Zoe
Haddonfield, 2024
hadn’t realized how much she’d missed her sister until that afternoon in Los Angeles, when, after almost twenty years had gone by, she’d finally seen Cassie again.
She hadn’t understood how much it had hurt, how much pain and shame she was carrying, until the moment that Cassie was actually standing in front of her, with her hair done and her face painted and an anguished look in her eyes.
had seen that look and felt lacerated.
Flayed.
Torn open.
She’d done her best.
She’d spent the entire flight to Los Angeles making a plan.
She was going to apologize.
She was going to try to explain herself, to tell Cassie how it had felt, being pushed out of the band, and tell her why she’d done what she’d done.
Not that it justified her actions, but, maybe, she could make Cassie understand it.
Had she accomplished any of that? Had she made her sister understand? Or had she only made things worse?
I hurt my sister, thought.
I hurt my daughter.
I’m a terrible mother, and a terrible person.
Back home, she’d tried texting Cassie, tried calling.
She’d sent long, handwritten letters to the PO box that Bess had given her, explaining it all again, saying she was sorry again.
She’d gotten no reply.
At least things were better at home.
Jordan had been stiff-shouldered and palpably resentful when brought Cherry home, but Bix’s room was empty ...
and, after a day or two of barely speaking to her, Jordan hadn’t turned to his side facing away from her the instant he climbed into bed, but had settled on his back, as usual.
Her third night back home, switched off the lights and slipped under the covers.
After a minute, Jordan reached for her hand and asked, “Do you want to tell me about it?”
“I think . . .”
’s voice caught in her throat.
“I don’t think you’re going to like me very much when you hear the whole story.”
Her voice was very small.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to love me anymore.”
“Oh, .”
He’d pulled her close, kissing her forehead, her nose, her lips.
“Sweetheart.
I could never not love you.”
“Just wait,”
she’d said, sniffling.
Even though it was dark, she kept her eyes closed while she told him about Russell, and Cassie, and what had happened at the end.
He’d held her hand, and handed her tissues, and, when it was done, he’d pulled her close, settling her against him, so that her head was on his chest.
“I lied,”
she said.
Her voice was flat.
“I told Cassie it was her fault that he died, but it wasn’t her fault.
It was mine.”
“Maybe,”
said Jordan.
For a wonder, he didn’t sound judgmental or disgusted or angry.
He wasn’t telling that she was a monster, or demanding that she leave his bed, his home, his life.
He was using his lawyer’s voice, cool and analytical.
“Or maybe it was Russell’s fault.
Or the driver’s fault.
Or the person who sold him the whiskey.
Or the person who designed the road.
Maybe it was just a tragedy, and it would have happened, no matter what.”
Could that be true? wondered, as Jordan stroked her arm, then her hair.
Could she let herself believe that Russell’s death had been predestined, somehow, and that she wasn’t to blame? Could she let herself be forgiven?
felt a lightness pouring through her, a sense of happiness, and contentedness, as Jordan held her, letting his body warm her.
“It’s over now,”
he told her.
“You’re safe.
You’re here.”
nodded, crying with her eyes squeezed shut, knowing she didn’t deserve any of it—not safe harbor, not happiness, or forgiveness, not a home with a man who loved her.
“You can’t change anything that happened,”
Jordan said.
“All you can control is what you do now.
What happens next.”
“You’re very wise,”
said, laughing a little before she started crying again.
“When did you get so smart?”
“Born this way,”
Jordan said modestly, and laughed.
What happens next? she thought.
Next, she’d help Cherry, as much as she could.
Next, she’d reach out to Cassie, and apologize again, and again, for as long as it took.
And then she’d do the hardest thing of all.
She would wait.
Cherry had called her old bandmates to tell them she’d come home, and by that weekend, she was playing with them again.
She returned to posting her music on social media and started sharing clips of her time on The Next Stage, once her segments had aired.
promised to send her songs to her contacts at Relic, whenever Cherry was ready.
“How do I know when I’m ready?”
Cherry had asked, and hadn’t known how to answer.
Cassie would have been the best judge, but Cassie wasn’t talking to either one of them.
knew that her sister was ignoring Cherry’s calls and the texts Cherry sent her: funny memes, pictures from Alaska, mostly of Wesley stretched out in front of the fireplace, or sitting attentively, listening to them sing, followed by emojis—musical notes, treble clef, snowflake, smiley face, heart, heart, heart.
had bought Cherry the Les Paul guitar she’d been lusting after for years, and attended three of Cherry’s band’s shows, standing in the back, earplugs in her ears.
