Cherry
Haddonfield, 2024
had, of course, been cut from the competition, fifteen minutes after her mother and her aunt disappeared.
She’d more or less promised the producers that she’d be able to get Cassie and Zoe for the show, and when it turned out that both of them had vanished, they’d replaced her with one of the alternates.
I knew this could happen, told herself, as she sat in her dressing room, auntless, motherless, waiting for the bad news to be confirmed.
A stone-faced PA had marched her to Sebastian’s office backstage.
Sebastian was waiting for her, his expression cold, eyebrows lifted.
“Well?”
told Sebastian what had happened.
Sebastian’s face was impassive as he listened.
“The Griffin Sisters were always kind of a package deal,”
he’d finally said.
nodded.
“I could sing with someone else.
Tomorrow.
Maybe, if April isn’t busy . . .”
“Oh, no.
You’re done,”
Sebastian said, almost indifferently.
He’d turned back to with an indulgent smile that put his veneered teeth on display.
“But I’ll tell you what.
If you can manage to get the Griffin Sisters back together, we’ll come and film the concert.
Anytime, anywhere in the world.”
He’d patted on the shoulder, a benediction and a dismissal.
“I’ll give you my assistant’s contact information.”
The PAs ignored her as she left Sebastian’s office, turning their faces away like she had the plague and it was catching.
couldn’t blame them.
Sending April, her assigned mentor, away, asking her mom to fly out, then springing her mother on Cassie was the definition of a high-risk/high-reward situation.
She’d hoped for the best—a joyous reunion, tears and hugs and kisses, after which Cassie and her mother would go onstage with her.
would come clean about her lineage, thrilling the audience in the process.
The Griffin Sisters, reunited at last, after all those years! The judges would be delighted, and then Cassie would take her place at the keyboard and would pick up her guitar and her mom would be there, for moral support and possibly backup harmonies, and they would sing, and it would be everything.
had stayed through the show’s taping.
She’d sat backstage, away from the cameras, and watched on a monitor as the other contestants performed, hearing the judges’ critiques, observing her former competitors come offstage, some of them elated, some of them looking shell-shocked or terrified.
That could have been me, she thought, as the girl they’d tapped to replace her sang “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,”
from Dreamgirls, and wasn’t half as good as knew she could have been.
When it was over, went back to her dressing room, to comb the gel out of her hair and put her street clothes back on.
Eventually, a knock came, and opened the door to admit her shamefaced mother.
Zoe’s carefully applied makeup was mostly gone.
Her high-heeled shoes were dusty, and she looked like she’d been crying.
“What happened?”
asked , as Zoe stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
“Where’s Cassie?”
Her mom just shook her head.
“I owe you an apology,”
she said, in a muted voice had never heard.
Yes, thought.
Yes, you do.
She stood up, put her hands on her hips, narrowed her eyes, and waited.
But when Zoe began, she didn’t say a word about scaring Cassie away, or ruining ’s performance, or getting her disqualified from The Next Stage.
She smoothed her hair, hands twitching anxiously, and said, “When you told me Bix was bothering you, I should have listened.”
blinked.
Of all the things her mother could have said, of all the conversations she’d imagined they’d be having, that one hadn’t made the list.
But if that was where Zoe wanted to start, she could work with it.
“So why didn’t you listen?”
she asked.
Zoe looked down at her feet.
In that moment, with her shoulders hunched, shaking her head, she looked so much like Cassie that found herself a little breathless.
She’d never seen much of a resemblance before, but in that moment it was unmissable.
“I guess because it was easier not to.
Easier to tell myself that Bix was just annoying.”
She looked at , glancingly, then looked away.
“Easier for me.
Not for you.”
She hung her head.
“It was my job to take care of you.
And I didn’t.”
felt staggered.
She felt like she’d gotten herself geared up to punch her fist through a board, and had ended up shoving her knuckles into a pile of marshmallow fluff; something that offered no resistance and didn’t feel the way she’d imaged.
It should have been a relief, but instead, she felt unsettled, off-balance.
Wrong-footed.
“I was a terrible mother,”
Zoe said.
“But I’m going to do better.
I promise.”
Just words, thought, not wanting to hope.
