Hold Tight

Then he met Cassandra.

It was like one of those science experiments that start with a clear liquid and then someone adds a small drop-a catalyst-to it and it changes everything. The color changes and the complexion changes and the texture changes. Corny as it sounds, Cassandra was that catalyst.

He saw her and she touched him and it transformed him.

He suddenly got it. He got love. He got hope and dreams and the idea of wanting to wake up and spend your life with another person. They met during their sophomore year at Williams. Cassandra was beautiful, but there was something more there. Every guy had a crush on her, though not really the fantasy-sexual kind you usually associate with college. With her awkward gait and knowing smile, Cassandra was the one you wanted to bring home. She was the one who made you think about buying a house and cutting your lawn and building a barbecue and wiping her brow when she gave birth to your child. You were wowed by her beauty, yes, but you were more wowed by her i

He’d seen a little of that in Reba Cordova, just a little, and there had been a pang when he had killed her, not much of one, but a pang. He thought about her husband, what he would have to go through now, because while he didn’t really care, Nash knew something about it.

Cassandra.

She had five brothers and they all adored her and her parents adored her and whenever you walked past her and she smiled at you, even if you were a stranger, you felt the pluck deep in your heart. Her family called her Cassie. Nash did not like that. She was Cassandra to him and he loved her and on the day he married her, he understood what people meant when they said you were “blessed.”

They came back to Williams for homecoming and reunions and they always stayed in North Adams at the Porches I

Yes, Cassandra died and that was when he knew for certain that it was all a crock and a joke and once she was gone, Nash didn’t have the strength to worry about stopping the crazy anymore. There was no need. So he let the crazy out, all out, with a sudden flooding rush. And once it was out, there was no putting it back.

Her family tried to console him. They had “faith” and explained again that he had been “blessed” to have her at all and that she would be waiting for him in some beautiful place for all eternity. They needed it, he guessed. The family had already picked up after another tragedy-her oldest brother, Curtis, had been killed three years before in some sort of robbery gone bad-but at least, in that case, Curtis had lived a life of trouble. Cassandra had been crushed when her brother died, had cried for days until Nash wanted to let the crazy out just to find a way to ease her pain, but in the end, those who had faith could rationalize Curtis’s death. Faith let them explain it as part of some grand scheme.

But how do you explain losing someone as loving and warm as Cassandra?

You can’t. So her parents talked about the hereafter, but they didn’t really believe that. No one else did. Why cry at death if you believe that you will spend eternity in bliss? Why mourn the loss of someone when that person was now in a better place? Wasn’t that horribly selfish of you-keeping a loved one from someplace better? And if you did believe that you spent eternity in paradise with the loved one, there would never be anything to fear-life is not even one breath next to eternity.

You cry and mourn, Nash knew, because deep inside, you knew it was a crock.

Cassandra wasn’t with her brother Curtis, bathing in white light. What was left of her, what hadn’t been taken by the cancer and the chemo, was rotting away in the ground.

At the funeral, her family talked about fate and plans and all that nonsense too. That this had been his beloved’s fate-to live briefly, touch everyone who saw her, raise him to a wonderful height, let him drop to the ground with a splat. This has been his fate too. He wondered about that. Even when he was with her, there had been moments where containing his true nature-his honest, most godlike state of nature-had been difficult. Would he have been able to maintain the peace inside? Or had he been hardwired from day one to go back to the dark place and cause destruction, even if Cassandra had survived?

It was impossible to know. But either way this was his fate.

Pietra said, “She would have never said anything.”

He knew that she was talking about Reba.

“We don’t know that.”

Pietra looked out the side window.

“Eventually the police will get an ID on Maria

“You are sacrificing many lives.”

“Two so far.”

“And the survivors. Their lives are altered.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Are you going to claim Maria

“Started is not the right word. She changed the dynamics.”

“So she dies?”

“She made a decision that altered and could potentially destroy lives.”

“So she dies?” Pietra repeated.

“All our decisions carry weight, Pietra. We all play God every day. When a woman buys a new pair of expensive shoes, she could have spent that same money feeding someone who was starving. In a sense, those shoes mean more to her than a life. We all kill to make our lives more comfortable. We don’t put it in those terms. But we do.”

She didn’t argue.

“What’s going on, Pietra?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“I promised Cassandra.”

“Yes. So you said.”

“We need to keep this contained, Pietra.”

“Do you think we can?”

“I do.”

“So how many more will we kill?”

He was puzzled by the question. “Do you really care? Have you had enough?”

“I’m just asking about now. Today. With this. How many more will we kill?”

Nash thought about it. He realized now that perhaps Maria

“With a little luck,” he said, “only one.”

“ WOW,” Loren Muse said. “Could this woman be more boring?”

Clarence smiled. They were going through the credit card receipts for Reba Cordova. There were absolutely no surprises. She bought groceries and school supplies and kid clothes. She bought a vacuum at Sears and returned it. She bought a microwave at P.C. Richard. Her credit card was on file at a Chinese restaurant called Baumgarts, where she ordered takeout every Tuesday night.

Her e-mails were equally dull. She wrote to other parents about playdates. She kept in touch with one daughter’s dance instructor and the other’s soccer coach. She received the Willard School e-mail. She kept up with her te

“I didn’t know people like this really existed,” Muse said.

But she did. She saw them at Starbucks, the harried, doe-eyed women who thought a coffee shop was the perfect place for Mommy and Me hour, what with Brittany and Madison and Kyle in tow, all ru