She’d spent hours after dinner in the basement, listening to Cherry’s songs, holding the phone to record her daughter singing; offering all of the encouragement she could, knowing that her praise wasn’t what mattered to Cherry, that her judgment was no substitute for her sister’s.
Time went by.
Spring slipped into a hot, mostly rainless summer, which, eventually, gave way to fall.
The days got shorter; Halloween came and went.
And then, one night in November, after the boys were asleep, and Cherry and and Jordan were in the den, watching the British crime drama they’d all become obsessed with, ’s phone rang, and the name she’d been waiting to see was flashing on the screen.
She stabbed at the buttons and lurched to her feet.
“Hello?”
There was a long pause.
“I was wondering,”
Cassie asked, “if I could come for a visit.
If you’re going to be around this week.”
Like she lived around the corner, instead of on the other side of the world, thought.
“Of course,”
she said, hearing her voice cracking.
“Of course we’ll be here.”
Cassie bought a ticket for the following week and sent her flight information.
had offered to pick her sister up at the airport, but Cassie had declined.
She’d be renting a car, she said.
She’d drive herself.
hadn’t wanted to push.
She figured the car might have something to do with Cassie needing an escape plan, a way to get herself back home, if she felt like she had to run.
And so she waited, until on Wednesday night, at ten o’clock, there was a knock at the door.
opened it, and there was Cassie, with her suitcase handle in one hand and a dog’s leash in the other.
The leash, she saw, was attached to a smallish terrier-type dog, who was looking up at with friendly curiosity.
“Hi,”
said Cassie.
exhaled, feeling like she’d been holding her breath for days.
Possibly weeks.
“Do you want to come in?”
she asked.
Cassie nodded.
And then Cherry was there, hugging her aunt, scooping the little dog into her arms.
“Cherry, can you give us a minute?”
Cassie asked.
Cherry gave Cassie another quick hug, then carried the little dog downstairs.
Cassie was looking around, at the family photographs on a table in the foyer, the big windows in the living room that offered a view of the yard.
followed her sister’s gaze to the photograph of Schuyler and Noah stuck to the refrigerator with a pickle-shaped magnet.
The boys were grinning at the camera, holding terrapin turtles.
Schuyler was missing one of his front teeth.
“Your nephews,”
she said.
“They’re asleep, but you can meet them in the morning.”
Cassie made a soft sound, and sat up very straight, her hands folded on the marble counter.
“I wish I’d known,”
she said, her words slow and halting.
“About them.
About Cherry.”
“I didn’t know how to reach you.”
“I didn’t want to be reached,”
Cassie said.
She closed her mouth, pressing her fingers against her lips like she was trying to keep more words from escaping.
felt her skin prickling with heat.
I deserve it, she thought.
Whatever she wants to say to me, whatever she wants to do, I deserve it.
“Are you hungry?”
asked, needing something to do, to focus her thoughts on a task.
Cassie shrugged.
From the refrigerator, gathered butter, cheddar cheese, sourdough bread.
She found a tomato in a basket on the counter, pulled a cast-iron pan out from a sliding drawer.
She put the pan on the stove, turned on the flame, and began buttering slices of bread for grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwiches.
“Remember how Mom used to make these?”
asked.
“Wonder Bread and margarine,”
Cassie said immediately.
’s bread was sourdough from the Mighty Bread Company.
Her tomatoes were heirloom and organic.
She told Cassie this, aware that she was babbling, unable, in her nervousness, to stop.
Cassie sat at a stool at the breakfast bar, silent, until paused for a breath.
“I was so jealous of you,”
Cassie said.
“For so long.
You had friends, and you knew how to talk to people, and what to wear, and how to be in the world.”
She licked her lips.
“I never wanted to be famous.
The only thing I liked about performing was that I could forget that there were people looking at me.
I could just be a voice.”
She looked down at herself, at her body.
“I loved that.”
Cassie licked her lips again.
“And I liked being with you.
I liked feeling like I mattered to you.
Like there was something I could give you, so I could help you the way you’d helped me.”
made a small, mournful noise.
