Cassie
Alaska, 2024
Can you forgive me? her sister had asked.
I don’t know, had answered.
After Zoe’s revelations, all wanted was to run away and hide: under a bed, inside a closet, someplace dark where no one would find her and tell her anything else that would erase any more of her certainties and upend her world.
She’d started walking: out of the park, through a residential neighborhood, up one hill, down another.
And, as she walked, she started thinking.
What if it’s true?
What if I was the one he loved? What if it wasn’t my fault that he died?
It was too much for her to consider, too big a revision to hold in her head.
And so she’d walked and kept going, barely noticing where she was, moving herself through the city until her feet hurt too badly for her to go on.
She found herself sitting in a bus shelter, with no idea of where she was or how far she’d come.
Instead of the Los Angeles landscape—six lanes of street, a stucco mini-mall with a vape shop, a doughnut shop, a karate studio, a used-car lot—she was seeing Russell, as he’d been, soft cheeks, pale skin, dark hair.
The way he’d gesture, talking with his hands when he got excited.
The way he looked onstage, with his guitar.
It felt, in a way, like losing him all over again, only it felt even more cruel—to know, for sure, that he’d loved her, and not Zoe! To know that they could have had a life together! They could have written more songs together; they could have played shows all over the world.
Only what did it matter? Knowing did not change anything.
Russell was still dead.
It felt like more than she could bear, more than she’d ever be able to endure.
dug for her phone, and tried to remember what Cherry had shown her about the ride-sharing apps.
Eventually, she’d managed to summon a car and get a ride back to her hotel.
Wesley was waiting in the room, whining unhappily, even though knew he’d been walked around lunchtime (Cherry had shown her an app for hiring dog-walkers, the same way there was one for summoning cars—how the world had changed, while she was hiding away!).
When she unlocked the door, Wesley had been sleeping on the hotel-room bed, and he was delighted to see her, prancing around her legs, licking her face when she bent down to leash him.
Was he comforting her? Did he have any idea that her life had just been blown apart, that every certainty had been pulled out from under her? She’d taken Wesley for a walk, noticing, with faint amusement, the way he seemed to lift his paws extra-high, looking especially jaunty as he strutted down the sidewalks, turning his head from side to side, possibly hoping to spot someone famous, or, maybe, be discovered, like Lana Turner at the soda fountain.
“Trust me,”
she told him.
“You don’t want to be famous.
I know it looks like fun, but it’s not.”
Back in the room, she’d showered away as much of the day as she could, and lay on the bed and closed her eyes, as Wesley curled up beside her.
Who am I now? Where do I go? What do I do?
She thought about the treehouses, and the life she’d made in Alaska.
A small, quiet life, where she didn’t hurt anyone, and no one hurt her.
She had Wesley, and her work.
Her routines.
She had enough money, and the pleasure of offering a useful service: a comfortable bed, a cozy room, a place to stay the night.
A life with no surprises.
It’s not enough, a voice in her head said.
Was that Bess’s voice? Her mother’s? Was it Jerry’s voice, or CJ’s? Was it Zoe, or Cherry? Was it Russell?
It’s not enough.
You have more to give.
pressed her fisted hands to her eyes, groaning.
She didn’t want to give more.
She didn’t want to have to be in the world at all.
She didn’t want to risk being stared at, or laughed at, being despised.
Or is it, asked this cool, new voice, that you don’t want to risk being loved?
“Please,”
heard herself saying, before she realized she was going to say anything.
“Please stop.
Please just don’t.”
Her throat was tight; her voice sounded hoarse.
She’d probably spoken more in the days since Cherry’s arrival than she had in the twenty previous years combined.
She’d built herself a life without voices, a life without people.
She’d needed the silence and the distance to keep herself safe.
And now look.
Wesley stood, stretched, turned himself in three circles, and settled his snout against her leg with a tired sigh.
stroked his ears.
Everything felt impossible.
Every choice seemed wrong.
Stay? Go? Sell the treehouses, come back to Philadelphia? Or New York? Make music again? Or find some third option, go somewhere else, and hope that this time, no one would find her?
You shouldn’t be hiding.
The voice was growing stronger, more certain, even though still didn’t know whose it was.
You have a gift.
“Fuck my gift,”
said hoarsely, loudly enough for Wesley to lift his snout and give her a concerned look.
“Sorry,”
she muttered.
And thought, What good is a gift, if all it does is hurt me?
She groaned ...
and then found herself remembering a time that she’d been happy.
Singing, and happy.
It hadn’t been in her house, singing with her niece, even though could admit that she’d liked it.
It was something else she’d done, almost against her will, and found herself enjoying.
There’s your answer, said the voice.
