10

Cassie spent a miserable second week as Mrs. Chan Jordain. Her husband was gone, and she wouldn’t hear from him or see him for eight days. When she had complained about the lack of contact and talked about a satellite phone, he laughed at her and said that they would have lots to talk about when he got back. Then he kissed her and was gone.

The only thing that saved her from full-blown depression was her work at St. Alphonse. She started parking in the night shift’s parking lot because the main entrance was locked when she arrived and when she left the hospital in the dark. She was so tired when she got home that she often didn’t eat, but just tumbled into bed.

Punky rousted her out Saturday night, leaning insistently on the doorbell until, finally awakened, Cassie pulled on her robe and staggered sleepily to answer it. “Oh, Punky,” she said wearily through a crack in the door. “It’s you.”

“You might want to tone down the enthusiasm,” Punky said. “I don’t want to be swept away. Take the chain off and let me in.”

“What time is it?” Cassie undid the security lock, then opened the door.

“Ten o’clock. I’ve come by to see how you’re doing—and from the dark circles under your eyes, I would judge not too well. I’m also operating in the capacity of Attendance Vigilante.”

Cassie sat on the couch and tucked her feet up under her. Rubbing her face with her hands, she squinted up at Punky, who had just turned on the lights. “Would you say that again?”

“Attendance Vigilante.” Punky sat on the arm of an easy chair. “It’s an unofficial calling, but I take it seriously. Whenever one of my friends is in town but doesn’t come to church, I start to worry. You’ve missed three Sundays in a row.”

“Last Sunday I was on my honeymoon,” Cassie reminded her.

“But the two Sundays before, you were in town.”

“I had to work.”

“Had to work! Holy Crow, Cassie, you’re your own boss. There’s nobody telling you you have to work. You won’t lose your job if you take a couple of hours off to go to church.”

Cassie sat still, looking at her friend. Mentally she trotted out one excuse after another and discarded each as vigilante fodder. “I think,” she said, dropping her eyes and offering the only excuse that she knew in her heart was valid, “I was afraid of seeing Ben. I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to be uncomfortable myself.”

“And were you going to work tomorrow?”

“I have so much to do, Punky!”

“Well, I don’t mean to preach, but I tell you, Cassie, things have a way of turning to manure. You’re riding high, and the next thing you know the bottom has dropped out of your world. It’s almost guaranteed. You don’t want to get into a situation where you don’t feel that you can approach the Lord. You need to go to church and take the sacrament—that’s what He’s asked you to do. Then, when you need help, you’re in a better position to ask for it. You can’t let Ben Torres, or anyone for that matter, keep you from church. Take it from me. I know what I’m talking about.”

“But I feel so awful about Monday night! I know he thinks I’m terrible and unfeeling.”

Punky was silent a moment, jingling her keys absently. “Um, I don’t think he does, Cassie. He told me he left because he thought that Chan had set the whole thing up. You know, invited us to celebrate on the day Ben had hoped to ask you again. Same time, same place. He thought Chan was showing off because he got the girl.”

“But Chan didn’t know about the date and the back booth. And besides, Ben already told me he would step aside.”

“Who knows what hopes he was harboring? Maybe he thought the infatuation would wear off. He didn’t know about the engagement—didn’t notice the ring when he came and got Ricky that day you kept him. You didn’t tell him.”

“I know. I know. That was unfair.”

“All he knew was that you were smitten. He didn’t know that you were not only engaged, but married.” Punky sighed. “It didn’t help that I didn’t mention that’s what we were celebrating on Monday night.”

They were both quiet a moment. Then Punky spoke again: “But Ben says that Chan did know that he was going to ask you again on the twenty-fifth. He knew when and where.”

Cassie’s brow wrinkled. “But how could he know? I never mentioned it.”

“Ben told him. That night at the basketball game. I gather they had a fight, and afterward, as men do, they became boon companions.”

Cassie shook her head. “No. I know Chan didn’t plan it. It’s an unfortunate coincidence, and Ben has his feelings hurt, and I can’t bear it.” Tears began to well up in her eyes.

“Are you working too hard?” Punky asked sympathetically.

Cassie nodded.

“Promise me you’ll come to church tomorrow. I’ll come by and walk with you. The walk will do you good, and so will seeing Ben. You’ll see. You have to face him sometime, and he wouldn’t do anything to make you sad.”

Cassie nodded. “I’ll come,” she said in a damp voice, dragging a tissue out of her pocket.

“Then I’m off.” Punky stood.

Cassie’s eyes crinkled over the Kleenex. “Who was that masked woman?” she asked nasally.

“It’s the Attendance Vigalante! Hi-Yo, Stainless! Away!”

Cassie giggled as she followed Punky to the door. “Stainless?”

“I couldn’t afford silver. See you tomorrow. You’ll feel better. You’ll see.”

“I know.” As she shut the door, Cassie realized she did feel better. She went back to bed and so to sleep, with a lighter heart.

Punky, good as her word, was there the next morning. The weather was fair and not too hot, so the walk was pleasant. Punky regaled Cassie with stories of missed cues and wrong entrances as the troupe continued rehearsing Annie Get Your Gun. “Opening night is not quite two weeks away,” she said as they entered the chapel. “Pray for us.”

“Oh, you’ll do fine. You’ll carry the show,” Cassie encouraged. Looking up, she saw Ben, already in their pew. His jaw was set, and his eyes were wary, but when she smiled tentatively at him, the corners of his mouth lifted, and he stood and extended his hand.

