Picture Perfect Read online

  She curled herself out of the bed, careful not to wake him. Smiling, she hugged her arms around herself, thinking that she was quite rightfully the envy of every woman in America. If she had had any doubts about the validity of her marriage to Alex, they were gone now. Two people could not make love like that without a history. Cassie laughed. If her heart stopped beating that very second, she could say she'd lived a fine life.

  It is a good day to die. The words stopped her, and a shiver ran down her body before she realized they had not been spoken out loud. Recovering, she padded into the bathroom and stared into the mirror, touching her fingers to her swollen lower lip.

  A lecture. It had been the opening line to a lecture she'd heard by a colleague at UCLA. Cassie let her hands drop to the marble sink basin, sighing with relief as she realized she was not facing an omen, but a genuine memory. It was a course on Native American culture, and that phrase was part of the ritual prayer spoken by tribal warriors of the plains before riding off to do battle. Cassie remembered telling the professor he sure knew how to draw a crowd.

  She wondered what Will was doing now. It was Thursday morning; he'd probably be on his way to work. He had left her his phone numbers. Maybe later she'd call him at the station, tell him she lived in a castle in Malibu, mention she was flying to Scotland.

  Cassie brushed her teeth and dragged a comb through her hair, careful to place each item back on the counter quietly so that Alex wouldn't stir. She tiptoed back into the bedroom and sat on a chair in the corner.

  Alex was snoring lightly. She watched his chest rise and fall a few times, then stood up and walked to the closet across the room that held all of his clothes. She pulled open the door and drew in her breath.

  Alex's closet was twenty times neater than her own. On the floor, on little shoe trees, were lines of sneakers and Italian loafers and black patent leather formal dress shoes. A hanging closet organizer proudly displayed folded sweaters, Shetland and Norwegian on one side and cotton on the other. His shirts stood stiffly on cedar hangers. A lingerie chest tucked into the corner of the walk-in closet was lined with neatly folded silk boxers and socks--arranged in separate drawers by their uses.

  "My God," Cassie whispered. She ran a fingertip over the line of shirts, listening to the music of the hangers batting each other. Neatness was to be expected, especially if one had a good housekeeper. Something, though, something else made this closet cross the line between fastidious and obsessive.

  The sweaters. Not only were they segregated by material and folded neatly, they were arranged in color order. Like a rainbow. Even the patterned sweaters seemed to have been placed by predominant color.

  She should have laughed. After all, this was odd to the point of being funny. This was something to joke about.

  But instead Cassie felt tears squeeze from the corners of her eyes. She knelt before the rows of shoes, crying in near silence, pulling a sweater from its appropriate spot and holding it to her mouth to muffle the sounds she made. She bent over, her stomach knotting, and she told herself she was losing her mind.

  It was the stress of the last few days, she thought as she wiped her cheeks. Cassie walked back to the bathroom and closed the door. She ran the water until it was so cold it numbed her wrists, and then she splashed some onto her face, hoping to start over.

  FOR DAYS, THEY HAD BEEN TALKING ABOUT THE BLIZZARD. IT WAS going to hit sometime after three on Friday. It was going to be the storm of the century. Fill your bathtubs with water, the weatherman said. Buy batteries and firewood. Find your flashlights.

  The only thing that could have been better, Cassie decided, would be if the blizzard hit on Sunday, so school would be canceled the next day.

  Cassie walked into the kitchen. She had been at Connor's all afternoon but had promised her mother she'd return before the first flakes fell. Cassie's mother was terrified of snow. She had grown up in Georgia and had never seen snow until she moved to Maine when she got married. Rather than being efficient about a winter storm--like Connor's mother, who had taken out candles and bought extra gallons of milk to store in the drifts--Aurora Barrett sat at the kitchen table with wide eyes, listening to the weather reports on her transistor radio and waiting to be buried alive.

  The one thing Aurora did like about nor'easters was that they provided a chance to accuse her husband of everything that had gone wrong in her life. Cassie had grown up understanding that her mother hated Maine, that she hadn't wanted to move there, that she didn't want to be a baker's wife. She still dreamed of a house with lawns that rolled down to the river, of a latticed bench veiled by cherry trees, of the melting southern sun. While Cassie watched, tucked in the shadows, her mother would rail at Ben and ask just how temporary ten long years in the same godforsaken place could be.

  Most of the time her father would just stand there, letting Aurora's anger blow over him. Technically, itwas his fault: he'd promised Aurora that as soon as it paid to sell the bakery with a tidy profit, they'd move back to her neck of the woods. But the bakery lost money every year, and the truth was, deep down, her father had no intention of leaving New England. Ben had given only one piece of advice to Cassie as she was growing up.Before you decide what you want to be , he said,know where you want to be .

  It did not snow that night until Cassie went to sleep, and when she woke in the morning the world had changed. Outside, a white lawn rolled right up to her bedroom window, and hills and drifts had smoothed the landscape so completely she almost lost her sense of direction. She grabbed an apple and stuffed it in her pocket; then she sat at the kitchen table to pull her boots on.

  She heard the argument clearly, although it came from her parents' room upstairs. "Sell the bakery," her mother threatened. "Or I can't tell you what I'll be driven to do."

  Cassie's father snorted. "What could you possibly be driven to that you don't do already?" Cassie jumped as a blast of wind whitened the window before her. "Why don't you just go home?"

  Go home. Cassie's eyes widened. For a long while there was silence, save the shrieks and moans of the storm. Then she heard her mother's exit line. "I'm not feeling well now. Not well at all." And after that came the unmistakable ting of the bourbon decanter Aurora kept on her vanity being opened. The more she drank, the less Cassie's father could tolerate her. It was a vicious cycle.

  "Jesus Christ," Cassie's father said tightly, and then he thundered down the stairs. He was dressed as she was, ready to brave the blizzard. He glanced at Cassie and touched her cheek, almost an apology. "Take care of her, will you, Cass?" he said, but before she could answer, he left.

  Cassie finished lacing up her boots and cooked an egg, soft-boiled, just the way her mother liked. She carried it up on a plate with a piece of toast, figuring if her mother had something else in her stomach, it might not be so bad today.

  When Cassie cracked the door open, Aurora was lying across the bed, her arm flung over her eyes. "Oh, Cassie," she whispered. "Honey, please. Thelight ."

  Cassie obediently stepped inside, shutting the door behind her. She smelled the cloying sweetness of the bourbon hovering at the edges of the room, mingling with traces of her father's rage.

  Aurora took one look at the breakfast tray Cassie had set down and started to cry. "Did he tell you where he went? He's out there, in this, thisblizzard --" She jerked her arm toward the window to prove her point. Then she rested her forehead against her hand, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "I don't know why this happens. I just don't know why."

  Cassie took one look at her mother's eyes, red-rimmed and raw, and she planted her hands on her hips. "Get up."

  Aurora turned toward her daughter and blinked. "Pardon me?"

  "I said get up." She was only ten, but she had grown old long ago. Cassie pulled her mother off the bed and started handing her clothes: a turtleneck, a sweater, bulky socks. After a moment of disbelief, Aurora began to follow her, silently accepting what she offered.

  When Cassie opened the front door, Aurora took a