freedom, you know? But enough about me. Why won’t they give you Jayla back, those bastards?”
Sophie reached for a paper towel. “I don’t know. They keep raising the bar.”
“Why won’t they give you custody? You’ve been sober forever now.”
“Six months.”
Cassie shook her head, fed up. “Fucking assholes.”
“Listen, I need your help.”
“Of course.” Cassie daubed her mascara-rimmed eyes with the edges of the paper towel and said, “What can I do?”
“Talk to Mandelbaum for me.”
“Oh Sophie.” Her best friend rolled her eyes.
“Indulge me. Just this once. I’ll never ask you for another favor.”
“You promise?” Cassie laughed, massaging her sore arches. “Okay. Fine. I’ll talk to the old guy, and then what?”
“He’ll offer you one wish. Just tell him you want me to have custody of Jayla.”
“Seriously?”
“You need to indulge me on this,” she insisted.
Cassie threw away the paper towel. “Listen, you know that I’d do anything for you. And I can play along with all that mumbo-jumbo, whatever. But seriously, sweetie. Are you sure you want to play these weird head-games again?”
“Just do it,” she pleaded. “Don’t think about it. Do it for me. Okay?”
Cassie sighed. “Okay. But on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“Get drunk with me.”
“I can’t.”
“Just this once, Soph. It’s my wedding day!”
“You’ll talk to him?”
“Whatever, sweetie,” she said. “Whatever.”
*
Sophie indulged herself, just this once, for Cassie’s sake, confident that she could handle it. She wouldn’t go tumbling off the wagon into the rut of self-pity ever again. The champagne tasted delicious. It was a relief to let loose for once.
Two hours later, they were drunk. While everybody else joined the conga line inside the brightly lit reception hall, they made their escape and tripped down the marble steps toward the vast expanse of manicured lawn that led to the lakefront. They were barefoot. The grass was cold and prickly. The night sky was starry. The rest of the wedding party was indoors, doing the chicken dance and the rumba, and they could hear laughter and music echoing across the lake.
Sophie glanced woozily at her watch. “He’s supposed to meet us here.”
“Who?” Cassie asked, trailing off in a wobbly spiral.
“Tobias. I talked to him about fifteen minutes ago. He said he’d meet us here.” She looked across the beautifully manicured grounds, every nerve tensing tighter. The parking lot was full of Mercedes and BMWs and Porsches. There was a small breeze around her, like baby’s breath. A frost of moonlight dappled the surface of the lake.
“Speak of the devil.” Cassie pointed at a lone figure approaching them from the terrace of the historic mansion. “Why, it’s Tobias Mandelbaum, I do declare.”
He was there—just barely—in the midnight gloom. He paused in mid-step, leaned against his cane and waved at them.
“Hi!” Sophie said gratefully, waving back.
“Oh, this is going to be good.” Cassie picked up her wedding dress, and the two of them galloped across the lawn, past the ornate fountain and hedge maze, their bare feet pounding over the ground like colts’ hooves. Sophie was feeling no pain. She couldn’t wait to see Jayla again—she especially missed their goodnight nose rubs, with Jayla nestled against her like a warm puppy.
“Hello, young ladies,” Mandelbaum said with a delighted grin as they ran up to him.
“You look sharp,” Cassie teased breathlessly.
“Congrats on the nuptials,” he said.
Sophie’s heart was hammering. Her throat had closed up. Her ears burned.
“My oh my. Aren’t you two a sight for sore eyes.”
The blushing bride laughed. “Sophie tells me I can have one wish?”
“Uh-un. Not so fast.” He smiled and wagged his finger. “Not until I offer.”
“Oops.” Cassie rolled her eyes. “Would you like some champagne?”
“Delighted.” He grinned at them.
They found the champagne bottle where they’d left it on the lawn, then hunted down three fluted glasses and hurried back.
“Well, all right,” he said. “About the wish.”
“About the wish,” Cassie repeated, while Sophie poured three glasses of sparkling champagne.
“Consider this my wedding gift to you,” he told Cassie. “Thank you, Sophie. Bottoms up.”
“Aw,” Cassie giggled drunkenly. “How nice! A wedding wish!”
Mandelbaum winked at Sophie. “She doesn’t believe me.” His eyes seemed devoid of surface reflection. They were set too close together above his crooked nose, and she felt a strange foreboding.
“Convince her,” Sophie told him anxiously. She could feel it in her throat now—a raised knuckle of abject fear.
“I can’t convince anyone,” he said with a shrug. “Either they buy it or they don’t.”
“It’s not that I don’t buy it,” Cassie said with a skeptical scowl. “It’s just that you put my friend through hell and back.”
Mandelbaum shrugged. “Perhaps I should be going.”
“No! Wait,” Sophie said, in a near-panic. She turned to Cassie and whispered, “You promised.”
“Okay, okay.”
Mandelbaum finished his champagne. “Thanks for a lovely time.”
“Wait,” Cassie said. “I get one wish, right?”
Mandelbaum nodded. “That’s right.”
“Anything I want?”
“Think about it very carefully.”
“Anything in the world? Anything at all?”
He stabbed out his thumb. “You name it.”
Cassie stood very still in the moonlight, letting the idea finally sink in.
Sophie squeezed her best friend’s hand. “Remember what you promised?”
“Yeah, yeah.” She drew her hand away. “Anything at all?”
“Anything your heart desires, young miss.”
“Young miss,” Cassie laughed. “I like that.
Anything my heart wishes?
” she repeated giddily.
“Whatever your heart desires.”
Sophie stared at the dull shine on Mandelbaum’s face in the low light. Time seemed to drag slowly forward. Horror clung to the seams of everything. Cassie wasn’t going to fulfill her part of the bargain, Sophie could see that now. “Cassie, you promised,” she hissed, but her best friend wasn’t listening.
“One wish? Not two?” Cassie asked Mandelbaum.
“One wish,” he told her. “Think about it very carefully.”
Cassie nodded. “One wish,” she repeated wistfully. “And I can have anything I want? Anything in the world?”
“Anything.”
“Cassie, be careful,” Sophie told her.
“What do I have to do?” Cassie asked Mandelbaum.
“It’s easy,” he said warmly. “It’s painless. All you have to do is stand there. I’ll do everything else.”
“Cassie, don’t,” Sophie said with growing concern.
“You mean I could change my whole future? Or even the past?”
“Past. Present. Future.” Mandelbaum smiled. “It’s totally up to you.”
“Cassie, this isn’t a joke. He’s dead serious.”
The bride nodded vaguely. “All I have to do is make a wish?”
“One wish,” he said. “One chance.”
“Cassie? Don’t do it! It won’t work out the way you think it will.”
Ignoring her best friend, Cassie turned her back on Sophie, linked arms with Mandelbaum, and the two of them walked into darkness together.
YOU ARE LEAVING
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SHUDDERVILLE
ONE
Mia Zabrisky
Copyright © 2012
All Rights Reserved.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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