Cherry
Alaska, 2024
I can’t do this.”
Cass and were in downtown Homer, at a table in the corner of Alice’s Champagne Palace, a dimly lit bar that had a stage up front.
It was five o’clock, two hours before Tuesday’s open mic night began, and the fourth day of what thought of as her Alaska residency.
Three days previously, she’d packed up her things and moved from the hotel to Cass’s vacant cabin, and had spent all day, every day, with her aunt.
In the morning, she helped Cassie with the cleaning.
The rest of the time, they’d been making music together.
On the first day, they’d started with covers: “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”
and “Piece of My Heart”
and even an acoustic, lo-fi version of “No Scrubs,”
which Cassie somehow turned into a soul-wrenching lament.
In the restaurant, patted her aunt’s shoulder.
She tapped out the drumline on the table, and sang the way Cassie had sung: “Hangin’ out the passenger’s side of his best friend’s ride . . .”
At their table, at the sound of ’s voice, Cassie groaned quietly.
squeezed her aunt’s arm, encased in a black hooded sweatshirt.
“You’re going to be fine.”
“I’m going to be sick,”
Cassie replied ...
but at least she hadn’t bolted.
At least she was still here.
On the second day, after a lunch of ramen noodles cooked in low-sodium chicken broth and green apples that were almost painfully tart ( had started to notice that her aunt’s food tasted like either punishment or nothing at all), had tentatively suggested trying one of the Griffin Sisters songs.
“Night Ride”
or “Flavor of the Week.”
Immediately, Cassie had shaken her head.
“Why not?”
had asked.
Cassie hadn’t answered for a long time.
“I wrote those songs with Russell,”
she’d finally said.
“You miss him,”
said .
Cassie shoved her hands in her pockets and didn’t respond.
hadn’t pushed ...
but, the next morning, she’d strummed the opening chords of “Take You Down,”
and Cassie hadn’t told her to stop.
Baby steps, thought again, and started to sing.
“I feel your eyes move over me, / Like car wash brushes slap and scrub / And when it’s through, I’ll be made new / I say it hurts, you say it’s love.”
Cassie wasn’t singing, or playing her keyboard.
But she hadn’t left the room.
“Does it make you think about him?”
asked.
Cassie’s lips moved briefly upward, a flicker of amusement too small to be a smile.
“I wrote it with him, not about him,”
she said.
“Russell wasn’t like that.
He would never . . .”
Her voice had caught.
“He never hurt me.”
wondered if her aunt ever thought about how her life could have been if Russell hadn’t died.
Would he have left Zoe? Would he and Cassie have gotten married, had a family? Would they have made music together for the next twenty years? Of course, in that version, herself either wouldn’t have existed or would have been raised by a single and undoubtedly bitter mom, who might never have met Jordan.
But at least her father would have still been alive.
And Cassie would not have run away.
“Did you ever think about marrying Russell?”
“He was married,”
Cassie replied, her voice low.
“Yeah, but . . .”
“We never talked about the specifics,”
Cassie said.
“We talked about being together, someday.
But not marriage.”
“Did you want kids?”
Cassie made a scoffing sound and gestured at herself.
“Do you think I would have been a good mother?”
honestly wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know.
Did you want to be a mom?”
As soon as she’d asked, she realized that maybe she should have phrased it differently; asking Cassie, Do you want to be a mom? Her aunt was in her early forties, which wasn’t too late, thought, and there were many ways for women to become mothers.
But Cassie was shaking her head.
“I didn’t want children.”
“You’re an art monster,”
said .
Cassie’s head went back.
Her eyes narrowed.
Before she could get too insulted, said, “I just mean, you’re a woman who cares more about creativity and art than domestic stuff.
It’s a good thing!”
“Is it?”
Cassie looked unconvinced.
“I’m one, too,”
said.
“No kids for me.”
Zoe had heard giving this speech, and would say things like You can’t be sure, and Just give it time, but was sure.
And she thought she saw a glimmer of understanding in her aunt’s expression, and that Cassie’s feelings didn’t seem hurt.
She looked almost amused as she repeated the words “art monster”
under her breath.
picked up her guitar and started singing “Take You Down”
again.
On the second repetition of the chorus, she held her breath, not even daring to look, as she heard—very faintly—Cassie singing with her.
“Take you down the broken staircase / Take you down to water’s end / where we’re drowning while we’re breathing / where we fall as we ascend.”
“I love that song,”
said, when it was over.
Cassie’s face had taken on a musing look.
