Chapter Fourteen
Cassie knocked lightly on Andrew’s door.
He’d been home two weeks, and she still hadn’t found time to have The Conversation with him.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. There’d been plenty of chances but whenever she went to tell him, her stomach seized up with a fluttery panic.
She kept promising herself she would do it the next day, but the next day always came and went and now her appointment with the genetic counselor was three weeks away.
Even though it terrified her, Andrew needed to know what might be lurking in his family history.
She knocked again, more firmly this time.
“Whaat?” he said sleepily.
She stuck her head in. The room smelled like sweat and dirty clothes. She pulled up the shade and threw open a window.
“Aaahhh!” He buried his head in the pillow. “What are you doing? I was asleep.”
“Time to get up. It’s ten o’clock.”
He opened one eye. “It’s still early.”
She wrestled open the other window too. Shelly had always complained that this one stuck. “You’ve been sleeping too much. It’s not healthy.”
He dragged himself up to sitting. “That’s because I’m tired.” He was wearing the same t-shirt he’d had on for the past two days. She needed to grab that for the wash. “Why’d you wake me?” he said.
“Here, have some orange juice.” She handed him the glass she’d carried upstairs and watched him drink it.
Andrew had always been a cheerful riser, jumping right out of bed in the morning.
Had his backpack ready for school the next day, set his own alarm when he was old enough.
Phil was usually long gone, but Cassie didn’t mind.
It gave her a few extra minutes alone with her son.
She set the empty glass on the dresser and sat on the edge of the bed, her stomach in free fall.
Maybe first thing in the morning wasn’t the right time to spring this on him.
He was barely awake. And she needed to tell him about the apartment before Phil mentioned it.
She couldn’t possibly lay it on him all at once.
“So…Dad and I went to the apartment the other day.” She would definitely find time for the family history talk tomorrow.
“Our apartment?” Andrew said.
“We met with a real estate agent. We’re going to list it.”
He pushed up in bed. “What? You’re selling the apartment?”
“It doesn’t make financial sense for us to keep it. Dad’s been paying half the mortgage, but he doesn’t live there anymore.”
His face darkened. “So he’s making you move?”
“He’s not making me move or throwing me out in the street. I could keep it if I want, but it’s an expensive place on just one income.” Of all things, here she was defending Phil.
“When did you decide this? No one said anything to me.” He threw off the covers. “What happens to my stuff?” The hitch in his voice caught her, how he sounded so young.
“Oh sweetie.” She reached for him but he swung out of bed. “Your stuff will go with me; I’ll always have a room for you. We’ll box it up together, and you can decide what you want to keep.”
He rummaged through a heap of clothes on the floor, then gave up and slumped back on the bed in his t-shirt and shorts. “Dad’s such a jerk. This is obviously his idea.”
“It’s no one’s idea. It’s just the way things are. And you need to be in the wedding. He’ll be hurt if you aren’t, and you’ll regret it. It might not feel that way right now but trust me. You will.”
“I don’t want to be his best man. I don’t want to be in it at all.”
“Andrew. He’s your dad.” It wouldn’t do him any good to hate his father.
It would only cause a lifetime of hurt. She’d butted heads with her dad so often over the years that she’d become wary of every encounter.
Bristling had become her default reaction, even when he wasn’t saying anything provocative at all.
She didn’t want that for Andrew. He might not like the fact that Phil was remarrying, but he would have to come to terms with it.
Andrew scrubbed his hands through his hair. A Phil mannerism. The same thick wavy hair. He was Phil’s son too. “I’ll think about it,” he muttered.
“Want some breakfast?”
“I’m not hungry.” He gave her a baleful look. “When’s all this happening?”
“Not for a while. We have to do some updating first.”
“Update what? The place is fine.”
“I think it’s fine too but the real estate agent has other ideas.” She kissed his forehead. “You sure you don’t want breakfast? I can make eggs.”
He groaned and pulled the covers over his head. “I’m going back to sleep.”
. . .
It had been a difficult week. Thankfully, Mrs. Macuja had declined to file a sexual assault complaint but the home care agency said given Mr. Linden’s proclivity—they’d used that exact word!—for inappropriate behavior, they would not send over another candidate.
“We understand these things sometimes happen with elderly patients,” the woman said, “but we have to protect our staff. We can’t place someone in a home where there’s physical or sexual abuse.”
