Chapter 4 - Cassidy refused every request for comment.
She returned to Evanston with Emily under professional security arranged not by Dominic but by Rebecca and the court.
Dominic did not live there.
He rented a modest apartment downtown while his legal situation unfolded.
He saw Emily every Sunday.
At first Cassidy stayed in the room.
Then she stopped hovering.
Not because everything was fixed.
Because Dominic never once used Emily to get closer to her.
That mattered.
On the first Sunday of September, he arrived carrying a cardboard box with air holes.
Cassidy opened the front door.
A wet black nose pushed through one hole.
She stared at him.
“No.”
From upstairs Emily screamed, “IS THAT A DOG?”
Dominic looked almost guilty.
“I made a tactical error.”
“You bought her a dog?”
“Adopted.”
A small golden-brown mutt exploded from the box and ran between Cassidy’s feet.
Emily came flying down the stairs.
“Oh my God!”
“Do not say God like that,” Cassidy said automatically.
“OH MY GOSH!”
The dog jumped into Emily’s arms.
She cried.
Actually cried.
Dominic stood by the door, looking terrified.
“What if she hates it?”
Cassidy looked at him.
“She is sobbing into its ears.”
“I don’t know children.”
“You know enough.”
Emily named the dog Pancake.
Dominic hated the name.
He lost the vote two to one.
The criminal investigation took months.
Life became documents, interviews, subpoenas, headlines and waiting.
Several of Dominic’s former associates were charged.
So was Dominic.
Not with violence.
Financial conspiracy and unlawful payments.
His lawyers negotiated.
He cooperated.
He did not pretend innocence.
When he finally entered a plea to two felony counts, Cassidy sat in the back of the courtroom.
She had debated for days whether to go.
Dominic did not know she was coming.
When he turned and saw her, something passed through his face.
Pain.
Relief.
Shame.
Love.
All of it at once.
The judge sentenced him to eighteen months in a federal facility, with substantial fines and credit for cooperation.
Cassidy heard someone behind her whisper, “He got lucky.”
Perhaps he had.
Consequences were not measured against romance.
They belonged to what a person had done.
Outside the courthouse, reporters crowded the steps.
Cassidy left through another exit.
That evening, Dominic came to the Evanston house before reporting to custody the following week.
Emily had been told only the truth appropriate for a child.
Dominic had broken serious rules.
He had admitted it.
He had to leave for a while because grown-ups had consequences too.
She cried anyway.
At bedtime, she hugged him around the waist.
“Eighteen months is forever.”
“No,” Dominic said softly. “It will feel long. That’s different.”
“Will you come back?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
Dominic hesitated.
Cassidy watched.
He had learned something about promises.
“I will do everything I can to come back.”
Emily nodded against his shirt.
“Okay.”
After she slept, Dominic and Cassidy sat on the back steps.
The same steps where months earlier he had told her about his mother.
Autumn air smelled like leaves and chimney smoke.
Cassidy held the platinum ring in her palm.
She had not worn it since June.
Their contractual year would end in February.
Dominic looked at it.
“You should file while I’m away.”
“Maybe.”
“You’d be free before I return.”
“Maybe.”
“You have the settlement.”
“Yes.”
“The house.”
“Yes.”
“Your job.”
“Yes, Dominic. I have read my own life.”
He almost smiled.
Then she held the ring out.
His expression changed.
“I think you should keep this.”
He did not take it.
“It was given to you.”
“Under false pretenses.”
“It was my mother’s.”
“That’s why you should keep it.”
Dominic finally accepted the ring.
His fingers closed around it.
“She would have liked you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“She hated rich men.”
Cassidy laughed.
“So do I.”
“I noticed.”
Silence settled.
Then Dominic said, “I wish I had met you differently.”
“How?”
“At a bookstore.”
“You don’t read fiction.”
“A grocery store.”
“You don’t know how to buy milk.”
“A funeral?”
“That is disturbingly on brand.”
He laughed quietly.
Cassidy looked at him.
“I wish that too.”
“If we had met differently, maybe—”
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
“Don’t turn another imaginary life into a way to hate this one.”
Dominic looked at her.
“This life hurt you.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“Is that enough?”
“No.”
The answer remained between them.
Cassidy reached for his hand.
“But not everything has to be enough.”
He looked down at their joined hands.
Some endings were built from certainty.
This was not one.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know.”
“I don’t expect you to wait.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want Emily waiting for some version of me that might not exist when I come back.”
“She won’t.”
He nodded.
Cassidy rested her head briefly against his shoulder.
“Neither will I.”
He went still.
She lifted her head.
“That doesn’t mean what you think.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means I’m not freezing my life for eighteen months.”
