Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Can I ask what we’re doing?” Cassie asked as she buckled her seatbelt.
The sun was drifting toward the horizon, elongating the shadows as Lyra navigated the winding road in her beat-up Volkswagen Bug.
“So,” Lyra began, tugging at the collar of her denim shirt. “When our grandparents died, they begrudgingly passed down the farm to my mom. Who then passed it down to Andi, since she’s the oldest and I was already pretty deep into planning my café at that point.”
“What kind of farm?”
“Dairy, when my grandparents owned it. Then my mom tried to get back at them posthumously by selling all the cattle and taking a stab at biodynamic farming. It didn’t work. Now it’s mostly free-range chickens and assorted seasonal crops Andi sells at farmers’ markets.”
How profitable could that be? Was that why Andi was always so grumpy?
“That sounds really cool.”
“It’s a lot of work. But anyway, we grew up with not a lot of money. Mom always wanted to do the same stuff for her birthday—make a big pot of SpaghettiOs to eat in a fort of hay bales in the barn and have a slice of birthday cake under the stars.”
Goosebumps ran up and down Cassie’s arms. She’d never had a physical reaction to SpaghettiOs before, but it was a weird day. “I love that.”
It couldn’t have been more different from her own parents’ birthdays. For her dad, it was always a steak dinner at his favorite upscale restaurant in Baltimore. And for her mother’s January birthday, it was usually a lavish trip—either Aspen or someplace tropical, depending on her mood.
This sounded so much cozier and meaningful.
“Are you sure you’re comfortable with all this?” Lyra asked.
“Of course. I’m really happy to spend more time with you and Andi. And learn about our mom.”
“I just feel bad that you weren’t there to experience any of it.”
Cassie smiled sadly. “Maybe this is just how it was meant to be. No matter what, I’m so glad to have found you.”
She reached over and squeezed Lyra’s hand. “What kind of birthday cake did you make?” she asked to cover the silence.
Lyra’s lips pressed together like she was trying to suppress a laugh. “You should guess.”
“Uh, okay. Chocolate? Vanilla? No, wait. She has a professional baker in the family. Something interesting, like a baked Alaska?”
“Much worse. Funfetti.”
Cassie gasped. “All the baking talent in the world, and she would ask you to make Funfetti?”
“It was her favorite. I do stubbornly make it my way, with a homemade sponge and everything, but she always insisted. It was the first birthday cake she made herself when she moved away from the farm. She said it tasted like freedom.”
Lyra put on her blinker and turned down a gravel lane. Cassie glanced out the window. Rows of crops she couldn’t identify stretched into the distance. It was a beautiful plot of land but looked way too big for one person.
“You said Andi doesn’t have a partner?”
“Nope. At least, not that she’s told me. It’s kind of the Martin curse.”
“It got me too, and I’m only half Martin.”
They rolled to a stop in front of a sprawling farmhouse. The front porch was made for sipping sweet tea. “How does she handle all of this on her own?”
“She has a couple part-time farm hands. Mostly high school kids. Some of us come together to help her out during harvest time. And she works from sunup to sundown. It’s probably why she’s so cranky. She’s a wizard though. I swear she can grow anything.”
Lyra went around the back to get the cake out of the trunk, and Andi appeared, carrying a stack of bowls.
“It’s about time. Take these.” She thrust them in their direction, and Cassie rushed forward to take them. Andi glowered at her for a minute but handed them over. There were three bowls, so at least Andi wasn’t planning on making her crouch over the pot like a raccoon. Progress.
“To the barn,” Andi said to Lyra. “Move.”
So bossy. She was probably best friends with Noah. Or maybe mortal enemies.
“Okay, okay.” Lyra handed Andi the white bakery box and plucked a picnic basket from the front porch.
“So you guys do this every year?” Cassie asked as Lyra nudged the barn doors open.
“We do. We skipped the year that she died. It was too fresh. But I think it would make her really happy to know we still do it. And that all her girls are now together.”
Cassie’s eyes watered. Must be the stupid hay.
“Come on.” Lyra led her to the back of the barn, where a bunch of bales were stacked. “You have to crawl through. Sorry.”
“No reason to apologize.” Cassie clutched the bowls to her chest and crouched through the hay tunnel. “This is so fun. So your mom was a total kid at heart? Funfetti and hay forts?”
“Definitely. She was always a dreamer.”
They emerged into a ten-foot-by-ten-foot square of bare floor. Lyra opened the picnic basket and laid down a large gingham tablecloth.
“What did she do for work?”
“She was a lot of things over the years.” Oh, that was Andi’s voice.
“Here.” A pot appeared just above the five-foot wall of hay. Cassie grabbed the handles and clutched it until Andi emerged.