Go to the joy.
Find the thing that makes you happy.
Try it again.
I don’t want to, thought.
What if I just get hurt?
The voice—she wanted to believe that it was Russell’s, or at least partly Russell’s—was kind. Just try.
used another one of the apps her niece showed her to order Thai food for dinner, then went online and bought a plane ticket.
The next morning, she and Wesley flew from LAX to Seattle.
By that afternoon, she’d landed in Anchorage and retrieved her car from long-term parking.
By eight o’clock, they were pulling down her driveway, with Wesley giving happy little whimpers.
She let him run outside, sniffing at the snow, lifting his leg at every tree trunk.
She fed him, checked the treehouses, built a fire in her woodstove, so that she wouldn’t leave Wesley in the cold, and climbed back into her car.
At eleven o’clock, she was back at the Safeway, walking slowly up and down the aisles, until, in the baked goods section, she found who she was looking for.
“Hi, Carl,” she said.
He’d been mopping the floor.
When said his name, he’d put the mop carefully into the bucket, then looked at her.
For a moment, she was sure he didn’t recognize her; that he didn’t remember.
Then his face broke into a broad smile.
“You sang that song!”
“That’s right,” she said.
“I remember,”
Carl said.
His chest puffed up.
“It was my birthday, and you sang ‘Silent Night.’”
cleared her throat. “Yes,”
she said.
“I wondered ... you like to sing, right?”
Carl nodded.
“Singing is my favorite thing.
My favorite and my best thing.”
Before could ask anything else, a woman with a meringue-like scoop of white hair came bustling down the aisle.
“Carl, who are you . . .”
She paused, eyes widening when she saw .
“Oh my goodness.
Oh, it’s you!”
nodded.
“I came to ask Carl if he wanted to sing with me again.”
She wasn’t sure, but she thought the look on Marcia’s face was approving.
“Well.
Well, that’s very kind of you.”
“Singing is my favorite and my best thing,”
Carl said again.
“And you’re very modest about it,”
Marcia said with a smile.
“I thought—I don’t know, if there’s a place where we could sing,”
said.
“Carl, and other people, if they wanted.
A school, or a classroom, or . . .”
Marcia nodded.
“Carl’s in a day program.
I bet they’d be very glad to have you,”
Marcia chattered.
“They’re desperate for volunteers, you know.
They get state funding, and some federal, but they’re always scrounging, and I don’t think they’ve had any kind of music program since Carl’s been there.”
nodded, and said, “Maybe I can help.”
That night, in the Safeway, she sang with Carl.
The next day, she drove to a single-story office building, presented herself to a receptionist, and filled out a stack of forms.
She gave them her address and her phone number and agreed to a background check.
Under relevant experience, she wrote, I am a former classical piano student.
I used to be in a band.
Under time available, she wrote, I have a very flexible schedule.
Under references, after a long moment of thought, she put her niece’s name.
Are you happy now? she asked the voice that was maybe Russell’s voice.
No reply came.
supposed the satisfaction she felt, the calm that enfolded her, was the only answer she could expect.
It was confirmation that she’d done the right thing, that she was honoring her gift.
That she was, just maybe, leaving things a little better than she’d found them for other people who were lonely, who felt like outcasts, or who, maybe, just needed a song.
Would it be enough? she wondered.
Now that she’d met Cherry and seen Zoe, and heard about her sister’s husband and sons, could she stay here, keeping herself apart from them, for another month, another year, the rest of her life? Or would the voice that was maybe Russell’s demand more things from her?
Zoe’s transgressions seemed so monstrous that she couldn’t see her way over them or around them.
She’d spent all those years with the weight of Russell’s death hanging on her shoulders, and now that weight was gone ...
but Zoe had let her carry it.
And Russell D’Angelo was gone too.
Forever and forever, no matter whose fault it was.
They’d both loved him, thought.
And Zoe had burdens of her own.
A baby! What would have done, if she’d known her sister was pregnant? Would she have resented her, for holding on to what was—perhaps—a remaining piece of Russell, for keeping it to herself? Would Cherry have brought them back together? Would have found a way to forgive Zoe, and let her back into her life?
“I don’t know,”
she said out loud, as she climbed the steps to the treehouse, where the air was warm and faintly wood-scented, and where Wesley was waiting.
She sat down on the metal chair, and thought, I want a couch.
It is ridiculous that I don’t have a couch.
And then she smiled, because, after the dark, blank expanse of all of the years, she felt like she was coming back to herself.
No, she thought.
Not coming back.
She was moving toward a better version of herself, one who could believe she deserved small comforts, and that she had something to give to the world; that it wasn’t too late, and never would be.
Russell, she thought, would have approved.