“Good.”
“I’m going to work. Raise Emily. Maybe repaint the bathroom. Pancake is getting neutered Tuesday.”
Dominic grimaced.
“Poor bastard.”
“Your sympathy is misplaced.”
“And us?”
Cassidy looked toward the lit kitchen window.
Inside, Emily’s school papers covered the refrigerator.
Pancake had chewed the corner off a dish towel.
The pantry door still held three height marks.
Emily.
Dominic.
And one added in August after Emily insisted Cassidy deserved one too.
Cassidy looked back at him.
“When you get out, call me.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s a lot.”
Dominic nodded slowly.
“And if you don’t answer?”
“Then you’ll have your answer.”
He looked away.
Cassidy squeezed his hand.
“You wanted contracts because they prevented confusion.”
“Yes.”
“Life doesn’t.”
“No.”
“That’s the lesson.”
The morning Dominic reported to custody, Cassidy did not go with him.
She drove Emily to school.
She went to work.
She ordered new menus for the restaurant.
At three-thirty, she picked Emily up.
At six, they made spaghetti.
At eight, Pancake threw up half a sock.
At ten, Cassidy stood alone in the pantry.
She looked at the height marks.
For a moment she touched Dominic’s handwriting where he had later corrected TOO OLD FOR THIS to APPARENTLY NOT.
Then she turned off the light.
Months passed.
Christmas arrived without him.
Emily mailed drawings.
Dominic wrote letters.
Not romantic ones at first.
Descriptions of books.
Questions about Pancake.
A complaint about instant coffee.
Once, he sent three pages explaining why the restaurant’s new supplier contract was terrible.
Cassidy wrote back:
You are literally incarcerated and still trying to manage my inventory.
His response arrived a week later.
Bad margins are bad margins regardless of geography.
She laughed until she cried.
February came.
Their contractual anniversary.
Rebecca placed divorce papers on Cassidy’s desk.
“You don’t have to decide today.”
“The contract ends today.”
“The contract does.”
Cassidy looked at the signature line.
“Funny.”
“What?”
“A year ago I thought the hard part was deciding whether to marry him.”
Rebecca smiled sadly.
“The hard part is usually deciding what things mean afterward.”
Cassidy took the papers home.
They remained on the kitchen counter for six days.
On the seventh, Emily spilled orange juice on them.
Cassidy stared at the ruined pages.
Emily went pale.
“I’m sorry.”
Cassidy started laughing.
She laughed so hard she had to sit down.
Emily cautiously laughed too.
They threw the papers away.
That did not mean Cassidy had chosen to remain married forever.
It meant orange juice had postponed a legal decision.
Life was sometimes that unimpressive.
Dominic came home thirteen months after he left, released early for good conduct and cooperation.
It was raining.
Not dramatically.
Just the miserable steady rain Chicago seemed to reserve for important days.
At 7:18 on a Thursday evening, Cassidy heard a knock.
Emily was at a sleepover.
Pancake barked wildly.
Cassidy opened the door.
Dominic stood beneath the porch light.
Thinner.
Hair slightly longer.
No tailored suit.
Dark jeans, plain coat, one duffel bag.
For the first time since she had known him, he looked like a man without armor.
“Hi,” he said.
Cassidy held the door.
“Hi.”
Pancake shoved past her and launched himself at Dominic.
Dominic crouched.
“Traitor.”
The dog licked his face.
Cassidy laughed despite herself.
Dominic stood again.
“I called.”
“My phone died.”
“I thought maybe that was an answer.”
“It was a battery.”
“Oh.”
They looked at each other.
Thirteen months lived inside the silence.
“I kept the ring,” Dominic said.
“I assumed.”
He reached into his pocket.
Not the velvet box.
Just the ring.
He held it between two fingers.
“I’m not giving it to you.”
Cassidy raised an eyebrow.
“That’s a terrible opening.”
“I practiced better ones.”
“What happened?”
“I saw you.”
Her chest tightened.
Dominic continued.
“The first time, I gave you this because I needed something. I put it on your hand before you knew enough about me to choose anything fairly.”
Cassidy said nothing.
“So I’m keeping it.”
“Okay.”
“Unless someday you ask for it.”
Cassidy looked at the ring.
Then at him.
“That sounds suspiciously like patience.”
“I learned some.”
“How much?”
“Probably not enough.”
“Honest.”
“I’m trying that too.”
Rain ran from the edge of the roof.
Cassidy folded her arms.
“What now?”
“I have an apartment.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not assuming you live here?”
“No.”
“Good.”
His face fell slightly.
She almost smiled.
May you like
“I have a job offer with a logistics company in Milwaukee.”
“That’s far.”
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