Brooklyn Gothic, page 18
She sighed, balancing next to him on her heels. “You scared me. I saw the pills.”
Plucking up her hand, he laid it on his chest, pressing his own firmly over it. She twisted it away. “I’m going to go make some coffee.”
“Casey,” he said, more like a groan.
“We can talk downstairs, I want to shower.”
He reached for her around the waist, but she slithered out of his grasp and scrambled off the bed.
Half an hour later, she sat with her coffee at the rustic oak island in the massive kitchen, unable to think of anything but what they would say to each other, waiting with a sick sense of suspense for him appear. He did, shuffling in, hair reaching for the sky on one side, wearing only pajama bottoms. He poured himself a cup of coffee, took a couple of sips, and flattened his palm on his forehead.
“Some night, eh?” he asked, grinning uncertainly, seeming like he was trying to lighten the mood. She felt her lids grow heavy as she stared from under them. She had never felt this look on her face before, never felt her eyes calcify into such cynicism.
“I don’t remember much of it.” Cupping her mug, she realized she was squeezing it so hard she could crack it.
“I guess we need to talk then,” he said.
She wanted nothing more than to snap, So start talking, asshole, and make it good, but instead she mustered up the power to speak so he could hear her, truly hear her.
“Samuel, I have bended with you and worked with you because I know you have fears I could never in a million years comprehend, but this time you went too far. You not only hurt me, you humiliated me. Thank God my parents weren’t there. This was all your idea and then you didn’t want it. I was doing fine not loving you. You asked me to come back. Made a big case for it. You asked me to marry you. Made a big case for that too. I don’t know exactly what your problem is, but I’m tired of trying to figure it out.”
He took baby sips from his mug, shooting her cautious glances. Then he began to prowl in front of the island, quiet.
She sucked in a sharp breath as salty icicles stabbed the backs of her eyes. “Why are you playing this twisted game with me?” she demanded. “What gives you the right? Is it because you’re rich and always get what you want? Well, think again.”
He stopped and looked punched, skin grayish, mouth gulping like a decked trout. “Oh, God, Casey, it’s not a game.” He looked down, cleared his throat. “I should have stopped it the night before… but I couldn’t. Things come slowly to me. I don’t recognize what they are when I should. I used to have complete control over my actions, I seem to have none now.” He threw a glance out of the wall of windows. “I was being selfish. Like I’d been in the past. Wanting something because I wanted it. For the first time in my life, I was able to move beyond that, and imagine what another person would want. What I finally accepted, as I stood there looking at you in your wedding dress and hearing those words being said to us, is that you wouldn’t want to be married to someone with my past. And you didn’t deserve to be married to someone with my past.”
A flush of irritation climbed her windpipe. “We’d discussed your past already. I’d accepted what you told me, that you’re completely different than what you were.”
“But…” He started walking, walking, and not looking at her. “There’s more I should tell you.”
“What is it?” she asked, her voice a hard, cold stone.
He stopped pacing. Putting his mug on the island, he balanced one arm against the edge, exhaled long, and hung his head. He stood this way for several seconds, a Hellenic statue.
“Casey,” he said, in almost a whisper. “What I told you about my father isn’t true. I killed him.”
Her head jerked involuntarily, lips popping open. She sat frozen, unable to speak or move. Finally, she heard “What?” and realized the screechy voice belonged to her.
He tried to make eye contact, flicked his eyes up, and shot them back down towards his mug. The words began to spill out of him in one desperate stream, as if he’d kept them corked up for too long and couldn’t wait to get rid of them.
“I was young, brainless, spoiled. I’d failed out of Harvard. I had no business being there, my grades were average at best, but my father got me in. I took the place of someone who deserved it. That’s been my whole life—chance after chance because of my birth and throwing every single one of those chances away. He was beyond angry with me. Here I was, his only child, a complete embarrassment, as usual. I was floundering around, traveling, pretending I was studying. I wasn’t and he knew it. He cut me off—triggered a spendthrift clause in my trust.”
Shallow swells whisked in and out of his lungs, as if he might be on the edge of hyperventilating.
“I started running out of money, at least the kind of money I was used to. I found two men through a man I knew. A man I used to buy cocaine from.”
This was the first Casey had heard about cocaine and her heart slowed to a thick beat, but her senses prickled, knowing whatever he was about to say next would be worse.
“I paid them to break into my father’s place in the Gorkana Republic. There was an alarm, but the house was on a hill and the police weren’t exactly swift. It would take them at least half an hour to get there. I’d ‘accidentally’ tripped it once and timed them.
The men were supposed to take cash and his diamond Rolex out of the safe and give them to me. I met up with them and described the inside of the house and gave them the combination. I insisted they memorize everything because I didn’t want anything written down that could be traced to me. Then I left the country, went to our place in London. The date for the robbery was two weeks away. My father was supposed to be in New York by then. A few different times I asked him if he was still planning to come back, and he always said yes. But… he didn’t. He’d met some woman and decided to stay longer.”
His legs buckled and a nearby bar stool caught him. He tented his arms, his hands clenched at the top in a fist, hiding his face.
