“Well. Maybe you need to do some research.”
Cassie furrowed her brows. “What do you mean?”
He stood, tossed his empty Starbucks cup into her wastebasket. “I mean talk to her. Ask her what the deal is. How else will you know?”
Cassie pinched the bridge of her nose. “Or I could just leave it alone. Things looked pretty cozy between them, and I’m probably just grabbing on to whatever I can since I’m single and hating it.” She looked down at Gordie’s eyes. “Right, Gordo?”
Jonathan shook his head and opened her office door. “You are such a girl.”
“But you love me anyway,” Cassie called out as he went into the hall.
“Lucky for you.” The door clicked shut.
Gordie wandered to his round dog bed in the corner, turned in a circle five or six times, then settled down with a happy groan. Cassie sipped from her coffee cup, making a mental note that she needed to bring coffee to Jonathan later, as he was three visits up on her. There was a mountain of paperwork that needed to be done, as well as a list of phone calls she needed to make, but all she could manage to do was gaze out the window at the lake and rehash every second of last night.
When she’d invited Emerson to join her and the kids, it had been fairly innocent. Cassie was smart enough to recognize when she found somebody physically attractive, but she’d kept that in check. Emerson wasn’t staying in Lake Henry. She’d made that abundantly clear more than once. So Cassie had been pretty sure she’d taken that attraction and shelved it. She had no idea when the switch had flipped, but she’d had a great time, and when Chris had shown up to get the kids, she wanted nothing more than to spend more time with Emerson. And the look in Emerson’s blue eyes had said the same thing.
Jesus, had she become a complete failure at reading people? At interpreting body language? They really couldn’t have been much closer on their walk. They’d strolled as slowly as possible so they wouldn’t get to the end of the journey so soon, and being up against her, having Emerson leaning on her… She shook her head slowly. She’d been so drawn to Emerson…and it seemed the feeling was mutual.
Why hadn’t Emerson mentioned having a girlfriend? She said she dated. Is that what she’d meant? That she was dating? Now? Currently?
Cassie remembered the woman’s eyes ping-ponging back and forth between her and Emerson. Had she known there was something there? Had she seen it? Did she have any idea that if she’d waited five more seconds to open the door, she’d have caught them with their mouths fused together?
And with that thought, Cassie pictured it, as she had a hundred times last night as she tossed and turned in her lonely bed. Emerson had a great mouth. Those lips…
“Jesus Christ,” Cassie muttered, shoving back from her desk harder than necessary. “Come on, Gordie. I need distraction. Let’s go downstairs and sell some stuff. Wanna?”
The store was somewhat busy for a Tuesday mid-morning. The kids were in school, but a few tourists were still around. Not nearly as many as in summer and early fall, and not nearly as many as during ski season, but it was steady enough. This was the very tail end of the foliage season, or the season of the “leaf-lookers,” as the locals called it. People from parts of the country that didn’t have the amazing trees that changed color with the seasons flocked to the northeast just to see the leaves. And Cassie had to admit, it was beautiful. But it was just about over. Most of the trees had started to drop their leaves, and in another week or two, most of them would be bare. The landscape would go from blazing oranges, yellows, and reds to dull and boring brown.
She and Gordie headed down to the first floor to see how things were going. She checked in with Frannie, who nodded to her questions as she rang out a customer buying gloves. Then she sidled past a couple more customers in the aisle and headed down to the lower level to check in with her mom. Gordie found her first, zipping across the room to her. As Cassie headed toward the back door to peek out at the lake, she saw her mother making a weird face at her. Cassie squinted at her and held her arms out to the sides in a silent, “What?” Her mother gestured to her left with her eyes, then widened them. Cassie was confused, but when she looked in the direction her mother pointed, it all became clear.
Vanessa walked toward her.
“Shit,” Cassie muttered under her breath. Then, “Hey.”
Vanessa stopped next to her. She looked exhausted. Dark circles accented the undersides of her eyes and her normally glossy hair was dull and yanked back into a messy ponytail that looked like it had been done at the very last minute. “Hi.” Vanessa’s eyes darted around the room. Luckily, there were no customers on this level at the moment. Cassie sent up a silent thank you to the universe.
