CHAPTER 24
When Casey awoke, Taylor was standing over her, glowering.
" Taylor?" she said sleepily. The afternoon was gone. From the angle of the light falling through the windows, she knew she'd slept all day.
"Where have you been?" Taylor said in a poisonous tone of voice.
Casey got her bearings and thought of everything she'd been through in the past forty-eight hours. She didn't know how or where to begin.
Taylor interpreted her confusion as a play at deception. He was enraged.
"Goddamn you, Casey!" he growled.
He had discovered the flannel shirt Sales had given her. It was in the laundry basket when he emptied the suitcase from his trip. He held the shirt up for her to see and threw it violently at her face. Casey instinctively flinched away, but Taylor grasped her by the upper arm and yanked her toward him until his face was only inches away, his eyes searching. He'd done plenty of cheating in his day, but he had sworn it would never happen to him in reverse. It was one of the reasons he'd married Casey. He'd never in a million years imagined she would do that to him. The hot flame of hatred and jealousy seared his insides, and he squeezed her hard.
"Let go of me!" Casey shrieked. He had never dared to get physical with her before. No man had. "Let me go!"
Casey struggled to free herself from his grip.
"Where were you last night, Casey?" Taylor demanded, unaffected by her malignant stare.
"Who is he?" he shouted. "Who?"
"You don't even know what you're talking about. Let me go!" Casey shrieked. Finally she snapped her arm free and scrambled to the other side of the bed.
"I know what I'm talking about!" he yelled. "You know! I called here last night. I called here this morning. You were out all night! And now, here you are, sleeping at six o'clock! His shirt was in the fucking laundry bin! Who is it? Goddamn you, Casey! I can't believe you did this to me!"
"You?" she shouted. "You? You who went out to San Francisco to be with that slut of yours! You wouldn't marry her, but she's still glad to sleep with you whenever you get the itch. Well, she's trash and so are you!"
"I wasn't with her!" Taylor shouted, but even to his own ears it sounded false.
Emboldened, Casey hissed, "I know. I had you followed by a private detective."
It was a lie, but she wanted him to know that she knew, and she knew as certainly as if she did have someone following him. "I know what you were doing, and if I had a man," she continued scornfully, "then it's too bad for you. How do you like it, Taylor? How do you like having the person you're married to fucking someone else?"
"You bitch!" he snarled. "It's over. You're just a white trash whore from a hick town. That's all you ever were. That's all you'll ever be! Everyone told me. They told me you weren't good enough and you're not even close."
"Ha!" Casey scoffed bitterly. "I'm not good enough? I'm not good enough? Look at you. You're not a man. A man marries a woman and that's enough. A real man makes his way in the world, and he's too busy doing things to go sleeping around. You never did anything. You couldn't even make it in the world if everything wasn't handed to you on a silver platter. The only way you think you can prove yourself is in the bedroom by screwing around with any woman that would have you, and from what I know, you're not even any good at that.
"Yeah," she said caustically, "you're a real accomplished man, Taylor. I bet you feel real good about all the things you've done with your life."
"Get out," he said flatly. "Get out of my house."
"This is my house as much as it is yours," she said. "You get out."
Casey marched past him, and he raised his hand to strike her. She turned on him and caught his eye with a hateful stare.
"If you touch me again, I'll have the police on you so fast you'll think you were hit by a train."
He stood there shaking, his hand in the air. Casey waited, her eyes shining with defiance until he slowly brought his hand down to his side. Without a word, she went downstairs and sat in the living room with her arms folded tightly as she listened to the faint sounds of him packing his bags. Finally, she heard his footsteps on the stairs. He walked past the living room without a word and into the garage. When she heard his car pulling out, she took a deep breath and set her jaw.
She felt a great sense of relief, as if she'd just come through a long-drawn-out illness. That's what her marriage had been, an illness. As she thought about the things that had prompted her to marry Taylor in the first place, she realized that her whole life had been sick. Her priorities were all wrong. She had wanted a husband who was rich and privileged, a man who would give her universal social acceptance. She had gotten what she wanted, but she had also gotten a husband who was untrue and selfish and who didn't appreciate any of the truly good qualities she had. To him, she was nothing more than a pretty ornament.
She had wanted to be a famous lawyer, too, and look where that had gotten her. She was recognized by many, but she was also reviled. She had also wanted to win at all costs, and look what she'd done. She'd bludgeoned an innocent father, besmirched his reputation, salted his deep, bleeding wounds. Worse yet, she had almost single-handedly turned a diabolical killer free.
Casey twisted a long piece of her wavy red hair until it hurt.
She felt like she had no one now. Her whole life had been her career. It was such an empty feeling to suddenly face the fact that her husband, the person who was supposed to be closest to her in the world, was emotionally miles away. Casey picked up the telephone. She hadn't spoken to her sister in months. She'd been too busy. She hadn't taken her calls, and she hadn't even thought of her. There was a time when they'd been close, but only when they were little girls. By the time Casey was a teenager, her ambitions had been clear in her head, and her younger sister Shelly's lack of the same were just as evident.
"Shelly?" she said at the sound of the familiar voice.
"Casey? Is that you, girl?" came the response in a backcountry drawl that made Casey involuntarily wince. It had taken her years to eradicate the same accent from her own speech.
"How are you?" Casey asked tentatively.
"Me? Oh, I'm just the same as ever," her sister said, talking as if they'd spoken only yesterday. "The kids are growing like weeds, and Gabe's losing his hair faster than you could think of, but I'm just the same. How are you, though? I seen you on the news during that trial. That's all everyone talked about 'round here my famous sister God dawg you should of seen Momma and Daddy. They were ready to bust at church, everyone crowding around them and asking about you…"
"What did they say?" Casey asked, with the sudden realization that she hadn't spoken with her parents in a good long while, either.
"Well, you know Daddy, he don't say nothing, and Momma, she just chattered on like a jay bird about Casey this and Casey that, telling stories about when you was young. You know, stuff you did that let all us know you was gonna be something special…" Shelly's words were completely ingenuous. She was one of the rare few who go through life without a hint of jealousy, and the goodness of her sister and the life she led gave Casey a sharp pang of dismay.
"I'm not the special one," she said seriously. "You are, Shelly. Look at you, a husband and three kids…"
"Oh, that ain't nothing," her sister said bashfully. "I didn't even get a four-year degree, and you got a husband, too.
"A handsome one with hair," she added with a giggle.
"No, I don't have a husband," Casey said.