“Dad left when we were like eight and six, I think,” Andi continued. “So she worked two to three jobs at a time for most of our lives. Waitressing, front desk clerk at a hotel, ranch hand. She was even a birthday clown one summer.”
“Oh my.”
“She never really found her thing that she loved,” Lyra said pensively. “Except for stargazing, anyway. If she could’ve found a way to monetize it, she probably would’ve.”
Cassie set the pot down on the blanket, and Lyra scooped the pasta into the three bowls. It was tangy, sweet, and bumpy. There was silence except for the scraping of spoons. A heaviness hung in the air. Maybe a change of discussion was in order.
“Can I make a confession?” Cassie asked.
“Go on,” Lyra said.
“I’ve never had SpaghettiOs before.”
Andi and Lyra gasped. “How?”
“It wasn’t something my mom…er, adoptive mom, kept in the house. She ran a tight ship, so I never got any of the good junk food unless I was at a friend’s house.”
“And I thought we had it rough,” Andi said.
“What’s up there?” Cassie pointed at a ladder that stretched toward the ceiling.
Andi and Lyra visibly shrank.
“The hay loft,” Lyra said. “It’s where we keep most of Mom’s stuff. You should check it out if you want to.”
Her curiosity burned. What secrets lay upstairs? What if there was a clue to her birth father’s identity up there? “I don’t want to intrude.”
Damn it. Her people pleasing was slipping out again.
Andi shook her head. “Go. She treated it like a second bedroom when she lived here with the grandparents. It’s worth looking.”
“Thank you. Can I help with anything in the meantime?”
“Nah,” Andi replied. But at least she didn’t sound annoyed.
Cassie crawled back out of the tunnel and looked at the ladder. She didn’t love heights, but she had to know what was up there.
She climbed one rung at a time, not looking over her shoulder until she crawled shakily into the loft.
She inhaled sharply. The fading rays of the sun cast a dim light through the window. Boxes were everywhere.
“How did you get all this up here?” she called down to Andi.
“Borrowed a forklift.”
Huh. She crouched in the middle of the loft, taking in all the pieces of the birth mother she never knew.
Endless cardboard boxes. A poster of Fleetwood Mac hung next to what looked like a sky chart.
A dusty mirror, an ancient can of hairspray.
There was a writing desk and a very dusty cup of pens.
Even a beanbag chair, an old desk lamp, and a stack of Nancy Drew novels.
Every item was a clue. She liked mysteries. The stars. What had she written at this desk? She walked toward it but tripped over something.
“Shit.”
“Everything okay?” That was Lyra.
“I’m fine. Just tripped…” She trailed off and looked for the source. One floorboard stood a little higher than the others. She stepped gingerly on it, and it shifted.
She fell to her knees and tugged. The board popped up, revealing a space below.
Holy shit. Inside were dusty pieces of jewelry, what looked to be a couple of ancient hand-rolled joints, and two red notebooks with yellowed pages. She drew the notebooks out with trembling hands.
“Did you guys know these were up here?” She held them over the edge of the loft.
“No. What are they, notebooks?” Lyra asked.
Cassie cracked the front cover of the first one. “Diaries, I think.”
“Let me see,” Andi said.
Cassie shuffled to the edge on her hands and knees and gingerly tossed the notebooks down to her sisters. She was about to put a foot on the top rung when something underneath the writing desk caught her eye.
Something was carved on the underside. She crawled over for a better look and ran a finger over the grooves. It was a small heart with “E.M. + M.D.” carved into the middle. E.M. was undoubtedly her birth mother. But who was M.D.? Her birth father?
She took a quick picture with her phone in case her memory failed her later, then scurried back down the ladder to the hay fort.
“I can’t believe these were up there the whole time,” Lyra mused as she pored over the pages, gingerly turning them.
“Oh man. ‘Mom beat me with the spoon again for falling asleep in the loft.’”
“Classic Grandma,” Lyra muttered. She paused for a long moment, then closed the book and turned to Cassie. “Here. We got to have her for most of our lives. You never got a chance to know her, so you should be the one to read these first.”
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
Thwack. The other one landed on top of the one in her hand.
“Don’t lose them,” Andi instructed.
“Thank you.” She looked at the dusty red volumes in her hands. What stories lay between these pages? Was her father’s identity somewhere in there? Was he M.D.?
Lyra clapped her hands. “Okay, the light’s gone, and I’m opening tomorrow. It’s cake time.”
They gathered the bowls and walked out of the barn.
Andi stepped quickly up the porch steps. It was hard to keep up with her. “So, what’s your deal? Why come here after all this time?”