Cassie waited. When Vanessa said nothing more, she raised her eyebrows and turned her head slightly, an expectant look on her face.
“The kids’ costumes looked great,” Vanessa finally said, her voice quiet.
Cassie nodded. “Yeah, they did good.” After a beat, she made a face and asked, “When did you see them?”
“Last night.” Vanessa’s eyes finally met hers, and they were crackling with…something. “We walked right past you, but you didn’t see us.”
Cassie searched her memory banks, but came up empty.
“Well, you didn’t see me. The kids were busy knocking on doors.”
That made more sense to Cassie, but she felt a little pang of guilt. “I’m really sorry, V. You should have said something, gotten my attention.”
Vanessa barked a laugh that sounded inordinately loud in the quiet space as she glanced out the back windows. “No, I don’t think so.” She waited a beat, then turned her gaze back to Cassie. Her eyes were filled with unshed tears as she asked in almost a whisper, “Are you seeing her?”
Oh, Jesus, Cassie thought, rubbing her forehead with her fingertips. That’s what this was about. “Vanessa,” she said, and Vanessa cringed, then lashed out, still quiet.
“Don’t. Don’t you say my name like that. Like you pity me. Please, Cassie. I can’t take that.”
Cassie grasped her arm and led her to the back corner of the lower level of the store. She kept her voice low, but imploring. “Vanessa. We cannot keep doing this. We can’t. You’ve got to stop.”
“I know. I know.” Tears tracked down her cheeks, but to Vanessa’s credit, she kept herself mostly under control. She looked back into Cassie’s eyes and said, “You didn’t answer my question.”
Cassie made a quiet guttural sound in her throat. “No. Okay? No, I am not seeing Emerson. She’s with somebody.”
Vanessa studied her face, and Cassie wanted to hide. She did her best to school her features, but Vanessa knew her better than anybody. “But you wish she wasn’t. You wish she wasn’t with somebody,” she stated simply. “Don’t you?”
Cassie clenched her teeth and looked away. “I am not going to do this with you.”
Vanessa looked down at her feet, and they were both quiet for a long moment. When Vanessa looked up, her eyes were clear and she was doing her best to look perfectly fine. If Cassie didn’t know her so well, she might not have realized how much pain she was hiding.
“You’re right,” she finally said with a sniff as her eyes traveled the store, looked anywhere but at Cassie. “I can’t keep doing this. I know. I’m sorry. It’s just been really…” Vanessa let the sentence dangle for a moment while she worked hard to keep control. With a clear of her throat, she went on. “It’s been really hard, but I’m working on things. I’m working on me.” She cleared her throat and added, “I’ve been on the internet doing some research like you suggested.” With a humorless laugh she said, “Hey, better late than never, right?”
Cassie reached out and squeezed her upper arm gently. “Vanessa.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
Vanessa swallowed, gazed out over the store, cleared her throat again, and again, to her credit and Cassie’s surprise, held on to her composure. “I hope you understand that ultimately, I just w
ant you to be happy.” Her eyes finally returned to Cassie’s and she whispered, “I love you, Cassie, and I just want you to be happy. That’s all.”
Cassie didn’t know what to say, but Vanessa saved her from doing so by giving her a quick peck on the cheek before she turned away and left out the back door. Cassie watched her get in her car, start the engine, and drive away without a backward glance. She sucked in a lungful of air, slowly, and held it for a beat before letting it out just as slowly. Then she rubbed both hands over her face as if this would help scrub off all the stress. When she looked up, her mother was walking toward her.
“You okay?” she asked gently.
“Can this day get any worse?” Cassie asked.
Suddenly, the front door alarm went off, shocking both of them back a couple of steps and letting them know somebody was trying to leave the store with an unpaid item.
“Apparently, it can,” her mother said.
“Son of a bitch,” Cassie muttered, taking the stairs two at a time.
