Chapter 8 Cassidy
Chapter 8
Cassidy
From the window of her room, Cassidy watches Rosalie scurry along the path leading to the small pond. Well, scurry is a stretch. It’s more like dragging her feet. What she wouldn’t give for her daughter to take up even a moderate form of exercise, anything to clear her head and make her less anxious and defiant. Whenever Cassidy suggests a gym membership or fitness class, though, Rosalie interprets it seventy-seven different ways. None of them complimentary. Granted, there’s a noticeable difference in their bodies. Cassidy is grossly underweight. But as a forty-five-year-old woman, she feels it’s important to maintain her college weight. Even if it kills her. Rosalie doesn’t feel the same way, so any mention of the Peloton Cassidy recently purchased or a suggestion to take a walk or join a SoulCycle class is met with derision, an immediate insult.
Which usually leads to Cassidy bringing up Rosalie’s rigid personality. Or Rosalie’s anemic social life. Or Rosalie’s choice of hair color and dress. The list is endless. Conversations are battlegrounds where benign statements turn into dangerous land mines. Is Rosalie depressed? Maybe they should discuss medication or therapy. Or boarding school? Maybe she would thrive away from home? But then it clicks in Cassidy’s mind: Without Rosie, who would remind her when bills need to be paid? Who would make her favorite oil-free egg-white omelet for breakfast? Rosalie is an excellent cook. No, boarding school is not an option.
But what did she mean earlier, when she said she was sorry for making her mother come here? Cassidy has no idea. Is Rosalie planning to do something foolish? Cassidy’s heart quickens. She doesn’t know what to make of it, and it makes her yearn for her own mother.
Like Rosalie, Cassidy was an only child. And Cassidy and her mother were more than mother and daughter: they were close. Fine, maybe they were a little too close. They weren’t as bad as the women on that show sMothered in that they never shared bathwater, but there were some similarities. Dressing alike, vacationing together, the two had been inseparable. When Ann died, it broke Cassidy. Little Rosalie was a newborn. How would she manage motherhood without her own mom? She didn’t like to think of that time.
Instead, she prepares herself for dinner, slapping on blush and a fresh coat of mascara. She’ll have to do something about the thin threads that used to be her lashes, but for now, she’s stuck here for the week, determined to make the best of it. And as she walks downstairs, she has no idea that making the best of it is never going to happen.