by Cecilia Lyra
Here’s who I will confront, though: Mandy.
I cut right to the chase.
“Your grandmother just told me Nana left letters behind. For Julie and me.” I pause, deciding to omit the mention of a letter to my father. “Do you know anything about that?”
To her credit, Mandy doesn’t hesitate. “I do.”
“So it’s true, then? Nana left us letters?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” she says plainly.
“Do you know who does?”
“My grandmother might. But she’s not likely to tell you. Not on purpose, anyway.”
“Will you ask her?”
“That’s not why I’m here.” Her smile is patronizing. Like I’m a child she’s indulging. “I’m supposed to be looking at your chakras. They need opening.” A pause. “Your grandmother warned me about you.”
I feel a tug at my heart. “About my jaded cynicism?”
“She was worried about you.”
“About what?”
“She was concerned you were too hard on yourself.”
I’m quiet for a moment.
“I have sisters. I get it.” Her tone is now more normal person than psychic.
I’m not sure how this has become about having a sister. “What do you think you get?” Although, since we are on the subject of sisters, I wonder if I can ask her how Julie knows about Daniel being married. It irritates me no end that I actually wonder, if only for half a second, if Julie could possibly have psychic powers. (Maybe she and Mandy are holistic partners?) But, of course, if I were to ask that, I’d be confirming the fact that Daniel is, indeed, married. And if I were to do that, then I might as well ask if Daniel is going to leave Tatiana.
Great, now I’m considering asking a psychic for love advice. My life really is a messy cliché.
“Sisters challenge us,” Mandy says. “They make us braver and better. They sometimes also make us angry and jealous.” She looks at me when she says that last word.
“Nana was concerned that I’m jealous of Julie?”
“Are you?”
Less than five minutes with this woman and this is already all about Julie.
Thirty
Julie
Wednesday, July 18th
My session with Mandy didn’t go at all like I expected.
I followed her instructions: kept my eyes closed, relaxed my shoulders, focused on her voice. I thought she’d guide me through positive visualizations. But she kept bringing up prompts like disappointment, resentment. Failure. And she didn’t respond to any of my questions. Instead, she fed me variations of the same line, some crap about how the answers I seek are inside me.
I thought holistic therapy was supposed to be soothing—or at least not depressing. But that session has left me disheartened. More than that: bitter. The way I assume Cassie feels all the time. Right now it seems like a miracle Cassie even has a boyfriend—married or not.
She’s now up in the attic doing God knows what. I can hear rumblings and the occasional “Darn it!” followed by loud, clunky sounds. Maybe her session with Mandy has left her angry. Angrier.
I call my dad. It goes straight to voicemail, but this time it’s not full.
“Hey, Dad, it’s me. I just wanted to talk to you. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking now that I’m here and I wanted to hear your voice. Call me?”
I sound impatient, which isn’t fair on him. He’s just lost his mother. Still, I need him to call me back. Patrick has given up on texting me once it became clear I wasn’t going to answer him. Nana is gone. Cassie is set on snubbing me. I need my dad. I’ve needed him since I got here, but now I need him even more. A thought has been unfurling inside my mind for the past days, maybe even weeks: I need to leave Patrick. There are many factors that have contributed to this decision. The silence he subjected me to for weeks. The sense of relief I’ve experienced from not having to constantly monitor my appearance to his specifications. The fact that I’ve obviously developed a crush on Craig—and happily married women don’t go around developing feelings for other men. But most of all, there’s this: I want to be a mom.
Except I need someone to walk me through what that would even look like. Someone to tell me that everything will be all right. It can’t be Janette—she has too much going on right now with work and, besides, she dislikes Patrick too much. It has to be my dad because, like Sophie, my dad approves of Patrick. He’s a good man, Julie. A good provider. It’s sweet, but it’s also a little insulting. Sophie does the same. The underlying message isn’t lost on me: I’m lucky to have Patrick. He rescued me from an unmarried life, after all. Rescued. Like a Disney princess, or a three-legged dog.
If I can make my dad see that being with Patrick is antonymous with being happy, then I’ll know I’m doing the right thing by asking him for a divorce.
I’m reaching into the fridge to get the pitcher of iced tea when I hear Cassie moving around the attic with renewed energy. What exactly is she doing? It didn’t even occur to her to tell me, even though whatever is up in that attic is mine as well.
I feel my skin prickle. No one would ever expect Cassie to need rescuing.
My phone rings. My face flushes when I see my dad’s name on the screen.
“Dad?”
“Julie!” his voice booms on the other end of the line.
“Dad, I’ve been trying to reach you for—”
I hear a whooshing noise coming from the phone, like the wind, only with more personality. “I just got back from fishing. My first time. I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t boring at all.”
“That’s nice.” I don’t want to discuss fishing. “Dad, can we talk?”
“Sure, sure.” His tone is unsurprisingly cheerful. My father is nothing if not happy.
“I spoke to a psychic today.”
His laugh makes me blush.
“She’s Nana’s holistic therapist. It got me thinking about my marriage. I’m a little, I don’t know, confused.”
“You’re not having problems, are you?” he asks.