“No, of course not,” Cassie agreed, her face flushed with embarrassment. Her childhood home was now flagged as a place where unsafe things might happen. Where there might be physical or sexual abuse. Her elderly father lying in wait! It was beyond mortifying.
Then that discouraging meeting with Weber and the wrenching conversation with Andrew about the apartment. And she still hadn’t talked to him about the genetic counselor. It had all been too much for one week.
But today was Saturday. Today she was going hiking with Glenn.
They’d been texting all week, semi-flirty texts, which sent her heart skipping. At least she considered them semi-flirty, but she would have swooned over his grocery list. Just the sight of his name popping up on her screen gave her a giddy little rush.
Just yesterday he wrote, Looking forward to our hike, and she’d answered back, Me too.
But was that enthusiastic enough? Maybe she should have used an exclamation point.
Me too! Everyone used exclamation points these days.
Why hadn’t she done that? He would think she wasn’t interested.
Dating, if that’s what they were doing, was such a minefield.
Back when she was going out with Phil, no one texted.
You called someone on the phone or you didn’t.
And of course they were in school with their own apartments, where anything could happen, and usually did.
She yanked her hair into a crisp ponytail. She and Glenn both had kids, and she was living with her dad and son at the moment. Not a lot of privacy there. Besides, she hardly knew him. They’d had one kiss. But her mind had become rambunctious, galloping off in all kinds of scandalous directions.
Let’s face it. The man was very sexy.
She spied his truck from the bedroom window and ran downstairs to give Andrew a last word of instruction. “Is this the beekeeper guy?” he said, glancing up from a bowl of cereal.
“Yes. His name is Glenn. You’ve met him.” This was so awkward, Glenn picking her up like they were in high school. Her nineteen-year-old son seeing her off.
“You’ll stay here with Grandpa, right?” she confirmed.
“Yup.” He tipped back his bowl to get at the milk.
“Okay. I won’t be late. Maybe try one of the new puzzles.
” Andrew and her dad had finished the dinosaur puzzle, and she’d picked up a couple of new ones at Meyer’s.
Although she had a feeling he could start on the dinosaurs all over again, and it would be completely fresh.
“Call if you need me,” she said. “We aren’t going far. ”
Glenn was waiting for her on the porch. He had on jeans and an olive green Henley and Cassie’s heart flew up at the sight of him. Charlie was standing in the passenger seat, nose wedged through a slice of open window.
“I hate to leave him if I’m going hiking,” Glenn said. “You don’t mind, do you? I can always drop him home.”
“Of course not. I’m delighted to see Charlie.
” She gave the dog a rub and nudged him into the back seat as she climbed into the truck, suddenly a little nervous.
The wine had loosened them up the other night, but what if they couldn’t find anything to talk about in the light of day?
They were such different people, and a trek in the woods wasn’t really her thing.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been hiking. Central Park probably didn’t count.
“I made peanut butter cookies,” she said, stowing the backpack she’d borrowed from Andrew under her feet.
Glenn chuckled. “And I made peanut butter sandwiches. Guess we should have coordinated.”
“Oh well.” She smiled. “You can never have too much peanut butter.”
He started up the truck, and they fell into an easy conversation after all. Glenn was surprisingly talkative, telling her as they drove about a new client who against all advice had ordered an assertive strain of bee and now was having trouble getting into his hives.
“They’re more protective than the Italian bees,” he said. “You’ve got to smoke the heck out of them, and even then you don’t have much time.”
“Will they come after you?”
“Oh yeah, they get pretty annoyed that you’re mucking around their house. And when one stings, it releases a chemical alerting the others there’s danger. So they all pile on. It’s not just this strain, they all do that.”
“You can’t blame them for defending themselves.”
He shot her an amused look. “Says the woman who had a bee in her hair.”
She laughed. “I’m feeling more charitable after the fact.”
“You were a champ.”
“I don’t know about that. I was just this side of hysterical.”
Now that it was May the trees had exploded in a torrent of green and they took the back roads from Connecticut into New York, eventually turning onto a narrow road that wound past stately homes with long driveways and modest houses hugging the road.
She didn’t see any hiking trails, but Glenn finally pulled over onto a gravel turnout next to a discreetly marked trailhead.