“The men went to the house on the arranged date, but as they cleaned out the safe, he came into the room with the woman. He fired at them, and they fired back and they shot him.”
Casey said nothing, but began to rock back and forth, slightly. She wasn’t sure how much time passed before she spoke.
“Did you want him to die?” Her voice was hollow, emotionless.
“No. But I knew they were dangerous men. I put him in that position and I might as well have pulled the trigger myself. In fact, that would have been less cowardly.”
Casey searched out the aureate veining and flecks, like splotches in a Petrie dish, of the Baltic brown Japanese ceramic fruit bowl in front of her. She stared at them until they seemed to grow and mutate into larger splotches. She could look nowhere else, because to look at him would mean looking at the end of the world she’d come to love.
“And the woman?”
“She was fine, but horrified, as you can imagine. She told the police of two intruders who sounded like local men from their accents.”
Casey said nothing, still rocking. When she spoke, her voice sounded as if it belonged to someone standing just beside her. “Then you lied to the police.”
“Of course I lied, that’s the kind of person I was at the time. These were third world police, clueless. And I’m sure they didn’t want to go up against the Foster family, which was bringing so much money into the area.”
“That’s pretty clueless, considering the men opened a safe with a combination,” she said, sarcastically. “How many people would have had it?”
“I doubt they put much thought into it. My father’s firm was the lead investor on a new hotel. My aunt took over the firm, but I had to inherit everything. If the succession didn’t go off as planned, voting rights could be disrupted. There could be a scandal and hold up. We could have been cut out of the deal, and plenty of other firms were lined up to get in on it. This had to go away. I think my aunt paid everyone to make it go away, quiet everything down as soon as possible.”
“This aunt—she knows it was you?” Casey asked, finally managing to look at him. He had his head dropped over his bare crossed arms.
“She never confronted me about anything, but I don’t doubt she had her suspicions. The family all knew I was trouble from the time I was a child. After my father’s death, they stopped speaking to me. Didn’t come to see me after the aneurysm, and did nothing to help me get back here. Sharon did it all.”
“What about the local men? Did they go to prison for you?”
“No, Casey, no. They took what was in the safe and disappeared. For years, I waited for them to pop up and blackmail me but I guess they figured it wasn’t worth the trouble.” He looked up for a moment with a heavy, defeated gaze, then drooped his head back down. “I couldn’t marry you without you knowing all of this.”
Her eyelids felt heavy, like she was squinting. No, she was glaring, a deathly glare, the kind of hardened glare she’d never experienced before this instant.
“Thanks for that,” she said. “Only I would have preferred to know about it a long time ago!”
His face reddened, and his hands were shaking. “As I told you, the aneurysm, it changed me. Before, I didn’t care about anyone. All I cared about was getting what I wanted. When I came to, I could feel. I had this thing in my chest all of the time. It wouldn’t leave me alone. I wanted to care about people. And I do. That’s why I’m doing everything.” His eyes glistened brightly, and red patches spread on his cheeks. “I’ve been trying to set things right as much as I can. And when I was done, I’d set it right to myself. I’d punish myself. But then I—I fell in love with you. I didn’t know what it was before. I’d heard about it. Books, music, TV. All full of this longing, this force. When I felt it with you, I convinced myself that I could go on, allow myself live despite what I’d done.”
He stopped, and they were silent again for a stretch. Casey felt as if something weighty was sitting on her chest.
“Does my being a good man now matter to you?” he asked.
She shook her head, almost imperceptibly, a little, little, little at a time. “I’m not sure.”
They stood on the stoop waiting for his driver to arrive, silence aching between them. She half-hoped the car wouldn’t show. But several minutes later it did. Lifting up his overnight bag, he gave his usual lopsided smile. “I guess this is me,” he said.
Casey nodded, a lump rolling up her throat. “Thank you, Samuel. I need—I want to—”
“You don’t need to explain.”
“I want to go through my things and think. I want to make sure I have everything I need in case I go see my parents.” She didn’t tell him she’d made up her mind to leave, at least for awhile, was worried he wouldn’t get out of the mansion if she did, but would stay and work every susceptible inch of her until she caved.
“Can I hug you?” he asked.
She nodded and he grabbed her more forcefully than she was anticipating. “I don’t want to go,” he breathed into her hair.
Casey let the tears come, rolling hot down her face. “It’s temporary,” she said, her nose clogging.
“What if something happens to me?”
The leverage. Always with the leverage. “You’re fine,” she said. “You’ve told me the aneurysm is closing off, unless you lied about that too. Stop using it against me. I need to think.”
“You’re right.” He kissed her several times on the forehead. “You’re very right. I’m going.”
They unraveled from each other, as if they were slowly plying off each other’s body parts. Without another word, he strode down the steps and disappeared into the town car.
Casey walked inside and her sobs could be heard in keen, sharp, unrecognizable wails pinging around the mansion’s walls.
35
Curled on the four-poster bed with the canopy curtains, Casey had stopped sobbing, had run out of tears, and her racking body went still. That’s when she heard a soft, distant ringing. At first, she thought she was hearing a ringing from somewhere outside. Eventually, it clicked she was hearing the landline. Just as she made the connection, the pealing sound stopped, and she lay empty and motionless. She took off her engagement ring and set it on the bedside table, couldn’t feel it wrapped around her finger right now.
