A whole life was documented in the receipts: Prada dress, aubergine, $1,500. Armani suit, gray, $3,400. Lavender silk tank, $850. Armani dress and coat, mauve wool, $4,500. Chanel silk scarf, $350. Bergdorf Shoe Department: mauve suede sling backs, gray leather pumps, $575; black crocodile loafers, $1,250. Escada red leather coat, $3,900. Escada red leather bag, $850. Escada red leather shoes, $495. Bliss Spa: La Mer face products, $890. Microbrasion treatments, $150 times ten. Salon de Daniel: peach satin robe and gown, $1,200. La Perla uplift bra, $125. Matching panties, $65. Hermès handbag, $8,600. Louis Vuitton luggage, $10,000. It went on and on.

Cassie was stunned, could hardly absorb what it all meant. It took her until past oneA.M. to look through the purchases of just the first five months of this year. She couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it! Eighteen thousand dollars for a string of pearls at Cellini. Where was that? Boiling lava filled her stomach and throat, and still she could not process this appalling picture of a life in her name that she didn't have. It was beyond her powers of imagination. It was like a horror story, a made-up nightmare for shock TV. Not only that someone else had been enjoying the fruits of her husband's labors, but worse than that the woman had taken Cassie's very own identity, the financial credit she was due. And the woman had used it with absolutely no restraint. Cassie didn't know that people like this existed.

The real Cassie was frugal. She did not buy ten thousand dollars' worth of clothes every month at Escada and Prada and Armani. She did not get her nails and hair done every three days at Fred's on the Miracle Mile, did not buy expensive lingerie at Danielle in the chic and costly Americana Mall in Manhasset, so close to home. She did not have her clothes cleaned at Fancy in Locust Valley. She did not use the expensive Martin Viette Nurseries in Old Brookville for her plants. The real Cassie had not bought new carpets or furniture for their house in twenty years, much less in the last few months at ABC Carpet and Home. She had not bought silver or dishes at Tiffany's, nor would she even dream of spending three thousand dollars at Williams-Sonoma for nothing, nothing at all. The extent of the spending of the fictitious, but nonetheless very real, Cassandra Sales exposed the habits of a pathological shopper, a thief with staggering ambition. Moreover, her debts were steadily building up, for Mitch had paid nothing beyond the interest on all those charge accounts. That interest had to be very considerable. And to this already stupefying debt only a few weeks ago, Mitch had added even more when he used the Cassandra Sales MasterCard to pay the Sales family tax bill.

In all the years of her marriage Cassie never considered that her husband might be unfaithful to her. Why not, she didn't know. After seeing the fake Cassandra Sales bills, Cassie checked Mitch's American Express business file. Here, she found that he was in the habit of spending from twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars a month on hotels and luxury items in places where she hadn't known he'd gone. Even about this he'd lied. In January he'd been in the Caribbean; in February he'd been in Australia, Hong Kong, and Thailand; in March at Grand Cayman Island (probably depositing more money), and all this time she'd been a jerk, alone at home.

This new knowledge about her husband triggered a long-forgotten memory. After a few years of marriage, Mitch's lovemaking dramatically improved after a business trip to Paris. Overnight he'd acquired a sudden interest in things he'd never done with Cassie before. She was thrilled and wanted more. She'd teased him in what she'd thought was a friendly kind of way that he must have been inspired by another woman. She was interested, intrigued, fantasized competition, and was excited by the possibility. Mitch's response, however, had been denial all the way. He had been so vehement that he could never even look at another woman that Cassie had been lulled into letting the intriguing suspicion drop out of her mind.

Mitch had piled on the scam of their marriage so heavily that he'd destroyed her ability to see. He'd been a fog machine. He'd lied to her about everything, every single thing. He'd never given her an opportunity to compete for him, to share any of the fun. Instead of just divorcing her-letting her be jilted and go on with her life-he and his girlfriend had made her an object of contempt. They'd stolen her. It was a stunning feat. No wonder Marsha had looked at her that way. No wonder Mark looked at her that way. They all knew. Everybody in the world knew.

For hours, Cassie ransacked her husband's files and still couldn't find anything like a will, or a living will. Maybe there was no will. Maybe it was in Parker Higgins's office. When Cassie could no longer see straight, she sat at Mitch's desk with her heart pounding out a new fear. What else could the fake Cassandra Sales steal?

It was two in the morning when it occurred to her to start calling to cancel the cards. It was then that the nightmare started to spiral. Not one of them would allow her to cancel her own cards. They were in her name, but she was not the cardholder. Mitch was the cardholder. Only he could cancel the cards. And he was in a coma. She went to bed and tossed around all night, wondering what to do. At around four, she closed her eyes and began to dream.

Selma the faith healer was massaging Charlotte Trotter's bare scalp, exhorting t he dying woman to give up her beautiful pearls in exchange for a cure. "This is why your hair is falling out. Pearls rob you of your energy," she scolded, holding out her hands to get those pearls. "Let me keep them for you until you feel better."

Cassie's heart beat frantically in her sleep as her dream showed her mother being fleeced on her deathbed. The poor woman had collected only a few treasures in a life that was ending far too soon at only fifty-one. Charlotte had two daughters, her husband, Albert, a diamond from Amsterdam that became the center stone for her engagement ring, a heavy gold bracelet that had been her mother's, and the pièce de résistance: a string of dazzling white pearls the size of quail eggs. In her final days, when her looks, her personality, and-most important to the family-her love for them and God had been corrupted by the illness, the pearls disappeared, too. Cassie never knew if it was her sister, Julie, who'd lifted them, or Selma, the healer. The last blow to the three of them was that after all the months of staying with her night and day, Charlotte had died alone while they were across the street having lunch. Then, before they got back, some nurse or orderly at the hospital took the diamond from her finger, too. At the very end, Charlotte left Cassie nothing but a curse.

Instead of saying goodbye and good luck, Cassie's mother's very last words to her had been "trust no one." She'd been angry at Cassie for being pregnant with a baby she would never live to see. And she was angry at her husband, who'd promised he would die first. She could not bear the fact that the good soldier who'd so carefully planned her widowhood would be the one to be freed from the lion's cage. Widowhood was getting to be a big theme, even in Cassie's dreams.

Suddenly Selma disappeared, and her mother rose from her hospital bed, looking like a mummy. All her hair was gone and so was the water that had bloated her body beyond recognition at the end. She was very thin now, a model with a mummy's head. She was wearing the lost pearls. They were at a hotel in Italy. Somewhere on the Amalfi coast. Graham Greene was there, writing The End of the Affair. Cassie's father, Albert, was wearing a dinner jacket and a bad toupee. Must have been his wife's hair he was wearing. He was smiling, trying to take a photo of them all where they sat at a table on a hill overlooking the blue, blue Mediterranean. Marsha, Teddy, Mitch. Baby octopuses with red sauce were piled on a platter in front of them. The octopuses were still alive, wiggling and multiplying like crazy. Many wine bottles cluttered the table, too. It looked as if they were having a tasting, a good time, while the octopuses spilled onto the table and then the ground. Nobody seemed to care about the lunch being alive and multiplying.