Vows Written In Poison

Raymond

Raymond Whitmore had not been afraid of anything in eleven years.

Then his wife walked out of his grandmother's dining room on his cousin's arm, and he discovered he was afraid of a great many things at once.

He had followed them halfway down the drive before Grandmother Patricia had caught his elbow.

"Do not," she had said, "run after her. Not in front of Vincent. Do you understand me?"

"She's my wife, Grandmother."

"She is a woman who just found out about the child. Give her the night. She will come home in the morning. They always come home in the morning."

"Vincent will not let her."

"Vincent," Patricia said coldly, "does not want a wife. He wants a weapon. And your wife has just become a very sharp one. So do not, whatever you do, sharpen her further tonight."

He had gone home.

He had sat in the empty house on Beacon Hill and looked at the sapphire bracelet still lying on the pillow where Claire had left it, and he had realized, slowly, that his wife had known.

She had known when he came home three nights ago.

She had known when she asked him to come to bed without a shower.

She had been testing him.

And he had failed.

He picked up his phone and called Casandra.

"Ray," she said, purring. "Are we celebrating?"

"What did you say to my wife on the phone?"

Silence.

"Casandra."

"I might have," she said carefully, "encouraged her not to make a hasty decision."

"By threatening her sister."

"By reminding her of the stakes."

"Casandra." He closed his eyes. "Casandra, do you have any idea what you have done?"

"I got you what you wanted."

"You did not get me what I wanted. You got me Vincent."

That silenced her.

"You," Raymond said, "have thirty minutes to leave the country. My driver is already at your door. Do not pack. Do not call anyone. Take the child and get out. Because when Vincent finishes with you, there will not be a country left that will hide you."

He hung up.

He drank one whiskey. He did not pour a second.

At eleven o'clock at night, the doorbell rang.

He opened it himself.

Simon, the lawyer, stood on his front step. Behind him, at the curb, was a black car with tinted windows and Vincent's silver monogram on the door.

"Mr. Whitmore," Simon said politely. "I represent your wife."

He held out an envelope.

Raymond didn't take it. "I don't want it."

"That is unfortunate," Simon said. "Because whether you take it or not, at nine o'clock tomorrow morning, the following will happen. Halden Biotech will announce Doctor Claire Robert as its lead researcher on a project that will make several of your family's pharmaceutical patents worthless. At ten o'clock, the Boston Herald will publish an interview with a woman named Casandra Vale, arranged and paid for by my client, in which she confirms her pregnancy and names its father. At eleven o'clock, your wife's petition for divorce will be filed publicly, along with photographic and video evidence of your infidelity taken at the Whitmore Grand Ballroom last Saturday night. All of this can be stopped, however, if you sign this envelope by eight o'clock in the morning."

"What does the envelope say?"

"That you leave the marriage with nothing. Not the house on Beacon Hill. Not the Vermont property. Not the stock she was given as a wedding gift. Not custody of any child, present or future. And that you personally deposit two million dollars into a trust for her sister Grace Robert."

Raymond laughed sarcastically.

"Two million dollars for a sister-in-law."

"Two million dollars," Simon said, "so that you can wake up tomorrow with your reputation still intact enough to run your hotels. Otherwise, my client is fully prepared to burn the Whitmore name to ash. And she has the resources now."

"Vincent's resources."

"My client's resources," Simon said. "Vincent Whitmore is a friend. He is not a wallet."

Raymond stared at him.

"Where is she," he said. "Where is my wife?"

"Sleeping," Simon said. "In her own apartment. Alone."

"Let me speak to her."

"No."

"Simon, please."

The lawyer, who had heard men more powerful than Raymond Whitmore beg him to open doors he had no interest in opening, simply set the envelope on the small table by the door.

"You have until eight," he said. "Good night, Mr. Whitmore."

The door closed.

Raymond sat down on the bottom step of his own staircase and put his head in his hands. From above him, on the wall, his own wedding portrait smiled down at him. In the picture, Claire was leaning her forehead against his and laughing. He remembered the day. He remembered the light in the church. He remembered promising, in front of six hundred people, that she was the only fragrance in the world worth living for.

He had believed it, that day.

The horrible thing, the thing he could not tell anyone, not his grandmother, not Casandra, not even himself until tonight, was that he still believed it.

He picked up his phone.

He dialed Claire.

It rang three times.

She picked up.

"Raymond," she said. Her voice was calm.

"Claire."

"You have until eight in the morning. Simon has been very clear."

"Claire, please, listen to me. Casandra is nothing. The baby is nothing. It was a mistake, it was a moment, it was..."

"Raymond."

"Yes."

"Do you remember," she said, "the perfume? The one you named after me?"

"Yes."

"I want you to do something for me. Only one thing."

"Anything."

"I want you to open the bottle you kept for yourself. The one on your desk. And I want you to smell it. And I want you to tell me, honestly, whether that is the smell of my skin, or the smell of hers."

He was silent for a long time.

"Claire, please don't."

"Smell it, Raymond."

He walked to his desk. He picked up the crystal bottle. His hand was shaking so badly the perfume rocked inside.

He lifted the stopper. He held it to his nose.

The scent was warm and sweet and it did not, in any way at all, smell like Claire.

It smelled like Casandra.

He set the bottle down.

"Claire," he said, and his voice broke in a way it had not broken in eleven years. "Claire, I have made a terrible mistake."

"Yes," she said. "You have."

"Claire, please. Come home. Please come home. I will do anything. I will send Casandra away tonight. I will burn the perfume. I will do the fourth doctor with you. I will do ten doctors. I will..."

"Raymond."

"Yes."

"I am not coming home."

"Claire, I love you."

"I know," she said. And that, more than anything else, was the thing that killed him. "I know you do, Raymond. That is what makes it so sad."

The line went dead.

He stood in the middle of his empty house at midnight with a crystal bottle in one hand and a divorce envelope in the other, and for the first time in his life, Raymond Whitmore understood what it felt like to lose something you were never going to get back.

Behind him, the front door opened again.

He turned, hoping, stupidly, that it was Claire.

It was not.

It was his grandmother. Patricia stood in the doorway with her white hair still in its crown and her mouth set in a line that meant business.

"Raymond," she said. "We need to talk about Vincent."

"Not tonight, Grandmother."

"Especially tonight," she said. "Because your cousin has just done something he has not done in eleven years, and I know why."

"Why."

"Because," Patricia said, "your wife is not just a woman he found interesting at lunch. She is the daughter of the man Vincent has been trying to find for eleven years."

Raymond stared at her.

"Grandmother. What are you saying."

Patricia stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and lowered her voice.

"I am saying," she said, "that we have a much bigger problem than a divorce.”