Cassie and I had been friends since junior high, though in truth “friends” was a polite simplification. Cassie was the sort of woman life forged instead of raised. She had started bartending at nineteen, bought a duplex by twenty-seven, divorced a man who thought apologies were a substitute for change, and now ran the busiest wine bar in town with the kind of competence that made men call her intimidating when what they meant was not available to manipulate. She had met Brett twice and disliked him both times.
She answered on the second ring sounding half asleep. “Val? It’s ten-thirty. What happened?”
“You were right,” I said.
Her silence sharpened instantly. “About what?”
“About Brett.” My voice sounded detached, almost clear. “About all of them.”
I heard sheets rustling, then her feet hitting the floor. “Tell me right now.”
So I did. Not elegantly. I told her in fragments. Airport. Hawaii. Tiffany. Group chat. House. Baby.
When I finished, Cassie said one sentence in a voice so flat it frightened me.
“Lock the doors. I’m coming.”
She arrived twenty-two minutes later in leggings, boots, and a raincoat thrown over pajama shorts, hair twisted up in a clip like she had sprinted out of bed. She let herself in with the spare key from the potted fern by the porch, took one look at the table set for two, the untouched Wellington, the candles burning down their sides, and muttered, “Oh, these people are going to wish they had chosen another victim.”
That was Cassie. No soft pity. No panicked questions. Just immediate recognition that something wrong had happened and someone was going to pay.
She blew out the candles, took the wine bottle from the table, and poured two enormous glasses.
“Drink,” she ordered. “Then show me.”
We sat cross-legged on the rug with the iPad between us while rain hammered the roof and the grandfather clock in the hall marked each passing minute like a witness. I walked her through everything. The phone call. The suitcase. The group chat. The photos. The sonogram. The fraudulent loan application attempt I had not even found yet but whose outline was already visible in the messages. Cassie did not interrupt much. She simply watched, absorbed, sorted. That was another thing about her. She could move through emotional wreckage like a firefighter through smoke, efficient and unsentimental because she cared enough to stay useful.