Chapter 38 Cass

CHAPTER 38 CASS

February 2007

Los Angeles

That last week before Ryan had to leave for filming in Charleston, I kept waiting for her to ask me to join her. Crazy, crazy, I know. It had only been a few weeks. But I just wanted it—her, the life, the city. Every single part of it. Los Angeles felt exactly like how we—Amanda and I—imagined it during those long Adirondack winters, and I knew I’d love being on location just as much.

Early morning of our last day, careful not to wake Ryan, I slipped out of bed. I tiptoed across the hall, locked myself in the bathroom, and sat on the toilet staring down at my silver phone. I flipped it open, flipped it shut—open, shut, open, shut.

“Ah, fuck it,” I said softly, then called the airline and rerouted my flight to New York to Charleston. Cart, horse, for sure, but I thought, why not twist the universe’s arm?

I steeled myself. I knew what would happen next. Two hours after the charge hit the account, Sidney would notice. (“Um, because I’m not a reckless moron,” she had responded when I once asked why she logged into my American Express account twice a day .) Then my phone would ring. And it wouldn’t stop ringing until I answered. Better to just call her directly, get it over with.

It went straight to voicemail—a blessing. There was Sidney’s commanding voice saying, “You’ve reached the mobile of Sidney Collins, Esquire, please leave a message after the beep.” How humorless she could be, not even a wink in her tone. I took a deep breath, said, “Sidney, it’s me. I wanted to let you know that I’m not coming back to New York right now. I’m going to Charleston with Ryan for the filming, and we can talk about all this when I’m back. Okay? Okay. I hope you’re… I hope everything is good there.”

I wondered if I was ever going back to New York. Did a world exist in which I would never see Sidney again? My left knee was bouncing rapidly. I bowed between my legs and pressed my eyes closed. A layer of fear, but beneath—excitement.

A minute later, I tiptoed across the hall, climbed back into bed, and pressed myself against Ryan’s back, grateful for her warmth after the bathroom’s cold tile.

We spent the day in bed, and I ignored my phone. Finally, early evening, I slipped away to get changed for dinner and fished the phone out of my bag. I was prepared for missed messages from Sidney—nobody ever called me except Sidney—yet there was nothing from her. But right there, right there on that little screen, was a number I didn’t recognize. Three times it had called me, leaving one voicemail.

My stomach dropped so violently that my vision went fuzzy for a moment. An unknown number had never called this phone. My brain was off and running: Here it finally was—the police. I listened immediately. A man’s voice:

“Hello, Ms. Ford—this is incredibly urgent. Please call me back at 212-555-3463.”

I could not give myself time to spiral. The faster this was over—whatever this was—the better for my internal organs. I dialed the number, hit Talk, willing him to answer—

“Hello.”

“This is Cass Ford,” I said. I was marching on a direct path through this moment.

But then the line went silent, which almost made me angry, like come on man, let’s get to the point as quickly as possible. The more open space my brain was given—even just a few seconds—the more horrible a scenario it would create. (This wasn’t the local police, it was the FBI— no, no, it was probably the CIA…) Eventually he cleared his throat, said, “Thank you for returning my call. I know it’s dinnertime in LA, so I’ll get right to it.”

Wait, how did he know I was in LA? The room’s only window looked onto the backyard, but I stepped out of eyeline anyway. I made a mental list of who knew my whereabouts: Sidney, Janie, Ry—

I flashed back to the day before, in Ryan’s pool, telling her too much about Amanda, the accident, tipsy on sunshine and infatuation.

But then he was talking: “We have a source here at the New York Times confirming you as the writer behind the pseudonym Cate Kay and that you were involved in a death in your hometown.”

My skin became a hot plate. I looked down at the tile in Ryan’s bathroom, hexagonal black and white. Yes, I’d told Ryan about Amanda, but—no, no way would she. I let my eyes run along the grout, following the pattern, looking for a way out. But there wasn’t one.

I hung up the phone. Didn’t say another word. Just snapped it shut on his questions and what it all meant. I looked at the flip phone and imagined the whole mess, the mess of my life, now trapped inside its shiny case.

Everything that had happened the previous few weeks with Ryan melted away. Just that morning, I’d been considering an exit strategy—out of this pseudonym and back into my life. I’d thought maybe I could release the next books under my name. I had felt excited; I was in control. But this, it felt like an invasion. I imagined the headlines, the follow-up stories, the whispers, and, worst of all, Amanda’s name in print—but no Amanda to read it.

I called Sidney. I needed her. She’d always fixed my mistakes. She picked up on the second ring and said, “Hi, Cass,” with the curtness I know I deserved. I leapfrogged niceties and explained the phone call, what the reporter had said, what was happening. I whispered, “Sidney, please, help, what do I do?”

She asked me to repeat everything, slowly, and hearing the calmness in her voice soothed me. I did as she asked, then waited.

“I knew this trip was a bad idea,” she said. “Can’t trust anyone in Hollywood.”

“You think Janie had something to do with this?” I didn’t want to say Ryan’s name again and certainly not to Sidney.

“Not Janie. Ryan. Doesn’t surprise me one bit. Actors are addicted to drama. Wasn’t she just going out with that costar of hers? Truth is a mirage out there.”

I flinched at the insinuation that I was just another in Ryan’s long list of conquests, but deconstructing the psychology of the movie business was not what I needed right then. “What do I do ?” I asked.

Thankfully, she moved on. “Okay, I’m going to personally go over to the New York Times offices and kill this story—whatever it takes. You should get on a red-eye home. Get out of that madness.”

I scrunched my eyes shut and pressed the heel of my hand into my right eye until I was seeing stars. Leaving Ryan, I didn’t want that—wasn’t ready to commit to it.

“How, how—how did this happen?”

“You know how,” she said. “But come home and we’ll figure it out.”

“Okay—yeah—okay,” I said, then she told me she loved me, then I hung up and I don’t remember if I said it back.

Ryan had a computer in the hallway, and I threw myself toward it. A stack of cassettes crashed to the floor as I reached for the power button, and Ryan called out from the kitchen, “Everything cool?” It felt like I was at high altitude, like I couldn’t get enough air. I had to deliberately pause and breathe once before I yelled back, “All good, just checking my email real quick,” even though I was not someone who needed to check their email real quick—or at all.

What had this reporter guy found? Into the Google search box I typed Amanda Kent and Anne Marie Callahan then paused. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. A moment later I quickly added dead, Bolton Landing and clicked the search button, terrified of the results.

I turned off half my brain, which is how I always managed thoughts of Amanda’s death, and scanned each result. Only one item was relevant: the local newspaper was building a digital archive and had recently uploaded their review of our play junior year, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead , in which Amanda and I played (with “star power”) the title characters, two traditionally male roles. Nothing else. Just this one result offering proof of our existence. I was about to click on it, read it again, when from the other end of the house, Ryan stepped into the hallway, yelled, “Is seven o’clock good for dinner tonight?” In a panic, I fumbled for the mouse and exited the search results.