***
Katie Parker watched from across the store as Cassie dealt with the police and the shoplifter. It was moments like this when her pride in her daughter surged, when she was so obviously not a child, when she was so blatantly a grown woman who could take care of herself, her life, her business.
But Katie was a mother before anything else, and when she saw one of her children confused or hurting or defeated, it squeezed her heart in a way that no non-parent could ever understand.
Katie liked Vanessa Turner. She always had. She’d known her for years. Jim had taught her in school so many years ago, and she was a good girl. She’d settled down with a local boy, had kids, and was a fixture in Lake Henry…at the PTA, at sporting events with her kids. She was known around town as a reliable, nice girl. She was kind. She was beautiful.
She was in love with Cassie.
Katie had known it long before Cassie had ever told her. They’re not kidding when they say, “a mother knows.” A mother knows. She always knows. It’s a mother’s job to be in tune with her kids. It didn’t hurt that Cassie was never good at hiding anything, try as she might. Katie even knew that Cassie’s marriage to Michael would never last. She knew from the time Cassie was nine years old that she preferred girls. And she was fine with that. Jim had taken a bit more persuasion, but ultimately, he wanted his little girl to be happy and if spending her life with another woman was what would make her that way, he could accept it.
Vanessa Turner had been a surprise.
Cassie’s signature on her divorce papers had barely dried before she began talking about how much time she was spending with Vanessa, how much fun they were having, how much they had in common. All her talk was very innocent, nothing at all suspicious, but a mother knows. Katie knew. Cassie was seeing Vanessa (she didn’t know what else to call it.). That was clear to her. She had no idea how far it had gone at the time, but Cassie had definite feelings for this woman who was married with children. Honestly, that was the issue Katie struggled with: the married with children part. Cassie was not a home wrecker. That’s not the kind of girl she was, not the kind of girl she was raised to be.
They were discreet. Katie had to give them that. She was fairly certain that nobody had ever suspected the affair. Mostly because this was Lake Henry, small town of the Adirondacks, and nobody’s mind would go there without some serious pushing. But when Cassie was home, she talked about nothing else. Vanessa this, Vanessa’s kids that. On the one hand, it was wonderful to see her daughter so happy…her constant smiles, the high, healthy color in her face were beautiful things for a parent to witness in her child. It was such a nice change from the stress she went through over ending her marriage to Michael. But Katie was worried. And more than that, she was disappointed in her daughter, which she hesitated to admit.
One night, she did.
They’d had Sunday dinner with the family, and it had been very nice. Chris and the kids had to get home so Trevor could study for his math test the next day, and Cassie had stayed behind to help Katie clean up the kitchen. It wasn’t long before Cassie had started talking about a show she and Vanessa were going to see the following weekend. Katie listened as long as she could before it burst out of her.
“What are you doing?” she asked her daughter quietly.
“What do you mean?” Cassie dried a dish, put it in the cupboard, still smiling.
Katie stopped washing, turned to her daughter. “What are you doing?”
Cassie held a wet plate in one hand, a towel in the other, and furrowed her brows at her mother. She shook her head quickly and asked again, “What do you mean?”
“She’s married, Cassandra. That’s what I mean. She’s a married woman with two kids and a life. What are you doing?”
Katie watched her daughter’s face lose the joy it had been holding for so long, and she hated that she was the one who pulled it away. She also read Cassie’s thoughts, saw Cassie realize that Katie knew exactly what was going on between her and Vanessa, that there was no more masking it.
Cassie rolled her lips in, bit down on them, obviously searching for the right words. After long moments, she spoke. “I know, Mom. I know. We’ve talked about it a lot. I don’t want to push her. You know?”
It wasn’t what Katie had wanted to hear, though if pressed she wasn’t sure she could even articulate exactly what it was she would have preferred Cassie say. “I don’t like it,” she said.
“I know. I know. I don’t either.”
Katie shook her head and said it again, more to herself. “I don’t like it.”
“It’s not ideal. I know,” Cassie told her, a reassuring tone in her voice. “It won’t always be like this. You’ll see.”
