Chapter 20 #2
Cassie almost tripped again. Apparently they were diving right in. “Lyra didn’t tell you?”
“I didn’t want to know.”
And now she did? Cassie wasn’t about to press her luck. She held the front door open for Andi.
“About two years ago, my life was really falling apart. I could feel my husband pulling away and—”
“You’re married?” Andi stopped in the middle of the foyer and glanced at her.
“No,” she answered flatly. The memory of what day it was stung her anew. “Anyway, it was a weird, lonely time. My sister got married and moved to Arizona, and I just had this pull to know more about where I came from.”
They passed through a dining room and into an outdated but quaint kitchen. Cassie paused to take it in. Cherries were everywhere—on decorative plates, oven mitts, kitchen towels. Was Andi a cherry aficionado, or was this a relic from their mother?
“So, what’d you do? DNA test?”
“Nah. I went old school and hired a PI. He dug up your and Lyra’s names. I stalked both of you on social media,” she admitted. “Then when my life imploded, I ended up here. I wanted to meet you guys.”
She paused and looked at Andi. Was this all too much? She was talking a lot.
“Shit.” Andi filled the large, square sink with soapy water. “Did you always know you were adopted?”
“Mostly. I came home from kindergarten one day with homework to make a family tree. My parents were super weird about it and eventually fessed up that I was adopted. They didn’t want me to talk about it though. Like it was a big, shameful secret or something.”
“Is your sister adopted too?”
Cassie shook her head. “She was a miracle bio baby. She’s six years younger.”
Andi frowned. “That must have been an interesting dynamic.”
“Interesting is a good word for it,” Cassie said.
Inadvertently, her mind flashed back to her med school graduation. Despite knowing the date for a full year, her parents had scheduled a Mediterranean cruise that week. Sammy had shown up alone but cheered loudly enough to make it feel like everyone was there.
On Sammy’s graduation day, however, their parents had rented out the entire ballroom at the Four Seasons.
“But I’m super close with Sammy now,” Cassie said in a rush. “I’m really happy she was born.”
The smell of Palmolive drifted over. Andi scrubbed at the bowls with a washcloth.
“I can’t believe we never knew you existed.
We knew mom didn’t have a great relationship with Grandma and Grandpa, but I assumed it was just because they were assholes, not because there was a secret love child out there. ”
“Surprise,” Cassie said grimly.
Andi stopped scrubbing but kept her gaze on the bubbles. “So she never reached out?”
“Your mom? No.”
“There must have been a reason,” Andi said. “It just doesn’t sound like her.”
Cassie looked around the kitchen. “I don’t know. Is it hard for you to live here, in the place she hated?”
“Yes and no. I can still feel her here. Like she might come through the front door any second with a bag of lukewarm hot dogs and a crazy story from the bowling alley.”
“I’m really sorry for your loss, Andi.”
“And I’m sorry for being a dick at our first meeting. You came out of nowhere, and you just look so much like her. It hit me like a fricken shotgun.”
“I can’t imagine.”
Andi vigorously scrubbed the already clean pot. “I took care of her, you know. At the end. Not by myself. We had amazing hospice nurses. But sometimes I wonder if watching her slip away wasn’t almost as painful as never knowing her at all.”
Cassie’s heart thumped uncomfortably hard. “We’ll never know. But in spite of everything, I’m really glad I got to meet you.”
Andi sniffed but kept her back to Cassie. “Me too. Mom loved surprises. You’re the last one she had to give us.”
Cassie squeezed her shoulder, then set to the task of cutting the cake. Minutes later, they met Lyra in the middle of the field.
A beautiful sprinkle of stars glimmered in the night sky. Lyra was already peering through a telescope.
“Oh, there’s Cygnus,” she said, pointing up. “What do you want to bet if Mom had ever had a boy, that would have been his name?”
“Or Scorpius,” Andi said, pointing in a different direction.
“She really committed to the whole celestial bit, didn’t she?” Cassie said.
“I’m kind of surprised your parents let you keep your name as a middle,” Lyra mused.
“I’m equally surprised,” Cassie said.
They ate their—delicious—Funfetti cake and flopped onto their backs to look at the stars.
Crickets chirped in the background, and smells of summer rose around them.
“Thank you for including me.” Cassie clutched the notebooks to her chest with the taste of buttercream still on her tongue. “This was a much-needed distraction.”
“From what? Living next to a rhino with rabies?” Lyra asked.
Cassie snorted. “Yes, but no. Today would have been my ten-year wedding anniversary.”