She found that she’d clasped her hands together and was pressing them against her chest like she was trying to hold her flayed, torn self together.
Listen, she told herself.
You have to listen.
She could feel herself trembling, her legs shaking, desperate to run.
Downstairs, to her daughter; upstairs, to her husband; anyplace but here.
Anyplace where she wouldn’t have to hear this list, the careful accounting of what she’d done and what it had cost.
“I felt guilty about being with Russell,”
Cassie said.
“I loved him, and I believed him when he told me you weren’t really together.
It was what I wanted to be true.
And we should have told you.
We shouldn’t have been sneaking around.”
Cassie delivered this speech without looking at , with her eyes straight ahead and her face expressionless.
“I’ve spent twenty years thinking that he died because of me.”
couldn’t help another one of those small, pained sounds from escaping her lips.
She wondered how she’d be able to live with the guilt of what she’d done, if it would even be possible.
“Did you love him?”
Cassie asked softly.
“Did you ever love him at all?”
looked at her sister.
She saw how Cassie had changed, how the years had changed her, how her body looked strong and her face looked determined.
She made think of a carved mermaid on the prow of a ship, facing the cold waves, thrashed by storms and salt water, bleached by sunshine.
Enduring whatever the world threw at her.
“Did I love him,”
said.
She tried to think back, to remember the girl she’d been, so full of dreams and envy, so desperate to be seen.
“The night you walked in on us . . .”
Cassie leaned on the counter, looking at .
“I told myself you didn’t love him, that you didn’t care for him at all, but that night, it looked like you did.”
turned off the stove.
She slid the sandwiches onto a cutting board, using a knife to slice them diagonally.
“I think,”
she said carefully, “it was the shock of seeing the two of you together.”
She smiled, a little sadly.
“It was a dog-in-the-manger situation.
Even if I didn’t want him, I didn’t want anyone else to have him.”
She put the sandwiches onto a pair of plates and handed one to her sister.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more generous.
I could see how good you two were together.
I’m sorry I didn’t just let it happen.”
“I could have been more generous too,”
said Cassie.
“I knew how much performing meant to you.
How much you got from it.
I could have spoken up more, when they started . . .”
She paused.
“You know.
Pushing you to the side.”
“That was where I belonged,”
said.
“If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have been on those stages at all.”
“Well,”
said Cassie.
“Same here.”
She was speaking slowly, like the words were pieces she’d just shaken out of a puzzle box, and she was taking her time fitting them together.
“I never knew how much I’d like it until you dragged me onstage that first night.”
“At Dobbs,”
said, remembering.
“It gave me something,”
Cassie said.
“It was a way to be in public and be hidden at the same time.”
“And I’m grateful,”
said .
“Even if it wasn’t perfect.
I’m glad that I got the chance.”
She took her plate and sat at the counter next to her sister.
We were so young, she was thinking ...
and was startled when Cassie said those exact words out loud.
“We were so young.”
nodded her agreement.
“And it was a long time ago.”
Cassie bit into her sandwich.
She chewed, and swallowed, and turned to .
“Being mad at you won’t bring Russell back.
Being mad at myself didn’t.
I think I would like to be done with all of that, and just not be mad at anyone.”
She took another bite.
“I think I’d like to try being happy.”
“Oh,”
said , in a very small voice.
“I can forgive you,”
Cassie said.
“I guess maybe the question is, can you forgive yourself?”
“Oh,”
repeated.
Her heart felt light as a bag of feathers, released to float up toward the sky.
She hadn’t let herself realize how much she’d longed for Cassie’s forgiveness until she had it.
Cassie looked down at her plate.
Then she looked up, her gaze steady on her sister, the question still hanging, waiting for ’s reply.
“Can you? Can you forgive yourself?”
took a minute to think before finally saying, quietly, “I can try.”
The first night, Cassie stayed in a hotel room in Cherry Hill.
On the second night, offered the guest room, but Cassie said she thought that it would be too much, too soon, so Cherry helped Cassie find an Airbnb, a one-bedroom apartment in an old Victorian house a few blocks away.
Every morning, Cassie walked Wesley over to ’s house, and she’d join and Cherry in the soundproofed basement, where the Steinway baby grand that Jordan had purchased stood in the corner, behind a pair of new microphones on stands.
Cassie would sit in the corner, with Wesley on her lap or by her feet.