But time went on. More than a year. Nearing two years. Nothing changed but the light in Cassie’s face. It dimmed slowly. She talked about Vanessa less and less. Katie began to worry. Finally, one day when Cassie had begged off of a Sunday family dinner, Katie decided to bring a dish directly to her apartment. When Cassie’d answered the door, her eyes were red-rimmed and her face was blotchy and puffy.
“What’s wrong?” Katie asked, pushing her way through the door.
“Nothing. I’m fine,” Cassie had lied.
“Cassandra.” Katie set her dishes down and turned to her daughter. “You’ve been crying. What is it?”
Cassie had studied her feet, then moved her gaze to the window, then focused on Gordie, who sat at her feet looking as worried as Katie. Katie gently touched Cassie’s chin, turned her face so their eyes met. The tears overflowed immediately.
They sat on Cassie’s couch as evening moved on to night while Cassie cried in her mother’s arms. Katie held her tightly, initially surprised by how much more intense these emotions were than the ones when she’d decided to divorce Michael, and she knew then that her daughter’s heart was truly broken. Cassie had uttered only one sentence the whole time.
“She’s never going to leave him.”
Katie was not surprised. She was hurt that her child was hurting. And she was angry. She was angry with Cassie for getting into this mess in the first place. She was angry with Vanessa for stringing Cassie along. She was angry at all of it. But she kept her anger in check, and she did what she needed to do to help her daughter heal. That hadn’t been very long ago. Cassie told her she’d been tapering things off with Vanessa for a couple months before the actual breakup. That had only been, what, a month ago? Maybe two? And in that time, two things had become clear to Katie: Cassie was moving on. Vanessa was not.
Or maybe she was. She’d seemed to have ahold of herself when she left today, which was more than Katie could say for the last couple times she’d seen her.
She watched now as Cassie shook the hand of Tommy Goran, the police officer helping her with the shoplifting situation. He’d graduated two years ahead of Cassie, and they were friends. Cassie smiled at him; he grinned back, a little smitten as he always had been when it came to Cassie. Katie couldn’t help
but shake her head and smile to herself. Oh, no, Tommy. Don’t get sucked in. She’s got her eye on somebody else.
Emerson Rosberg.
Chris had called Katie this morning, and now she knew all about the Halloween date. She smiled to herself and shook her head as she recalled the conversation when she’d asked Chris how Halloween went.
“The kids had a blast with Aunt Cassie,” Chris had said. “And methinks Aunt Cassie had a blast with Ms. Emerson Rosberg.”
“What do you mean?” Katie had asked, puzzled. “What was she doing with Cassie and the kids?”
Chris chuckled. “Mostly shivering. A lot. But when I offered to give them a ride home in my warm, toasty car, they both declined. Apparently, they preferred to walk home. Alone. Together.”
Emerson Rosberg. Former darling of Lake Henry. Notorious hard-head. Somebody who fled when the going got tough.
Cassie’s track record was not the most impressive. A boy she was more comfortable and familiar with than in love with. A married woman with children. And now a self-centered loner who lived three thousand miles away.
“Oh, my baby girl. Where did you get such lousy taste in partners?” she muttered under her breath. But she couldn’t work up a smile. None of this was funny. If Cassie really did fall for Emerson, there would be no way to catch her when she inevitably crashed to the ground.
Katie was worried all over again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was time for Claire to go. She moped around for much of the morning, knowing that with a four o’clock flight and a three-hour drive to Albany, she needed to get on the road by eleven at the latest. It was already after ten, and it was obvious she didn’t want to leave. She looked sad. She acted sad. She clung to Emerson like they were the two sides of Velcro.
Jesus Christ, just go already, Emerson wanted to shout.
The guilt hit her immediately every time that sentence crossed her mind, and she felt terrible, because Claire had been a whirlwind of accomplishment in the two days she’d been there. The half-empty living room and the stack of neatly labeled cardboard boxes in the corner were testament to that. So what was Emerson’s problem? Claire had buckled down and gotten busy doing exactly what Emerson had been dragging her feet on for over a week. Why did she feel so unsettled about that?
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