“Hello, Cassie,” was all he said. His eyes went to the rings on her left hand and back to her face.

“Hello, Ben.” She sat next to him and put her arms out to Ricky, who came willingly to sit on her lap. Holding the warm little body, she couldn’t help but cuddle him and put her cheek against his curly black hair. “I’ve missed you,” she whispered in his ear.

As they sang the opening song she felt a welling in her heart. I’ve missed this, she thought, and I didn’t even know it.

After the block, as she strolled home with Punky, Cassie said, “I’ll have to work tomorrow, since I took time for this today. But that’s okay. Chan doesn’t get back until noon. I’ll have him meet me there for lunch, and I’ll be able to finish up, I think.”

Monday, rested and rejuvenated, Cassie was at work before dawn again, hoping to be done with the project by the time she heard from Chan. He called her from the airport but declined to eat in St. Alphonse’s cafeteria with her. “They are cooking for people who have had their taste buds destroyed,” he said. “Let’s go someplace else. Meet me out in front in half an hour. I can’t wait to see you.”

“Me, too,” she said, smiling as she hung up. She closed up her work right then, knowing she wouldn’t be able to follow a train of thought, and went down to sit in the shade and wait for her husband.

There was a marble bench under a tree on the green swath in front of the entrance to the cancer center. A long circular drive separated the parking area from the well-tended lawn, and Cassie sat on the bench, watching for Chan’s car to pull in. He must have come in from the opposite direction, because she missed his entrance and he surprised her. Hailing her from the parking lot, he waved a bouquet of flowers at her. “Hey, Mrs. Jordain,” he called, smiling that rectangular smile.

Cassie’s heart skipped a beat. “Chan!” she called, jumping to her feet.

She ran down the long walkway toward him just as he stepped into the circular drive. She had her eyes on his face, and she didn’t see the approaching car, didn’t hear the roar of the engine as it raced around the long arc and struck Chan as he stood helplessly in the center of the road, throwing him high in the air, tumbling him like a rag doll, and scattering flowers all around.

Cassie watched it all in slow motion, rooted to the spot, her mouth open but no sound coming out. Finally, when he hit the ground, her muscles began to obey instructions again, and she ran screaming his name in a high-pitched shriek.

He lay unconscious, with his head hanging over the curb and his body on the sidewalk. One arm lay across his chest and the other was out flung; one leg was straight and the other flexed. His eyes were closed, and his mouth was open. Blood was trickling from one ear.

Cassie wasn’t the first one to reach him; three others were there before her, one with his cell phone open, calling 9–1–1. She would have straightened him, but a young man wouldn’t let her. There might be spinal cord damage, he earnestly warned. Knowing he was right, Cassie sat on the curb and held one seemingly lifeless hand, rocking back and forth, struggling to breathe, numb with shock as she waited for the paramedics, pleading silently for them to hurry. Intellectually she understood that waiting for the ambulance, for people who are trained to treat trauma, was better than running screaming into St. Alphonse, begging oncologists to come out to the curb, but it was all she could do to restrain herself from doing just that.

The police arrived before the ambulance and settled in like apologetic crows around road kill, speaking in low tones, dispersing the little crowd that had gathered, and asking bystanders if anyone had noted the car that hit Chan. One officer, kneeling so he could look into Cassie’s shattered visage, put the question gently to her. She stared blankly at him for a moment and then shook her head. Like everyone else, all she could say was that it was a dark sedan. Newer. No one had thought to look at the license plate as it sped away. Like Cassie, they were all mesmerized by the sight of the high, arcing, rag-doll flight and the utter stillness of Chan’s body as he lay in such an unnatural position by the side of the road.

Finally the paramedics came, emerging from the ambulance with quick efficiency in choreographed movement, carrying with them a litter board and a case full of miraculous tools to help stabilize broken bodies and preserve life. One of them was fifty-ish, a tall, slender man with gray hair and a bristly moustache. The other was young, pudgy, and pink-cheeked. Cassie was so relieved to see them that tears began to flow, and she watched through a blur as they quickly set their equipment down on the grass and knelt beside Chan. The stethoscopes came out, and they both listened for a long while, first at the chest and then at the throat. She watched as they conferred quietly, and it seemed there was no longer the intensity about their actions, the driven purposefulness.

The older man went to the ambulance to get a stretcher while the younger man took a black package out of a cabinet on the side of the vehicle and began to tear off the shrink wrap cover. Unfolding it, he laid it on the grass next to Chan as his partner came with the stretcher.

Mr. Gray-hair dropped the stretcher and stepped away, calling curtly, “Morris, come here!”

Cassie couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the hushed lecture was short and sharp. Morris scurried over and stuffed the black plastic thing back into the cabinet and then sprang to assist in lifting Chan onto the backboard and then onto the stretcher. After covering him to the shoulders with a flannel blanket, they fastened some straps over his body, then wheeled Chan to the ambulance and slid the stretcher in.

While Morris got back into the cab of the truck, his gray-haired partner came and knelt on the pavement by Cassie.

“Are you related to him?” he asked. “Are you his wife?”

Cassie nodded.

“Would you like to accompany us to the hospital, ma’am?” he asked gently. “I’ll ride in the back with you.”

Cassie regarded him dully. She was not fooled by his offer, for she knew what Morris had been scolded for was unwrapping a body bag.

The fairytale was over. Cinderella was a widow.