“We wrote it on the tour bus, from Buffalo to New York City.
The leaves were changing.”
“That sounds nice,”
ventured.
“It was a long time ago.”
Cassie hadn’t talked much the rest of the afternoon, and hadn’t even tried another Griffin Sisters song.
“Sleep well,”
she’d told her aunt, after a dinner of black bean burgers and baked sweet potatoes, served without butter or salt.
Cassie had smiled weakly: the look, thought, of a woman resigning herself to a sleepless night, where she’d lie awake, gnawed by nerves and by memories.
The next morning was Tuesday.
had offered to do all the cleaning, but Cassie had refused.
She was always quiet, but that morning, she’d said almost nothing, sweeping and scrubbing with her forehead furrowed, her lips pressed together, and Wesley shooting worried looks at her face.
They’d had bread and soup for lunch, and had gone back to her treehouse to shower and dress.
She hadn’t missed the way Cassie’s hands had trembled as she’d set her keys in the car’s center console, or the way Cassie sat, rocking a little, hands curled into fists, fingernails digging into her palms, when they’d gotten to the bar and grill.
In the restaurant, a harried-looking waitress, in a black tee shirt and black jeans, with an apron tied around her waist and brassy red-blond hair piled on her head, swung by to refill their water glasses.
“You guys want to do a sound check before it gets busy?”
she asked.
had brought her guitar, and one of the bands that was signed up to perform had a keyboard that Cassie could play.
She started to nod, then looked at Cassie, who shook her head.
“We’re fine,”
said.
The waitress looked dubious, but didn’t argue.
There were two other bands set to perform—locals, the manager had told her.
Amateurs.
figured that people whose full-time jobs involved leading tourists on hikes or through glacial lagoons on pack rafts couldn’t be much competition—that this could be the lowest of low-pressure situations, the easiest of easy ways back in.
She’d begged and pleaded and threatened until, finally, Cass had agreed to try.
“You’ll see,”
her aunt had said darkly.
hadn’t wanted to ask exactly what Cassie thought she would see.
“It’ll be fine,”
had said instead.
In her borrowed treehouse, decidedly more comfortable than the one Cassie herself occupied, had bleached her hair for the occasion, and used extra-strength hairspray to freeze it into spikes.
She wore high-waisted jeans, a black bodysuit, and a loose flannel shirt.
Cassie wore black jeans, a black hoodie over her flannel and her thermal, and a look of abject misery.
pulled out her phone.
She filmed the stage and the bar, panned back over the crowd of about twenty, and pointed the camera at her aunt, who immediately yanked her hood up over her head, covering her hair, hiding most of her face.
“I can’t do this,”
Cassie repeated.
“Sure you can!”
said.
Her voice was too loud, and it sounded too insistently upbeat.
She leaned closer to her aunt and lowered her voice.
“You’re going to be fine.”
Cass just shook her head.
“You’ve done this before,”
reminded her.
Cass muttered something, so quietly that couldn’t hear.
All she caught was the word sister.
It took a minute for her mind to fill in the blanks: not without my sister.
Oh.
cast her mind back, over every Griffin Sisters performance she’d ever seen or heard: the single video, for “The Gift”; the bootlegged concerts on YouTube; the television appearances she’d found online.
Cassie had been on a hundred stages; she’d sung for audiences of thousands.
Millions of people had seen her, if you factored in the band’s TV appearances.
But, as far as could recall, Cassie had never sung in public without Zoe.
Not even going all the way back to that legendary Battle of the Bands in Philadelphia.
She’d always sung with her sister at her side.
realized that this could be a problem.
“You’re going to be fine,”
she told her aunt, with as much conviction as she could muster.
Cassie shook her head.
“I don’t want—”
she began.
Then she stopped, shook her head again, and started over.
“I can’t have people looking at me.
I don’t want them looking, and I don’t want them knowing where I am.
I just want . . .”
Her voice trailed off, and she turned toward the door again, with such a look of longing that was left breathless.
Was it just that Cassie had stage fright, or suffered from anxiety? Was there some other explanation for the way she was?
thought back to Jordan, talking about one of Noah’s friends, who’d been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
“When your mom and I were his age, kids like him were just called weirdos,”
he’d said.
Before could start telling him all the ways that was wrong, and all the neurodivergent people she knew, he’d said, “Thank God we’ve made progress.
It’s a good thing, that they’re getting help and support now.
That the world’s more understanding about differences like that.”
, who’d been ready for a fight, had been forced to back down.
She’d barely noticed her mother, looking stricken.
