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Don't Scream. Wendy Corsi Staub
Читать онлайн.Название Don't Scream
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781420129335
Автор произведения Wendy Corsi Staub
Жанр Триллеры
Издательство Ingram
They all laughed…at first.
But their amusement faded as the four of them passed around the bottle of champagne while Rachel guzzled the contents of the mason jar, clearly hell-bent on getting trashed.
There was no joy in it; it was clear to them even then that this was no celebration.
Something was troubling their friend.
Brynn even pulled her aside and asked her, at one point, what was wrong.
“If I could tell you, I would, Brynnie. But I can’t.”
And sweet, pretty Rachel Lorent carried her secret to her death that night…or so they all believed.
Cassie’s cell phone rings a few minutes after she turns it on, just as she slips behind the wheel of her car in the hospital parking lot.
It’s probably Alec. She left him a message earlier saying that he shouldn’t come over tonight; that she feels as though she’s coming down with something.
He’ll probably insist on coming anyway, with chicken soup or ginger ale or flowers. That’s the kind of guy he is.
A great guy.
And I don’t deserve him, Cassie tells herself, not for the first time.
Why is she consumed by a familiar urge to drive straight to the barn, climb on her horse, and gallop off as fast as she dares…?
Where? Where would you go?
Anyplace other than here, in my life.
Because it doesn’t feel like my life.
She reluctantly presses the SEND button on her ringing phone.
“Cassie?”
It’s a female voice. Unfamiliar…
But only in that first instant.
“Hello? Are you there?” the caller asks, and Cassie realizes, with a quickening pulse, just who it is.
“Brynn?”
“Oh, you are there. I heard a click a second ago and I thought you’d hung up.”
“No, I’m here.”
“Can you talk? I mean…you know…Is anyone around?”
At her furtive words and hushed tone, Cassie understands why she must be calling.
“Yes,” she says reluctantly. “I can talk.”
“Did you get one, too?”
Cassie’s heart erupts in a wild pounding.
“Yes,” she says simply.
So it wasn’t just me.
“So did Fiona.”
Then what about Tildy?
Maybe I have a voice mail from her, Cassie thinks—though there wasn’t one the last time she checked, on her lunch break.
“Listen, we’re meeting at one tomorrow afternoon, near Springfield, to talk about it. Can you be there?”
“Who’s meeting?”
“Me, Fee, Tildy…and you.”
“You talked to Tildy?”
“Fiona did. She tracked her down at work.”
“So she got one, too? Tildy?”
And why didn’t she call me back last night?
“All four of us did. Can you be there tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow? No, I can’t—”
“You’re working?”
At her hesitation, Brynn says firmly, “Cassie, you have to come.”
“But—”
“You have to.”
Brynn is right.
Cassie dutifully writes down the directions to the meeting place.
“You haven’t told anyone about…” Brynn hesitates.
“Come on, do you really have to ask that? We took an oath, remember?”
“I remember. But that was ten years ago.”
“An oath is an oath, Brynn.”
There’s a pause.
“I know. I’ll see you tomorrow at one.”
Tomorrow.
At one.
That’s going to take some juggling to arrange, but it has to be done.
There’s no way I’m going to miss this.
Four so-called sisters, together again at last.
The precious bond of trust, stretched thin across the span of years, is on the verge of snapping.
They’re wondering, now, who among them might have violated the sacred vow.
They’re wondering whether carefully sealed closet doors are about to be thrown open, brittle, decade-old bones tumbling out.
Ah, ladies…if you only knew.
One moment, Rachel was there, clutching the almost-empty mason jar.
The next, she was precariously close to the brink of
The Prom, laughing hysterically about something.
Or maybe she was crying.
It was hard to tell; she was incoherent.
All four of them warned her to get away from the edge.
And all four watched as she lost her footing and fell.
Unlike the champagne cork, she didn’t sail out over the edge of the cliff. No, she rolled off, grasping helplessly, her terrified screams punctuated by a horrible thrashing descent, curtailed abruptly with a sickening thud far below.
Fiona lives still in the house she and Pat bought during their marriage: a vintage 1920s Tudor tucked into a quiet, winding side street in Cedar Crest.
“Don’t you want to sell it and start fresh in a place where there are no memories?” Brynn asked, after the divorce.
“Trust me, there are no real memories here.”
No meaningful ones, anyway—good, bad, or even trivial, day-to-day stuff. As far as she’s concerned, everything about her marriage was behind her the moment they signed the separation papers. The house itself was always just a roof over their heads and a façade behind which they could carry on the charade of marriage and family life.
The mountain cabin is even less meaningful. They bought it just a few months before the split—Fiona more as an investment, and Pat because he wanted to actually use the place. As far as she knows, he rarely goes up there—and she never does. They keep the key under the doormat, and Fiona has more than once urged Brynn and Garth to use it as an escape. Mostly because she doesn’t want Pat to think he has sole dibs.
“Leave the kids and take a second honeymoon,” she tells the Saddlers every so often. God knows they could stand a break.
But they keep protesting that they don’t have anyplace where they can leave their kids, and Fiona isn’t about to offer to watch them for a weekend.
“Why don’t you ever go up, Fee?” Brynn wanted to know once.
“Because I like my creature comforts. I’m not the rough-it type.”
Brynn laughed. “No, you’re definitely not.”
Now, as Fiona stands in the master bedroom