The ringing started again.
She walked downstairs into the dry, dusty library, the shelves streaked with old books she suspected no one had touched in years, where she’d previously seen the phone on a desk. It was ringing and ringing. He obviously hadn’t bothered to set up voice mail.
It must be him, at the hotel. He must not have her cell phone number, he’d never called it. She didn’t want to speak to him, had no idea what she’d say to him, yet she couldn’t stop herself from picking up the ceaselessly ringing phone.
“Hello?” she asked cautiously.
“Hello? Is Sam there?”
A woman. That voice. She’d heard it before, but didn’t know from where.
“No, he’s out. Who is this?”
“Casey? It’s Sharon. I’ve been trying to reach him all day. Haven’t you heard me calling? Max said the wedding didn’t happen as planned. I’m very sorry.”
Casey was silent. She didn’t want to get into anything with this woman.
“Can you tell me where he went? I need to speak with him.”
“I don’t know where he went.”
“Listen to me. This isn’t your fault. Ever since what happened to him, he’s been strange and impulsive, and gets obsessed about news tragedies and strangers’ problems. You can probably see that from this foundation. I try to talk to him, and sometimes he listens, and sometimes he doesn’t. Is he coming back tonight?”
“We’re taking some time apart,” said Casey, annoyed she’d volunteered even that much.
“Did he go to a hotel?”
“I believe so.”
“The Baccarat? He used to rent one of its apartments. I know he likes it there. I’ll call there. I’m flying in but can’t get there until tomorrow evening. Here’s what you should do. Go somewhere. A friend’s house. A hotel. I’ll pay for it. Don’t talk to him. When he gets like this, he says things he doesn’t mean.”
She came close to asking Sharon whether she knew about his involvement with his father’s murder, but decided not to. She got the feeling that even if Sharon did know about his involvement, she wouldn’t admit it.
“I’m on your side, Casey,” Sharon said. “And I’m on his side. I’ll find out what’s going on. Hang tight. And, please, don’t talk to him. Not until I do. It’s very important when he gets like this that he be left alone. Will you do something for me? Look up a man named Mr. A, a forty-nine-year-old from Brazil. It might explain a lot of this.”
Mr. A, a forty-nine-year-old from Brazil.
In her office, Casey did the search. The article was from The Huffington Post.
A 49-year-old man in Brazil survived a stroke but underwent a strange personality change afterward—he developed “pathological generosity,” according to a report of his case.
His willingness to give liberally to others—including people he barely knew— dramatically changed his life. He would spend his money on children he met on the street, buying them soda, candies and junk food, his wife told the doctors. Mr. A, as the man is called in the case report, became unable to manage his financial life, or resume his job as a department manager within a large corporation.
The stroke apparently left Mr. A with “excessive and persistent generosity,” said researchers.
“Stroke can cause a whole variety of neuropsychological and behavioral changes,” said Dr. Larry Goldstein, neurologist and director of the Stroke Center at Duke University, who wasn’t involved with the case. “Although the observation of personality change is not unusual, this particular one is apparently novel,” he said.
With her hands clasped tightly between her knees, Casey realized she was biting down hard on her lower lip.
Pathological generosity. She had never heard of such a thing. How had Sharon heard of it? Is this what Mr. Foster had?
She thought about not only the beneficiaries of the foundation, but also how he’d brought a teen girl back to the mansion to get her home to Wisconsin. How he spent most of his day looking at online fundraisers and donating to them.
Was the foundation about brain changes due to his aneurysm and not about his making up for his past and his father’s death? Or was it a combination of both?
The article didn’t say what had happened to Mr. A. It sounded like he was still doing his thing. Which wasn’t such a bad thing to be doing, except it had made him unable to have a normal life, and it sounded like his wife was fed up. Casey couldn’t blame the woman. It was doubtful Mr. A had the resources Mr. Foster did. But how long would those resources last? She remembered during the meeting for the Nonez victims how he’d said he’d given away about one-third of his wealth.
No wonder Sharon was concerned. Perhaps it wouldn’t be long before he had nothing. His extreme generosity made sense when he’d thought he was doomed to die, but not now with his aneurysm closing off. If he did give all his money away, Casey doubted he’d be able to get much of a job, not from what he’d told her about how he used to spend his time.
So now you’re going to support Mr. Moneybags, Cassilda Maria?
36
She listlessly went through her belongings, packing enough so she could stay with her parents for a few days. Around 10 p.m., exhausted to the point she could sleep, she drifted off in the spare room, but her sleep was ragged and restless.
In the early morning, she fell fully asleep, but as daylight seeped through the windows and crept behind her eyelids, she awoke with a strangling need for him. If he had a cell phone, she would have called him and asked him to come back so they could talk. She was glad he didn’t have one. She thought about calling the hotel Sharon had mentioned, the Baccarat, but decided against it. What she needed was to get out of the mansion, suspecting if he came back before she left, her defenses would be so shaky she would forgive him everything.
