Sasha McCandless 03 - Irretrievably Broken (6 page)

Daniel’s father stepped out onto his porch and yelled down to her, “Did you kick his behind, girlie?”

Sasha smiled and gave him a thumbs up sign.

He waved and made his way over to the glider on his porch, leaning heavily on his cane.

Sasha turned back to Daniel. “What’s your dad up to these days?”

Daniel shrugged. “Driving my mother crazy, I guess.”

Larry Steinfeld, now in his early seventies, had finally retired from the practice of the law. He’d worked for years in the Federal Public Defender’s Office, before moving over to the ACLU. Sasha had heard him speak at several conferences before realizing he was Daniel’s father.

Sasha checked her watch. “I gotta go.”

“See you in class tomorrow?”

“Yep.”

She gave Mr. Steinfeld a wave and jogged away to tackle the rest of the hill.

CHAPTER 8

Sasha stepped out of her steamy shower, wrapped herself in a thick, oversized towel, and reflexively checked her Blackberry, while she was still dripping wet.

Prescott & Talbott required its attorneys to respond to e-mails and voicemails within sixty minutes of receipt. The policy held true in the middle of the night, on holidays, and during natural disasters and championship sporting events. Exceptions were made only for travel to remote areas.

It was no coincidence that the firm’s attorneys had begun to opt for rugged, off-the-beaten track vacations in unheard-of locales. Their out of office memos began with sentences like, “At the Buddhist monastery where I will be on retreat, I can be reached via air mail, which is delivered once per week to the village at the base of the mountain and held for the monks until they visit the village to barter goods.”

Although Sasha had removed her electronic leash nearly a year earlier, she had not yet broken the habit of checking her Blackberry. She was like one of those dogs that wouldn’t cross the bounds of an invisible fence even when the power was out.

She looked down at the display: no e-mails; no voicemails; one missed call from the Prescott & Talbott main switchboard; and a text from Connelly:
Running late. Meet you @ Girasole.

As she toweled off, Sasha wondered if Connelly had stopped by his apartment. Although he’d been working out of the Pittsburgh Field Office for about a year, as far as the Federal Air Marshal Service was concerned, it remained a temporary placement. So, in its customary fashion, the federal government was still paying for corporate housing in a complex out by the airport, even though Connelly was more or less living with her. She shook her head at herself in the mirror. A live-in boyfriend, practically, whom she’d been dating for eleven months.

Before Connelly, her longest relationship had expired in less time than a half-gallon of milk. She knew this for a fact, because on the way home from her first date with that guy—Vann, a surprisingly funny butcher who worked at Whole Foods—they’d stopped by his workplace so she could pick up some milk. And, for almost a week after they’d called it quits, she’d continued to drink that milk with no need to even sniff the carton first.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Connelly was waiting when she walked into the restaurant. He leaned across the cramped space in front of the hostess station and kissed the side of her head by her ear.

“Our table’s ready,” he said.

The friendly redhead who served as the hostess and fill-in bartender gave a nod from the center of the restaurant. One of the benefits of being regulars was that Paula always seemed to be able to find them a table in the tiny dining room.

Sasha turned back to Connelly. The tight expression stretching across his face reminded her of Will.

“Everything okay? You look a little tense.”

“It’s just ... work. We can talk over dinner.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

Paula squeezed past a couple walking arm-in-arm toward the door and plucked a pair of menus off her station.

“Sorry, guys. Busy night,” she breathed over her shoulder.

They followed her to a two-top squeezed into a dark corner. They hadn’t yet spread their napkins on their laps when a waiter appeared to take their drink order.

Connelly, who usually limited his drinking to a glass of wine or two with his meal or a beer while he watched SportsCenter, ordered a vodka tonic.

“What’s the occasion?”

Connelly didn’t answer. Instead, he told the waiter, “She’ll have the same.”

Hungry after her run, Sasha turned her attention away from Connelly’s odd behavior and to the menu. She debated between the squid ink linguine and the fish of the day.

She looked up to ask Connelly what he was having and found him staring at her.