“Well, no. Not problems, exactly. It’s just that I wonder if Patrick and I are compatible—”
“Don’t let this place get to you, Julie.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. This plan your grandmother came up with, it isn’t healthy. Your sister isn’t a good influence on you. Don’t listen to her. Stand by your man.”
“Cassie doesn’t know about any of this, Dad. And it’s been going on for a while now. Before Nana passed away.” I pause. “I feel lonely.”
“A pretty girl like you, lonely?”
At this, I flush with pride. I love it when he calls me pretty. “It’s that Patrick works such long hours—”
“He’s a lawyer, Julie. You knew how hard he worked when you married him.”
I can’t argue with that. Still, that doesn’t explain his withdrawal when he’s at home.
I step out of the house. I need fresh air.
“It’s more than that, Daddy,” I say. I go on to explain how controlling Patrick is. I offer a tame example: his insistence that I put on a full face of makeup in the morning, but never any lipstick. I once made the mistake of trying on a red lipstick (I felt certain that he’d like it) and he told me I looked like a whore. Luckily, we were at home because he refused to speak to me until I took it all off.
“So he doesn’t like red lipstick.”
“Dad, it’s a lot more than that.” I explain how Patrick insists that I be home on weekends and in the evenings, even though he doesn’t seem the least bit interested in interacting with me. I add that he gets upset if I make plans with any of my friends, which is why all of them have given up on me, except for Janette. “It’s just that I wonder sometimes. Maybe we don’t belong together.”
“Who’s been filling your head with these ideas?”
“No one. It’s just me.” Does he think I�
��m incapable of wanting more, of being critical?
“Tell you what. Why don’t I meet you in Boston when you go back? We’ll have some nice father-and-daughter time. Patrick and I will go golfing.”
I bite my lip. He’s not listening to me, but he is offering to fly to Boston to spend time together. I know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. Part of me wishes he and Sophie were still involved—it would mean I’d see him more often.
“Can we go for brunch, Daddy?” I ask. I decide that I’ll tell him about Patrick’s stance on babies then. Even if dad doesn’t find fault with Patrick’s other behaviors, he’ll surely be horrified by his refusal to give me children. “Just the two of us?”
“Absolutely. I have to take off now. But we’ll talk soon, OK?” I hear background noise. Traffic, maybe. “I love you, Julie.”
“I love you, too, Daddy.”
I stare at the blue expanse in front of me. It’s a cloudless day, one of those perfect summer skies, balmy and clear. When we were little, we used to see rainbows from this very porch, usually towards the end of summer. Nana would tell us to make a wish, as if a rainbow were a shooting star. For the longest time, I thought that was how it worked: you see a rainbow, you make a wish. Cassie wished for something different every time, but I only wanted one thing: more summers with Nana and Cassie, more time in this place where I felt at peace. I wished for more days where I could be a butterfly and not a caterpillar.
“That makes no sense,” Cassie once said to me. “You shouldn’t waste a wish on something you already have. Ask for something new.”
But that never came easily to me. I was comfortable dreaming, not asking. The idea of articulating my wants to other people—even to a rainbow—sent me into a panic. I was lucky to have Nana and Cassie. Asking for more seemed rude, ungrateful. Which is why I kept my wishes to myself, close to my heart.
Until I didn’t. Until the day I opened Pandora’s box and destroyed my family.
Thirty-One
Cassie
Wednesday, July 18th
Today I learned something new about my grandmother: she was a secret slob.
The attic is disgusting. The contrast with her otherwise immaculate house is staggering. Clearly, her level of neatness was only possible because she stored every last bit of junk in the attic. A box filled with laces (sentimental relics?), the old Ouija board (that thing used to give me the creeps), receipts for dirt she bought for flowerpots. There’s an entire corner filled with multicolored beads and string. Beads!
I’m beginning to suspect Nana may have had some hoarding tendencies.
I feel my allergies start to act up as I roam through a stack of boxes. It’s possible the letters do not exist—and, if they do, they may not be here—but I’m not giving up until I’ve searched every square foot of this dusty place.
And the dust isn’t even the worst part. That would be the heat. The single, tiny round window offers no relief against the punishing July sun—in fact, it seems to magnify its power. I open it, anyway, hoping for a breeze.
That’s when I hear her. Julie, on the phone.
At first, her words get mixed in with the sounds of the beach: waves gently crashing along the Montauk shore, the creepy flecks of insects’ wings. But then I hear it.
Can we go for brunch, Daddy? Just the two of us?
Julie is making plans with our father. Just the two of them.
A lump forms in my throat. What exactly is keeping her from telling me he’s on the island—is she too dense? Too stupid?
I crane my neck, hoping to hear more, but she’s quiet now. They must’ve hung up.
I feel my blood boil as I finish rummaging through the large, faded blue box that I’ve left open. There’s an envelope inside it—cream white, almost the exact shade of the eggshell white envelope Sophie mailed to my mother on the night she died. This one has nothing of importance: two lists of china and silverware with dots next to some of the items. I think of what was inside the other envelope and I shudder.
My decision not to speak to Julie has haunted me for years. A part of me has always felt it was…unfair. Sophie was the one who sent those pictures to my mother. Julie wasn’t at fault.
