"Okay," Cassie replied gamely. "Absolutely." She tried to smile bravely as he left the cafeteria. She was still trying to figure out what had happened. Had he been coming on to her? Had she turned him off? The fleeting electricity in his smile and the delicate touch of his fingers lingered for a while in her mind after he was gone. She was unnerved by the heat she'd felt and the undercurrents, the innuendo of the conversation. She was concerned, but after a while she concluded that nothing bad had happened. Mark was a friend. She'd been starving for the personal touch and had gotten it, that was all. Still, she couldn't drink her coffee, even with its pleasant hazelnut-flavored creamer.

Sunday evening, ten days after Cassie's surgery and two days after Mitch's stroke, Marsha and Teddy further trashed their rooms in preparation for their return to their studio apartments in Manhattan. Just before they left, Marsha came into the kitchen, where Cassie was still on her feet, dazedly trying to find things to do.

"Mom, you okay?"

"Sure, I am," Cassie told her. "Fine."

"I've washed my sheets and towels. The towels are in the dryer now. Teddy was only here for two nights. I figure his sheets are good for a few more days. When is Rosa coming back?"

Rosa was the cleaning lady they'd had for the last fifteen years. She'd been on vacation in Peru for three weeks.

"Soon. I don't know."

"You should get someone else. And you don't have to sit at the hospital all day tomorrow. Why don't you rest for a few days. It wouldn't hurt."

"I want to be there when he wakes up," Cassie said.

"I hate to leave you like this, Mom." Marsha drew Cassie over to the kitchen table and sat her down. She looked sad as she patted her mother's hand. "Are you okay?"

It reminded Cassie of Mark's pats. She thought she must look pretty pathetic to engender this kind of reaction from both of them.

"You're a nice girl, Marsha," she murmured, her eyes puddling as she realized for the second time that day how unused to touch she'd become. "Marsha, about those receipts-"

"Oh, Mom, let's not talk about that now," Marsha cut her off quickly.

"I didn't sign them," Cassie told her. "I want you to know that."

"I know that, Mom." Marsha gave her another sympathetic pat.

"You do?"

"Yes. I'm really sorry." Marsha hung her head. "I shouldn't have jumped on you like that."

"Marsha, why did you do it? We would have taken care of you, gotten you therapy. Why-?"

"Mom!" Marsha's tone changed into a whine. "You don't think it was me? Are you crazy? I wouldn't do anything like that. How could you think it was me?" she cried.

"Teddy?" Cassie was astounded. "Was it Teddy?"

"No, Mom. Not Teddy, either."

Cassie tried to frown with her new forehead. "Daddy? Daddy? Your father did this on purpose, didn't he?"

"We'll talk about it tomorrow."

This was hard to swallow. Cassie swallowed it. "Your father opened credit card accounts in my name? Signed my name? Bought a Jaguar?" She was really annoyed about that Jaguar. "Who has it?"

Marsha shook her head, didn't want to say.

Teddy came in. "What are you two talking about?" he asked suspiciously.

"Teddy, Daddy took out credit cards in my name? Bought all that stuff? A car? Where is it all?"

Teddy put his arm around her shoulders. Another one. Gave her a pat.

"Why?" She looked from one to the other.

"Must be some kind of a tax thing," Teddy said vaguely. Suddenly he found his shoes very interesting. Very interesting indeed.

"What kind of tax thing, Teddy?"

"Mom, Teddy and I will talk to you about these money things some other time. We'll get a tax lawyer and, I don't know, we'll work it out." Marsha gave Teddy an angry look.

"I'll get a lawyer," Cassie said. It was her life. She felt forlorn. "When are you coming back?"

"Maybe tomorrow night. Maybe Tuesday. Mom, Edith is coming over to be with you tomorrow. Are you okay for tonight?"

Cassie knew it was useless to question them further. She told them she was just fine. But where was that Jaguar? She kept focusing on the car because hers was such an old one.

BEFORE CASSIE WENT INTO HER HUSBAND'S OFFICE for the first time, she called the hospital to see if there had been any change in his condition. It was half past ten on Sunday night, and she wanted to give him one more chance at returning to his life before she entered his world and took command of it. She was frightened by the responsibility of having to do it, terrified of what she might find. Money had never been her thing. She didn't know what to do about it, how to handle it. She'd never had any of her own. She'd been told to trust, and so she'd trusted.

Her stomach felt like a volcano, erupting intermittently in hot, dizzying waves of anxiety. It bubbled up again after the kids left. Her life had become a mystery she had to crack. How could she have let the big questions slide? She and Mitch used to be happy. They used to have fun. Why hadn't she confronted him more directly when the fun stopped? Even now she still couldn't help feeling that it wasn't right for her to search for the health insurance, the will, the simplest things about their lives with which she should already be thoroughly familiar.

On the phone, the night nurse told her Mitch was still holding his own. Those words pretty much summed up their marriage. After Cassie hung up, she put Mark's special cream on her stitches, wound sterile gauze around her glasses, and carefully eased them on. Then she went into Mitch's office and opened his file drawers one by one.

What she found in them hit her like an atom bomb. First thing: Mitch had a bank account at the Bank of the Cayman Islands with a May balance that topped a million and a half dollars. The statement reassured her that he'd told her the truth when he'd said she never had to worry about money. On the other hand, there was a balance of less than two thousand in their joint Chase bank account. She didn't know what day he deposited money for household expenses, or how much it was, but she didn't worry about it. She could get money easily; he owned the company.

He had a balance of $523,000 in his pension fund. It didn't seem like much after a quarter century of harping on her to save for it. A little note of alarm buzzed in the back of her head about the money he'd stashed outside the country. What was that about? On the other hand, the life insurance policy she found seemed adequate. The various pieces of it added up to a cool $3 million. If he died, she'd be a wealthy woman, better off than she was now. However, the date on the policy was old and the premium bills were not in the house, which led her to believe he might have a newer and bigger one whose premiums he paid from the office. At the moment everything they had was in his name, and she couldn't put her hands on a nickel. Their affairs were as clear as mud. She was sure somewhere there was more than this.

She opened the filing cabinet and plunged into the accounts in Mitch's name for which she had her own card. There was nothing surprising there. The picture of their joint life jibed pretty well with her knowledge of it. She herself used the family resources sparingly, almost ascetically, always mindful of Mitch's constant admonitions about sensible spending. And Mitch in turn faithfully, and fully, paid off all the expenses of the house and all the bills that she incurred every month. Virtually none of his personal expenses appeared on these charges. The house had a small mortgage, but their life, considering Mitch's income, was modest indeed.

The first discrepancy came out with the spending habits of the fictitious Cassandra Sales. Cassie discovered that her fictitious self had two of her own American Express cards, as well as accounts at Tiffany's, ABC Carpet and Home, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, Fancy Cleaners, a Chase Platinum MasterCard, several gold airline MasterCards, and two Visa Platinum Card accounts. Mitch kept a separate file for each one right here under her very nose. This was both gross stupidity and colossal nerve on his part. Clearly he'd understood her character well, and she'd had not the slightest inkling of his.