“What?”

“Nothing. Sorry.” He dropped his eyes to his menu.

She opened her mouth to tell him about Greg Lang, but he spoke first.

“No, that’s not true. I’ve been offered a job in D.C.,” he said, lifting his eyes and searching her face for a reaction.

Sasha tried to make sense of the words.

When she didn’t say anything, he continued, “It’s a pretty good offer. I’d be the chief security officer for a pharmaceutical company.”

Sasha’s heart hammered in her chest.

“D.C.?” she managed.

“Just outside, actually. In Silver Spring.”

“You’d leave the government?” she asked, confused.

That didn’t sound like Connelly at all. He was always going on about law and order, duty, and, well, other stuff that she generally tuned out. But, still.

“At this point, the private sector has more to offer me, I think.”

He was hunched forward over the table, waiting for her to respond.

“Oh. I’m just ... surprised,” she said.

I didn’t begin to cover it. She felt nauseated. Stunned. Dizzy. But he seemed to be waiting for her to say something more, so she added, “It sounds like a great opportunity.”

Her words rang hollow in her ears, but they must have sounded convincing to Connelly.  He reached across the table and took her hand in his.

“I think so, too,” he said.

“When do you need to make a decision?”  She tried to sound casual. She wasn’t sure she succeeded.

“Very soon. By the end of the week.”

“Wow. That’s fast,” she said, just to have something to say.

She wondered how long this change had been in the works and why she was only now hearing about it.

“It’s only D.C. We can see each other on weekends, right?” he said.

“Sure.”  She forced a smile.

He sounded to her like a man who had already made his decision.

CHAPTER 9

 “I can’t believe she’s dead,” Martine said on the other end of the phone. Her voice was scratchy, like she had a cold.

Clarissa could hear Martine’s kids squealing in the background, but it was faint. She couldn’t tell if they were playing or fighting. Either way, she figured Martine had about ten minutes tops before she had to go break up a squabble, kiss a skinned knee, or help someone get a snack. That’s the way it always was at Martine’s house.

“Cee Cee, are you there?” Martine asked.

“Yeah, sorry. Me, either.” Clarissa sighed, and then she asked, “Do you think Greg killed her? Really?”

“I don’t know. Greg never struck me as the violent type, but things were pretty ugly. I mean, they were getting a
divorce
. Ellen was admitting failure. It had to have been bad.”

 It
had
been bad. Ellen had told Clarissa that Greg was gambling again, but had asked her not to tell Martine. Clarissa chewed on the ragged skin near the fingernail on her left ring finger and let her eyes drop to her wedding band. There was a time when the three of them hadn’t kept any secrets from one another, but after Martine had left the firm and all its pressures behind, she sometimes seemed to forget what it was like to work there, how it frayed the edges of a person’s relationships, driving a spouse into a casino or, worse, the arms of some slutty teenager.

Clarissa willed herself to put the picture of Nick and that girl out of her mind.

“It was pretty bad,” she said. Then, feeling guilty that Martine didn’t know, she blurted, “Ellen found out Greg was gambling.”

Martine let out a long, low whistle. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Clarissa instantly felt better. She was still keeping her own secrets from Martine, but what was the harm in sharing Ellen’s now?

“Was he in deep?  Like last time?”

“I think it was more money, but, you know, they could afford it. I guess he was just taking the money out of their accounts, trying to take care of it behind her back.”

The last time had been when the three of them were still junior associates. 1998. Ellen and Greg were engaged, and the wedding had been just four months away, when she’d broken down crying at a happy hour. Greg had been betting on football and owed his bookie thirty thousand dollars. To them, back then, that was a lot of money. Today, any one of them would have written a check for that amount without bothering to confirm the balance in the account, but they didn’t have that kind of money in 1998.

Ellen had sold her engagement ring and emptied out the fund she’d set aside for the wedding and honeymoon; perhaps presciently, her parents hadn’t been wild about Greg and had no intention of footing the bill for the reception. So, she’d been saving a chunk of her salary every month. But, they came up eight thousand dollars short on the gambling debt.