Of course she can say the right things, it doesn’t mean that anything will change.
She’d barely finished thinking it when Zoe said, “I told Jordan that Bix can’t live at home.
I don’t want him around you, or the boys,”
she said, then looked anxiously at .
“You don’t think he—bothered—them too, do you?”
“No.”
was disgusted to find that her voice had gone a little wavery.
“I think I was the only one who got that honor.”
She blinked hard, then wiped at her eyes, hoping her mother didn’t notice.
“What did Jordan have to say?”
“He isn’t happy.”
Zoe sniffled a little.
“He loves Bix.
And he feels guilty, still, that Bix lost his mother.
He thinks that whatever Bix has done is because he’s troubled. Not bad.”
“What do you think?”
asked.
“I’m not interested in the why of it.”
Zoe’s voice was a little steadier.
“All I know is that he doesn’t get to hurt you anymore.”
couldn’t bring herself to look at her mother.
“You did your best,”
she said, her voice sounding thick, her tongue feeling heavy.
“You couldn’t have known all of it.
He was sneaky.
And he never touched me.
And I just stopped talking about it, after a while.”
“Because I wasn’t listening!”
Zoe raised her fisted hand to her forehead and struck herself, once, then again.
grabbed her hand.
“Hey,”
she said.
“Don’t.
It’s okay.”
“It isn’t,”
said Zoe, with her voice like a sob.
“It is not.”
“Okay,”
said.
“But maybe it will be.
You know.
At some point.”
Her mom made a noise, half sob, half laugh.
decided she could be magnanimous.
“I know that it must have been hard for you.
With the band breaking up.
With my father dying.”
Zoe sniffled.
She wiped at her eyes.
“Ah.
Well, that’s another thing.”
“What?”
“I’m not actually entirely sure who your father was.”
Again, felt that sense of dislocation, of expecting one thing and getting something completely different. “What?”
she asked.
Then, like a baby owl, “Who? If it wasn’t Russell, then who?”
“Maybe Tommy.
Tommy Kelleher.
The band’s drummer.”
still felt staggered.
Russell, maybe, wasn’t her father? Her father was, maybe, still alive? She struggled to picture Tommy Kelleher and could come up with only the vaguest memory of a generic dark-haired man behind a drum kit.
“Does he know?”
Zoe shook her head.
Before could ask more questions, starting with why Zoe had lied to her, her mother said, “One more thing.”
waited, breathless, wondering what revelation could possibly be next.
Zoe pushed her hair behind her ears.
She stood up straight and looked her daughter in the eye.
“If music is what you wanted, I should have let you pursue it.
I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,”
said, a little faintly.
“I got hurt.
A man—hurt me.”
Zoe’s throat jerked.
“I can tell you about it, sometime ... Anyhow, the thing is, I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. I was ambitious, and I let that . . .”
She shook her head.
“It made me stupid.
I made bad choices.
I got hurt, and I didn’t want that for you.
But if music is your dream, , you should go chase it.”
She let her hands fall, palms out, at her sides.
“I won’t stand in your way ever again.”
“What happened?”
asked.
Part of her didn’t want to hear any more.
But she needed to know.
Maybe knowing would help her understand.
Zoe shook her head again.
She sounded anguished as she said, “It was a long time ago.
There was a photographer . . .”
Her voice trailed off as one of her hands wandered—unconsciously, was sure—to rub at her cheek.
“It doesn’t matter.
Just—well.
If you made it all the way to Alaska and nothing bad happened, I guess you can take care of yourself.”
“I can,”
said, speaking half to herself.
“I always could.”
She looked at her mother.
“And whatever happened to you, it wasn’t your fault.”
She wanted to grab her mother’s shoulders and shake them; wanted to tell Zoe what she was sure her mother would have said if had been the one who’d gotten hurt.
“He was the one who did something wrong. Not you.”
“I know.
You’re right. You are.”
Zoe didn’t sound entirely convinced.
wondered if her mother believed what she was saying.
Zoe was still looking at the ground when she said, “I wasn’t much of a mom to you.”
stared at her curiously.
She remembered the years in the apartment in Bella Vista, the time before Jordan.