At first, she just listened, as Cherry played the piano, and played the guitar and sang with her daughter.
Then, after a few days of listening, Cassie stopped them in the middle of a song.
“Try it like this,”
she said, and went to the piano to play a line of the melody from “A Long December,”
before she started to sing.
Her voice, as always, was a shimmering miracle.
met her daughter’s eyes and stepped back, holding her breath, not wanting to disrupt the magic.
By the next afternoon, was the one in the corner, with the dog on her lap, listening quietly as Cassie played the piano and Cherry played the guitar, better than ever could, even after all her lessons and hours of practice.
She would have been happy to stay there all day, witnessing this beauty—her daughter and her sister, making music, together.
But after an hour, Cherry said, “Mom, why don’t you sing with us on the chorus?”
looked at her sister, who nodded, beckoning her toward the piano.
At first softly, then more confidently, joined her voice with theirs, thinking about how lucky she’d been, to sing with her sister; how lucky she was now, to be able to do it again.
For days, then weeks, they sang together, taking breaks to make meals or snacks or taking Wesley for walks.
In the afternoon, they’d climb upstairs to make dinner.
The boys would set the table, Cassie and would do the cooking, and, when Jordan arrived, they’d sit down together and tell stories about their days.
They were some of the most pleasant, most peaceful nights could remember.
When the dishes were done and the leftovers put away, they’d watch movies or TV, the boys petting Wesley, Cassie sitting on the couch with Cherry next to her, on her phone, on social media, posting outtakes from the day’s performance that didn’t feature Cassie’s face.
Big things happening, Cherry would write.
Watch this space!
Cassie still insisted that she wasn’t interested in playing in public, that she wasn’t ready.
But, eventually, decided to make a very low-stakes request.
“The PTA winter fundraiser?”
Cassie looked skeptical, but she was smiling a little, and her voice sounded amused.
“Not The Next Stage? Or the Vegas residency? Or that Broadway thing?”
“I thought we’d start small,”
said .
“I know how it’ll go.
I’m on the planning committee.”
“Impressive,”
Cassie said, deadpan.
“The kids sing some nondenominational winter songs.
Then there’s a silent auction, and some kind of entertainment.
Last year it was one of the kids’ dads who does magic tricks.”
paused, then said, “I think we’d be at least as good as he was.”
Cassie smiled a little.
“And it’s in the school auditorium?”
nodded.
“There’s maybe a hundred people.
It’ll be over by nine o’clock, because it’s always on a school night.”
Cassie didn’t say yes immediately.
It took the better part of a week, before Cassie told , “I’ll try.”
It was Cherry’s idea to let Sebastian at The Next Stage know about the concert.
saw the way her sister’s spine had stiffened, and the frightened look on her face when Cherry raised the possibility.
“It would help me,”
Cherry said.
“So much.”
Just leave her alone, wanted to say.
It’s too much, too soon ...
but, before she could step in to defuse the bomb, Cassie had said, “Okay.”
“Really?”
asked.
Cassie shrugged.
“Your daughter says that talent is a gift, and that gifts are meant to be shared, not hoarded.
I like singing.”
She closed her mouth, seeming to consider the words, then said them again.
“I like singing.
And I think I can handle a show in a school gym.”
If they tape it, thought, then the whole world will be watching.
But Cassie knew that.
And if she wasn’t objecting, wasn’t going to provoke her refusal.
The Next Stage people, unsurprisingly, had been over the moon.
Anything you want, they’d said.
Anything you need, just let us know.
They’d offered to pay the sisters, but, when Cherry conveyed the offer, Cassie asked the show to make a donation, to some music program she was starting back in Alaska, for disabled kids and adults.
, who was pretty sure the producers would have sent millions of dollars in unmarked bills to anyplace her sister cared to name, had told Cassie she was confident they’d agree.
“I’m so glad you’re doing this,”
told her sister, later that night.
“Cherry’s thrilled too.
And maybe it’s a way to honor Russell’s memory.”
Russell’s name seemed to hang in the air.
For a moment, imagined she could see him, as he’d been the day they’d met: curly brown hair brushing his collar, cheeks red from the cold.
She could hear how happy he’d sounded, how eager to begin when he’d said, Let’s write a song! Was Cassie remembering that too?
“We can try,”
said her sister.
She nodded, like she’d answered her own question, and repeated the words: “We can try.”