Chapter 36
Spring came early that year, restless and wet, turning the roads to slush and the fields to rivers of mud. I measured the days not by the calendar but by the way the light fell on my desk: longer now, brighter, though I still caught myself staring past the window at trees that refused to bloom.
I was writing. Not just filling pages with grief, but shaping something out of it.
Outlines spread across the dining room table like puzzle pieces, sticky notes clinging to every available surface.
I’d stopped writing in my journals and started writing chapters.
A different kind of therapy, one that made me sit taller in the chair, made me feel like my words might live somewhere beyond this house.
Still, the whispers didn’t go away. Grocery runs meant eyes tracking me down the frozen aisle. The post office meant shoulders turning inward, phones tilted just so. The quiet shaming had become a background hum, like power lines you can’t tune out.
But life didn’t stop either.
Jackson dumped his backpack on the counter every day after school, begging for help with projects I knew nothing about, dragging me outside to kick a half-deflated soccer ball through snowmelt puddles.
Clara and Mason had started moving toward something steadier: house listings, late-night talks, cautious hope, rare afternoons spent soothing Clara’s spirals when doubt crept back in.
Brody was around more than not: hauling lumber, fixing a hinge at my parents’, teaching Jackson how to split kindling with slow, patient hands.
Every time I caught him watching me, that same quiet intensity stirred in my chest.
And then one night, I overheard the fight.
I hadn’t meant to. I was on the stairs, halfway down to grab a tea, when Dad’s voice snapped through the hall: “I can’t get involved. Not with this.”
Mom’s reply was low, but sharp enough to slice. “And yet Cassidy’s private medical choices end up as gossip fuel for half the town. That doesn’t seem to bother anyone.”
The world tilted. My hands gripped the banister.
Dad again, weary. “I’m not that clinic. I’m not her doctor. I can’t say it. I shouldn’t even know. They’re putting me in a position I never should’ve been in. I don't know how she was even given an appointment with me.”
And then Mom: “Our daughter is broken because of them.”
Silence. Heavy. Crushing.
Behind me, Clara appeared, silent as breath, and wrapped her arms around me from behind before I could run. No words, just that anchor-hold only an older sister could give. I let her, just for a moment.
Later, in my room, I stared at my outlines, my chapters. Tried to convince myself it didn’t matter what Dad knew, what anyone knew. Andrew had already taken enough of me; I couldn’t let this, whatever this was, unravel me further.
So, I wrote. Scene after scene. Fiction, but not really. My words carved out the things I couldn’t say aloud: the gaslighting, the false promises, the way he’d made me feel like both a prize and a dirty secret.
The cursor blinked when my email pinged.
From: Marin — Northlight Literary
Subject: Your Pages
Cassidy,
Your pages gutted me. The restraint. The clarity. The ache.
I spoke to my team at Northlight this morning. We’d like to represent you formally and begin shopping the novel immediately. Harbour Clara laughing with Mason in the kitchen, Dad pacing in his office, Mom humming some song under her breath as she folded laundry. Life went on. And yet inside this room, my life was shifting, just a fraction, just enough.
I pressed my hand to my chest, breath catching.
Not broken. Not invisible. Not noise.
I could be me. Share my voice. My truth.
I couldn’t stay in the house that night. Not with Mom hovering like I might shatter again, not with Dad avoiding my eyes, guilt written across his face like an unfinished sentence.
So, I packed up my laptop and made my way to Adam’s.
The pub was buzzing, the kind of warm chaos that made it impossible to feel invisible.
I slid into a corner booth, ordered their Beef Stew and bread, and opened my laptop, the blue-white glow washing over me.
Words spilled more easily here, maybe because nobody expected anything of me beyond eating and paying the tab.
Adam spotted me eventually, weaving his way over with a rag tucked into his apron. He gave me a once-over, then nodded at my screen. “Working?”
“Trying,” I admitted.
“You coming to the fundraiser next week?” he asked, leaning an elbow on the table.
I wrinkled my nose. “Not sure. I’ve already caused enough scenes in this place.”
He scoffed. “Please. You’d have to set the place on fire to beat half the shit that’s gone down here.”
That tugged a laugh out of me, but he didn’t stop. “So… you seeing anyone these days?”
The bark of laughter that left me was louder than I meant.
“Are you kidding me? No. I’m still recovering from my last..
.” My stomach turned, bile rising at the word.
“Relationship. If you can even call it that without nausea.” I shook my head.
“No. I’m not ready. And it’s not like I have to worry about people lining up anyway.
I used to be the golden girl. Now I’m the dating pariah.
Nobody would touch me with a ten-foot pole. ”
Adam’s grin was wicked. “I’d touch you with my pole.”
The laugh ripped out of me before I could stop it, a loud, messy snort that had a couple of heads turning. But for once, I didn't care.
Adam grinned wider, but then his expression softened. “Jokes aside, Cass, I get it. You need time. What you went through… that’s not nothing. But don’t shut down completely. Don’t miss out on something, on someone, because you’re too busy convincing yourself you don’t deserve it.”
And I felt it then. That shift in the air, the quiet awareness that had nothing to do with Adam’s words.
I turned my head.
Brody had just walked in, wet snow clinging to his shoulders, his hair mussed from the wind. He scanned the room, and when his eyes found mine, his whole face broke open in a smile so bright it felt like sunlight.
My pulse tripped over itself.
I snapped my laptop closed.
Adam smirked, muttering under his breath as he pushed off the table, “Maybe someone right in front of you.”