But now she absolutely is at fault. Her behavior is callous, heartless. Julie thinks nothing of making plans to see our father here in Montauk. No thought to warning me. No concern for my feelings. She knows how much he cost me. She knows why I don’t talk to him. Yet they’ve been meeting in secret, behind my back.
It hurts. The Julie I knew would never do this to me.
I let out a sneeze so powerful it makes my head throb. I should’ve taken an antihistamine before coming up here. This place will be the death of me.
But I can’t stop now. I have to find the letters.
I open a box that seems to contain nothing but old newspapers and magazines. And I do mean old: some are from the nineties. Why would Nana keep these? I brush my fingers over a timeworn US Weekly. I had no idea Nana was even remotely interested in celebrity gossip. The headlines are predictably foolish.
Revealed: Celebs’ Hottest Beauty Secrets
Disowned due to Morality Clause: an Heiress Fights Back!
Hoop, There It Is: The Season’s Hottest Trend
This box will be thrown out. I won’t even bother asking Julie—she couldn’t be bothered to tell me our father is on the island. I’ll sort everything into two piles: toss and keep. It’ll mostly be toss. I’m thinking of how I can dispose of so much junk when a thought pops in my mind.
My eyes flick back to the magazine: Disowned due to Morality Clause.
The words ring in my ear. Is that why my father is here? Could he and Julie be planning on contesting the will? On taking the house from me on the grounds that I am a couples’ counselor who is romantically involved with a former patient—a married man?
Would that even be legal?
My head is spinning. I need to get out of here. I need fresh air. I head for the rickety stairs attached to the trapdoor that leads to the second floor. I don’t see what happens next. It’s possible I slipped. Or tripped. But I feel every inch of the fall until I’m on the ground, my right ankle caught on one of the steps. A snap, then a rush of raw pain.
A high-pitched cry rings in my ears. I soon realize it came from me.
“Cassie?” I hear Julie scream.
Within seconds she’s standing over me, cupping my head with her hands, her voice tremulous and grating.
“Cassie, oh my God! Are you OK? What happened?”
If I could form a proper sentence, I’d say it was all her. She is what happened.
Thirty-Two
Julie
Wednesday, July 18th
Cassie’s face is twisted in a gruesome, painful expression. Her foot might be broken.
“I’ll get Craig.” I jump up.
“What? No!” Her voice is a guttural roar. “Take me to the hospital. My car keys are on my nightstand.”
“I can’t drive.”
She looks at me like I’m a unicorn. No—unicorns are special. A troll. A swamp monster.
“How is it possible,” she begins, enunciating each word through gritted teeth, “that you don’t know how to drive?”
Not all of us got cars when we turned sixteen. Not everyone learns to drive in the idyllic setting of Dover, Massachusetts, where the roads are wide and safe, and traffic is non-existent. In Jamaica Plain, the only way for a sixteen-year-old to have a car is if he’d stolen it.
“I learned enough to get my license, OK? But I’ve never really driven.” I’m stumbling on my own words. I hate that I feel defensive.
“Fine, get Craig.” She lets out a testy sigh.
I leave the room feeling wounded. I came to her rescue after she fell off the stairs. She could afford to be a little nicer. I just hope she won’t be this rude to Craig.
Except Craig isn’t home. I’d forgotten he and the kids are out. Ben wanted to go to Ditch Plains. I would’ve gone with
them if Mrs. Bunsen hadn’t shown up. Like an idiot, I’d forgotten.
I’ve now wasted fifteen minutes dashing to and from his house.
“He isn’t home,” I tell Cassie. “Should I call an ambulance?” I’m fumbling through my purse trying to find my cell phone. Maybe I can text Craig? How long would it take him to drive back?
“No. No ambulance. Look, just get in the car and drive, OK?” And then, a mutter, “How bad of a driver can you possibly be?”
I swallow, unsure of how to answer.
I help her get up, doing my best to ignore her wincing. I have a feeling it has more to do with me touching her than it does with whatever pain she’s experiencing. I’m thankful for my Pilates training—I need a strong core to help hold her down the stairs.
I’m sweating as I turn on the car and reluctantly start to back up on Nana’s driveway. Driving has always scared me. There are just too many things to watch out for. If you think about it, cars are like weapons.
“Watch out,” Cassie says, at the exact moment I hit the mailbox with the side mirror.
“Shit. Sorry.”
I hear her suck in a heap of air. She’s clenching her fists in pain or annoyance. Likely both. Does she think I want to be driving?
But now is not the time to mull over her ungrateful attitude. Eyes on the highway.
I exhale when we finally arrive at the emergency drop-off of the Southampton Hospital. Within minutes, we’re out of the car and in a waiting room so cold it feels like winter. Cassie is filling out a bunch of forms while I pretend to check something on my phone.
“No painkillers,” Cassie tells a nurse, as soon as she leads us into a room.
“I’m just here to check on your blood pressure, ma’am.” She instructs Cassie to take a seat on the aluminum cot.
Cassie complies but keeps her eyes on the woman in lavender scrubs as if she might surprise her with a needle.