Now, she wondered if Zoe had been remembering something specific; if she’d been thinking about her sister, and whether the world had misunderstood Cassie.
Or, thought, maybe her mom had felt guilty because she’d been the one who hadn’t understood.
“What can I do?”
she asked her aunt.
“How can I help you?”
Cassie said, “You can’t.
I can’t do this.
I’m sorry, but I can’t.
I want to go home.”
She said it again—“I want to go home”—but she made no move to leave.
It was almost like she couldn’t get out of her chair, like fear and bad memories had left her paralyzed.
What happened to Cassie out there? wondered ...
and then, for the first time in a long time, found herself thinking about her mother, without any of the anger and resentment that had accrued over the last months and years.
Both sisters had been damaged, realized.
Cassie lived in exile, in this cold, dark, lonely place where she never sang at all, and Zoe had stopped making music, had retreated completely into the life of a wife and a mother.
Maybe Zoe needed Cassie, to write the songs, the same way it seemed like Cassie needed Zoe to get on a stage.
Maybe they really couldn’t do it without each other.
The manager came back to their table.
“Ten minutes,”
she said.
“Just giving you a heads-up.”
She hurried off.
Cassie shook her head.
“I think I’m going to be sick,”
she said faintly.
Fuck.
could see her dream coming apart.
She’d go back to LA, alone and empty-handed.
She’d be eliminated from the competition, right back where she’d started.
This would be the end.
She could feel a spike of adrenaline in her blood; her body revolting at that idea, and then she was up and moving, kneeling down in front of her aunt and taking her hands.
She put her hands on Cassie’s knees and looked into Cassie’s face, as she sent a quick prayer to the gods of rock and roll, wherever they were, whoever they might be (she imagined Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, together in heaven, dressed in leather and sequins, smiling benevolently down).
“Listen to me,”
she said.
“You have so much talent.
You can do this.
You are going to be fine, and I will be there with you.”
Cassie stared down at her.
From the look on her face, it was like she’d never seen before.
Her voice was hoarse as she asked, “What did you say?”
For one brief, frantic instant, couldn’t remember.
Then the words came back.
“You have so much talent? I will be there with you?”
Cassie’s eyes were locked on hers, and she looked frightened but, also, thought—or hoped—determined.
felt a fragile breath of relief.
For a second or two, she thought, I can make this work.
Then Cassie pressed her hand to her mouth, stood up, fast.
heard her retching as she went racing toward the door.
Fifteen minutes later, glumly loaded her guitar in the trunk of Cassie’s car.
They drove back without speaking.
’s thoughts were coming fast and furious.
This is a disaster, followed by There is no way she’ll agree to come to Los Angeles with me.
And then, hard on the heels of that thought: God, but she’s so good.
Except if the prospect of singing in front of a few dozen friendly locals made her aunt physically ill, how would performing in front of cameras and a televised audience affect her?
sat in the passenger’s seat as the car sped through the dark, and, slowly, a new plan came together.
If it was true that Cassie had never sung onstage without her sister, if she found it physically impossible to do so, it meant, realized, that she’d need to engineer a bigger reunion.
She’d have to do the thing she’d long dreaded—the thing she’d hoped, desperately, to avoid.
She’d have to call her mom.
“Hey,”
she said, as Cassie turned onto the dirt road that led to the treehouses.
Cassie had left the lights on in her house, so that Wesley wouldn’t be alone in the dark, and the windows glowed like squares of gold, making the house look like a tiny ship afloat on a great, dark sea.
“Is there any chance . . .”
“Any chance of what?”
asked Cassie.
Her voice was wary.
“I’d like it if you came to LA with me.
Not to sing,”
said hastily, before Cassie could object.
“Just to be there.
If I decide to go through with it.
All the other contestants will have family there, or boyfriends or girlfriends.”
She made her voice small and mournful.
“I won’t have anyone.”
“You could ask your mom.”
Cassie’s voice was expressionless.
“Could,”
said . “Won’t.”
Can, she thought.
Will.
Cassie was not going to like it, but that couldn’t be helped.
When you had a voice like Cassie’s, a gift like Cassie’s, you couldn’t just stay holed up in Alaska and not let anyone hear you.
It was like spurning your destiny, turning your back on the gifts God had given you—maybe, even, on God Himself.
And Cassie was so lonely.
couldn’t allow it.
She had to help her aunt.
She had to give the world the gift of Cassie’s voice.
She had to balance the scales, fix what was broken.
And if it ended up helping her music career, was that the worst thing?
decided that it was not.