Greg’s attempt to negotiate the debt had earned him two cracked ribs and a busted nose, and Ellen was terrified he was going to be killed. Clarissa and Martine had each lent Clarissa four grand. They told themselves they would have spent that much on shower and wedding gifts, bridesmaid dresses, and other wedding-related hoopla if Ellen and Greg hadn’t canceled the wedding in favor of a quiet civil ceremony at the courthouse.

As a condition of going through with the wedding, Ellen had made Greg join Gamblers Anonymous. Grateful to her for saving his hide and afraid of losing her, he had thrown himself into the program. As he’d worked through his steps to recovery, he’d eventually made amends to both Clarissa and Martine and had repaid them the money they’d given Ellen.

And, as far as Clarissa knew, in the fourteen years that followed, Greg had never once broken his promise to Ellen that he wouldn’t gamble. Until those pictures showed up.

Funny how she and Ellen had both gotten their pictures on the same day.

Unlike Ellen, though, she hadn’t flown into a rage and confronted her husband with them immediately. Instead, Clarissa had deliberated, planned.  She’d taken patient steps, beginning with retaining Andy Pulaski to ruin Nick’s life.

Martine broke into her thoughts again. “I thought they were really a solid couple. You know? Like you and Nick or Tanner and me.”

Clarissa swallowed her laugh, or maybe it was a sob. She couldn’t tell anymore. Martine still believed she and Nick were solid. If she only knew. Clarissa had a sudden urge to confide in her, now that Ellen was gone.

“Can you get away for a drink tomorrow night? In honor of Ellen?” she asked.

Clarissa could almost hear her ticking through a mental schedule of carpools, soccer practice, dinner, homework, and baths.

Finally, Martine said, “Sure. Let’s do it late. Maybe nine-thirty? If I don’t help the kids with their homework and get lunches packed before I leave, I’ll have to do it when I get back. Tanner just gets so overwhelmed.”

“Sure, nine-thirty’s great. The bar at the William Penn?”  It had been their hangout, way back when they were three single girls with a lifetime of glamour and excitement ahead of them.

“Where else?”

WEDNESDAY

CHAPTER 10

Sasha woke with a headache, a furry mouth, and an empty bed.

From behind her closed bathroom door, she heard the shower running. She sat up and the room started to spin. She laid her head back down on the pillow as if her skull were made of blown glass and replayed the previous evening.

After Connelly’s bombshell, they’d shared a joyless meal and then had decided to go for a nightcap. They’d started at a hip martini bar, stopped in a neighborhood saloon, worked their way down the food chain to a dive bar frequented by hard-core drunks and twenty-somethings looking to stretch their drinking dollars, and had ended the night at the Mardi Gras, a refuge for drinkers who’d been banned from other establishments and underage kids trying to pass off bad fake IDs. Its signature drink was a hellish version of a screwdriver, wherein the bartender squeezed the juice of half an orange into a glass of vodka.

The Mardi Gras. No wonder her head pounded.

She took three slow breaths and forced herself out of bed. She made her way to the kitchen, taking the stairs from the loft slowly, and steadied herself against the wall when she reached the bottom.

She poured herself a cup of strong coffee, thankful she’d apparently remembered to set up the coffepot and turn on the timer the night before, and considered her options.

It was almost six o’clock. She looked out the window. The sun had not yet risen, but early light, gray and soft, streamed in. No rain. She could follow her routine: put on her running shoes and jog to Krav Maga class, then try to ward off punishing blows while her hangover attacked her from within. It didn’t sound appealing. Or she could sip some more coffee, nibble a piece of dry toast, and try to get her legs back underneath her.

The shower turned off.She pictured Connelly wrapping a towel around his waist and combing through his black hair with his fingers. Next, he’d run the hot water in the sink and start his daily shaving ritual. A ritual that would be moving to D.C.

She put down the coffee mug and found her running shoes.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She returned from her class feeling almost human and found Connelly’s used coffee mug holding down a note on her recycled glass kitchen island.