Her mom had been tired, short-tempered and prickly, and could remember nights and weekends spent with her grandparents and Aunt Bess and random babysitters, seemingly anyone Zoe could find to care for her.
She remembered sitting at the window, watching her mom heading down the sidewalk, toward her car, carrying her guitar case, walking away.
She’d had a cropped leather jacket, and her hair had been loose, and remembered feeling a little sad, but also proud.
Other kids had parents who were doctors and lawyers and nurses, parents who worked in offices and in restaurants and yoga studios.
Their parents were regular-looking people with normal kinds of jobs.
But her mother was beautiful, and she did something amazing.
Her mom made music.
Even after Zoe had married Jordan, even after they’d moved, even after the guitar disappeared and never heard her mom singing in the shower or humming an insurance-company jingle, never forgot how her mom had looked, and how it had made her feel.
“I wanted to be just like you when I grew up,” she said.
Zoe laughed, and wiped her eyes.
“Maybe not just like me,”
she said.
“Maybe better.”
’s boots clomped on the floor as she crossed it, and gave her mom a hug.
She felt Zoe stiffen, then relax.
She could smell perfume and expensive hair products, and could hear her mother sniffling against her shoulder ...
but, when they separated, Zoe’s eyes were dry.
wondered whether asking about Cassie would be a mistake, in the moment.
She decided to risk it.
“Do you know where . . .”
Your sister? she wondered. My aunt?
“...where Cassie went? Did she go back to Alaska?”
Zoe’s shoulders lifted in a brief shrug.
“Is she coming back?”
asked.
Zoe shrugged again.
In a muted voice, she said, “I did things that hurt her.
Things she hadn’t known about.
I told her everything, and she . . .”
Zoe gestured in a way that indicated disappearance.
ground her teeth together, and her voice was brittle.
“Whatever you had to say to her ... did it occur to you to maybe not say it until after my performance?”
“Oh, she wouldn’t have gone onstage with you.”
Zoe’s voice was almost absent.
“She only sings with me.”
“You’re wrong.
She did sing with me,”
said, not hiding the fact that she was, suddenly, furious.
All the anger that had dissipated after her mother’s confessions had come roaring back.
“She’s changed.
People do that when you don’t see them for twenty years.
But I knew she wanted to sing with you.
That’s why I asked you to come.”
Her mother looked at her.
couldn’t read the expression, could only identify parts of it—sorrow and regret.
Maybe a bit of amusement.
Maybe, even, a touch of pride.
“These shows don’t guarantee anything,” said Zoe.
“No,”
said.
“I get that.
You’ve told me a hundred times.
But you know what? Making it this far tells me I’ve got talent.
That I’m actually good.
And if I’d won the competition, at least it would have given me a shot.”
She inhaled, remembering what she’d said to Sebastian, the first time he’d interrogated her onstage.
When he’d asked her if she wanted to be rich and famous, and she’d told him that singing was her way of communicating, her way of telling the world her story.
“You are,”
Zoe said.
“You are good.
You’ve always been good.
You . . .”
She paused, inhaling deeply.
“Whatever Cassie has, you inherited it.”
For all the good it’s done me, thought, feeling frustrated and furious, and—still—sorry for her mother, to whom bad things had happened.
She touched Sebastian’s card, tucked in her pocket.
“Do you think she’d ever sing with me?”
Zoe shrugged.
“Will you talk to her?”
asked.
Her voice was getting louder, sharper.
“Can you try to convince her? It would . . .”
Make a difference.
Help me.
Get me on TV.
Launch my career.
“It would change my life.
And hers, too, I think.
I think she’s pretty lonely.”
Huge understatement, realized, but, in the moment, it was the best she could do.
Cassie might have been an art monster, a woman who lived for music, and music alone.
But monsters got lonely, too.
Her mother looked at her.
“Let’s go home,”
she said.
“And when we’re back, I promise, I will help you as much as I can.”
“What about Cassie?”
Zoe’s expression became complicated again.
“What happens next is her choice.
We just have to wait and see.”
This was not what wanted to hear.
“So what happens now?”
she demanded.
Zoe sighed, and nodded toward the door.
“Now, we go home.”