“Ah, shit. I knew I should’ve brought out the wine,” Andi said.
“I work at six a.m., dude. I can’t do that with a wine headache,” Lyra chastised. “Do you want to talk about it, Cassie?”
She debated. It might be nice to hash it all out with people who hadn’t known Dave. Who hadn’t fallen under his spell. But talking about it would make her think about him. And about what he was doing with his new girlfriend on the opposite coast.
“Nah,” she said finally. “He’s not worth wasting another breath on.”
“Good fucking riddance,” Lyra agreed. “We should get going.”
They all sat up and gathered their plates. They said goodbye, and Lyra yawned the entire drive home.
Cassie waved and ducked into her house. It was just after ten, so too late for music.
She let Taco out, then collapsed on the couch inside.
Her emotions felt too big for her body. While spending a special night with her half sisters had left her feeling warm and full, the memory of the date had made things all the more complicated.
Andi was right. She did deserve some wine. She poured a hefty glass of Pinot Grigio and sipped as she opened her laptop.
The clinic website was up. That was good.
Now she just needed to staff it. She checked the new email, but nothing else had trickled in.
Interviews were tomorrow, and she had already prepped a list of questions.
She was waiting to hear back from about a thousand other people about the rest of the admin stuff, so she was stuck.
She heaved a sigh, fingers tapping aimlessly on the keys. Taco sat next to her on the couch, head in her lap. Before she knew it, she had navigated over to Instagram and found her ex.
She bit the inside of her cheek. There he was. Oh, great. He had taken Sonoma, who had attained the ripe old age of twenty-two, to Nobu in Malibu.
Tension rose in her body as she scrolled through a dozen more pictures. There they were, out to dinner again. Sitting in first-class seats on a plane. Drinking cocktails on a beach.
He was love-bombing her and she was too young to realize it. She slammed her laptop and downed the rest of her wine. She needed a distraction. Any distraction.
She jumped to her feet and nearly fell over.
The wine had hit harder than expected. Good. What did she have to wake up for in the morning? Certainly not a husband and a loving family.
She climbed the stairs to her room and thrust open the doors of her closet. Her gaze fell on a garment bag shoved in the back.
Fuck it. She yanked it out of the closet and unzipped it to reveal the wedding dress she had worn ten years ago.
She yanked her clothes off, then slid on the silky A-line gown.
Ha, it still fit. Mostly. She couldn’t get the back zipped all the way, but who cared?
It wasn’t like she’d ever wear it again.
It was probably cursed. Maybe she should take a leaf out of Taco’s book and go roll in some squirrel poop.
Oh, the damn fence. She should fix that.
She marched downstairs, train trailing behind her. Emboldened by the wine, she grabbed the rest of the bottle in one hand and her toolbox in the other. She muscled open the sliding glass door, and Taco followed her eagerly into the backyard.
The brilliant white dress dragged on the ground, but she was beyond caring. Maybe she would set it on fire when she was done.
It was completely dark outside except for the stars and a sliver of moon. What better time to find a hole in a fence?
It was fine. Everything was fine.
Clang. The toolbox hit the earth. She dug out her headlamp and slapped it on, taking another long sip from the bottle.
That was better. The pain was duller now, like she had smothered it with a citrusy, fruit-forward gravity blanket.
She put a hand on the fence to steady herself and stalked the perimeter, staring at the ground.
Taco paused his zoomies to dig aggressively at part of the fence that bordered Noah’s backyard.
“Taco! Knock it off.”
There it was. A hole just big enough for him to squeeze through.
“Naughty boy. I know you’re still learning house rules, but we do not dig under the fence. Inside. Go.”
Taco snorted, expelling a bit of dirt from his nose. He followed her reluctantly back into the house. She closed the door and trudged back to the most recent—and urgent—item on her to-do list.
She didn’t even have a shovel yet. Grumbling, she shoved some of the loose dirt back into place by hand. But that wouldn’t hold him for five seconds. Maybe she could cover it with something heavy?
She dusted her hands off and stood, pausing to take another sip of her now lukewarm wine. Blech. Suddenly, the weight vanished from her hand.
Crash.
Damn it to hell. It had slipped through her fingers, hit the edge of the toolbox, and shattered. Now there were chunks of glass in the yard. Glass that could hurt Taco.
Muttering to herself, she gathered the pieces. This was all Dave’s fault.
“Fuck.”
Blood rushed out of a fresh cut on her finger, dripping down her wrist and splattering onto the freshly turned earth.
A floodlight flicked on over Noah’s patio.
“What the hell is going on?” he called out.