Chapter 6 #3
Eva joined Cassie on the sofa and handed her a white porcelain teacup with a strand of faint pink roses painted along the rim.
The heat of the tea warmed Cassie’s hands, either still cold from the slight chill outside or the emptiness permeating her body at the thought that this relationship could be over.
The bohemian mix of warmth and texture in the furniture and design elements in the room mixed nicely with Eva’s black-and-white photographs of their favorite New Orleans places hanging on the walls.
These were all things Cassie had come to recognize as Molly and Eva’s things, right down to the teacup.
It had been her mother’s, and the sight of it created a hard knot of emotion in her throat.
It all combined into an eerie sense of familiarity and finality that something significant had changed.
Molly was still there, they all were, but more the ghosts of their former selves.
The conversation she had planned to have, even the answers, seemed futile. She could feel the shift. But the years they had all shared, everything they’d been through together, pushed her forward, needing some explanation or understanding of what had led to this.
While she had thought a little bit about what she’d say, words failed her now, not coming close to encapsulating her feelings in the face of such a huge loss. All she could utter was the truth. “I don’t get it. What happened?”
Eva let out a small chuckle. “I’ve asked myself that same question so many times over the past few years.”
Few years? Cassie felt her face scrunch up as she tried to compute those two words.
She didn’t think the breakup had been a rash decision, though she still didn’t know for sure, so maybe it was, but she definitely wasn’t expecting that timeframe.
Eva and Molly had seemed so happy. She tried to rack her brain over the times they’d all been together over just the past year, searching for any indication that either had been unhappy.
There was nothing. How had she missed it?
The two people she knew almost as well as herself. The realization hit hard in her chest.
“I don’t think anything I say will satisfy what you’re needing to hear. It certainly doesn’t satisfy me. We just changed.”
Cassie stared at Eva, probably not disguising that it was the stupidest reason she’d ever heard.
“I mean, we’ve been together forever and we’ve changed a lot in that time.
But we’d always grown together. And this .
. . well, this time we grew apart. And it wasn’t something either of us could control or fix.
” She gave Cassie a pointed look. “Trust me, Cas, we tried. We just . . . we want different things now. And the more we tried to ignore that, the louder it got.”
Cassie shook her head. “What different things? You’ve always supported each other.”
“It’s not about supporting each other. I can’t ask Molly to devote her life to something she doesn’t even want. And she can’t ask me to stop wanting something that’s important to me.”
“What do you want?”
“I want a family.”
“We’re your family.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Eva blew out a breath. “I meant I want to have kids.”
Cassie sat back, the blow and confusion physically moving her. She had never once heard Eva talk about having kids, though Molly and Eva were both in that period of their lives when they needed to make those kinds of decisions.
She sat with the new information for a long moment, her brain working hard to find a way around it, to still keep them together. And she couldn’t.
Cassie knew how Molly felt about having kids.
They had talked about it not long after they lost their parents and again maybe around ten years ago when Molly would have been twenty-nine, Cassie’s age now.
Maybe she had been feeling the pressure of needing to make that decision for herself.
Neither of them had that urge or desire.
Having had an abusive alcoholic father didn’t leave them with too many fond memories of childhood, and they both had fears about passing on some pieces of that.
That maybe some parts of that were in them too.
As loving and warm as their mom had been, it didn’t assuage those fears.
The sadness of the moment filled Cassie, knowing it really was over for Molly and Eva. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as an even deeper sorrow gripped her. She looked up at Eva. “But what about us?”
Eva nodded as her face crumpled and tears ran down her cheeks. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Cassie. The strength of the embrace comforted Cassie, but it wasn’t enough to overpower the feeling that maybe it would be the last time. It was a goodbye hug.
Eva eventually let go. “I love you, Cas. And I’ll always be here for you, wherever we are.”
Cassie nodded, tears still wet on her own cheeks.
“I love you too.” Though the words were true, an emptiness filled her chest, knowing this chapter was over.
There would never be a Molly and Eva again.
They would never all be together again. Nearly twenty years of a sister and friend were coming to an end and it hurt more than any breakup Cassie had ever experienced.