Nice to Come Home To

by Liz Flaherty

  In answer, he took something out of the pocket of his coat and held it up. “Does this look familiar to you?”

  Of course it looked familiar to her. She hated the picture with the pot of daisies in color and the black-and-white urn in the background. Lucy Garten’s stories weren’t grim, yet the cover of The Case of Daisy’s Ashes was bleak and hopeless. She’d felt that way herself then so she hadn’t complained, but neither had she promoted the book wholeheartedly.

  She hadn’t had to—it was her bestselling one to date. Her editor told her the mail all leaned toward readers liking the cover and loving that Lucy’s personal life had gained so much space in the story.

  It was the book Cass had written when she hadn’t had the energy to maintain her Cassandra persona. She had been almost disappointed that it was such a reader favorite when she considered it so flawed. Even when she’d admitted to Holly that she was indeed Cassandra G. Porter and during the conversations since, she’d never talked about Daisy’s Ashes.

  Now here it was in Luke’s hand. And he was waiting for an answer.

  “Yes,” she said, “it’s familiar.”

  “Are you—”

  “Yes.” She felt as emotionless as the word itself. “I’m Cassandra G. Porter.”

  She shivered, standing there, and he came up the steps. When she stepped back into the house, he followed and closed the door behind him.

  “Can you explain to me why that particular subject never came up?” He sounded more hurt than angry.

  Across the kitchen, she poured coffee for them both, wondering if that should be her response to the world coming to an end—Wait a minute on that bomb, will you? The coffee’s almost done.

  They sat at the table in the chairs they always chose, their cups in front of them, the paperback lying between them on top of the spread pages of her next contract—how ironic was that? The cracked spine indicated the book had been read. She wondered if he’d read enough to recognize Zoey in the characters. Or Cottonwood Creek in the setting. Or Linda’s shouted laughter in the departed Daisy.

  But, no, he hadn’t known Linda.

  Cass looked down into her cup, not wanting to meet the cold gaze that made her want to flinch even when she couldn’t see it. “When I first started writing, I used a pen name because it was easier than dealing with my father and my husband. I also used the pseudonym because when I left Miniagua, I cut off all connection to it except for Zoey and my grandparents. Even when I came back for Nana and Grandpa’s funerals, I only stayed long enough for the services and I didn’t talk to anyone. It was like a scene out of a movie you wish you hadn’t paid to see.”

  “Why did you cut off that connection? I still don’t understand that.”

  “Guilt. I was alive and Linda wasn’t. I had no scars and virtually everyone else did. My grandparents, who were ill when I came to stay that year, got sicker so fast it made my head spin. I still think they probably would have lived longer if they hadn’t had me to worry about.” Cass shrugged. “But we all have guilt over one thing or another. Coming back here, being around the rest of the survivors and my family and…and you—that’s given me a kind of confidence I’ve never had before. It’s put the guilt wherever it is we keep it, because I don’t think it ever goes away.”

  “Not completely, probably.” He tapped the front of the book. “Does everyone know this is you?”

  “My family does. Holly figured it out. I think most of the survivors do, by now. I stopped keeping it a secret, but I haven’t gone out of my way to tell anyone, either.” Cass picked up her cup, then set it down. She had to stifle the tremor of her lips again, biting down hard on the bottom one. “I don’t know how to explain to you what I don’t fully understand myself. I think I was waiting for the right time and it never came. And I suppose I’m afraid of commitment—there’s that, too. Letting you see who I really am would be getting too close.”

  “What I don’t like is being the last to know.” He hesitated. “Although I have to admit the two-people concept is a little disconcerting. Which one do I know, or do I know either of you? It feels like a lie by omission, Cass. A big one.”

  “I understand that.” She did understand it. She should have told him. She should have told him everything.

  But then he’d have known the real Cass, and she’d been so happy the way things were. Happier, she realized now that she wasn’t, than she’d ever been. Because of Royce, Zoey, Damaris and the old farmhouse.

  For so many reasons.

  Because of the friendships she’d renewed and others she’d made since coming back to this magical place. Because even with fear of cancer’s return creating a huge cold place inside, she felt neither alone nor lonely, and being scared was a lot easier when you could share it.

  And because of Luke. Because for the first time in her life, she felt for herself what she’d seen and envied in other people she’d known. She understood Grandpa and Nana sitting in their recliners in front of the TV and laughing together at things no one but they considered funny. She’d wished the best for her friends who were couples and felt as if it might really happen—for them and for her.

  But now, before she’d even given voice to the joy of the developing relationship between Luke and herself, she was going to lose it just as surely as the cold November sun would slide up over the apple trees in the morning.

  She thought, for no particular reason, of the Robert Frost poem that had given the orchard its name; she’d seen the verse so often that she had it mostly memorized. Its first line said, “This saying goodbye on the edge of the dark…”

  It was full dark, but she was almost sure about the “saying goodbye.” Her heart ached.

  “I don’t use Cassandra’s name, but I’ve tried to make myself into her. She’s the one you know, I hope. I like her better than I like Cass.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know how to say it without sounding like a world-class whiner.” She met his eyes, then looked away. The chocolate brown that was always so meltingly warm was anything but.

  Another line from the poem slipped into her mind: “Its heart sinks lower under the sod.”

  Frost had been talking about an orchard, not a woman who’d made a mess of her life, but the sentiment resonated. Her heart, feeling as leaden as the knot of fear she’d been carrying around for too many days, sank still lower.

  “Just say it.” He leaned forward in his chair, meeting and holding her gaze.

  She had to look away before she could answer, “It’s pretty simple. My life as Cass has been a series of losses and bad choices and underachieving. When I first sold a book as Cassandra, I was able to be someone else, someone with curves instead of angles. When I got cancer and had to have a mastectomy… I don’t care that it is the twenty-first century—I felt disfigured and scared and as if I’d failed not only my parents but myself because it was just one more thing wrong with me.”

  “That’s crazy.” His voice was flat. A frown made a sharp vertical line between his brows.

  “It is, I agree.” She turned the book over, hiding its cover, then lifted her eyes. “Did you feel like a failure when Jill died?”

  The flinch was no more than the tiny jerk of a jaw muscle, but she saw it. He nodded. “Sometimes.”

  “That’s crazy,” she said.

  “I know it is, but it’s not something I hide behind a pseudonym, either.” He picked up the book, holding it up. “Is that the real reason your picture is unrecognizable, so that no one will know you carry the same kind of scars everyone else in the world does?”

  She started to answer, then stopped. Was he right? Was she so filled with her own importance that she wanted to be better than anyone else? The thought horrified her into silence, then she shook her head.

  “No.”

  “Then you’re going to have to explain it to me.”

  “It’s pretty simple, really. I didn’t like the person I was, the one I thought was a complete disappointment and failur
e to everyone, who let her best friend die in her place, so I wanted to be someone else.” She stopped for a moment, her throat closing. Tears trickled hot and fast from the corners of her eyes “Cassandra, on the other hand, is fine. She’s a good sister, a good niece, a good writer, a good business partner. She’s the one you know, the one I want to be. Is that so unreasonable?”

  He took her hand, stroking a finger over the worn wedding band, and lifted it to his lips to kiss the crooked knuckle. “I think it is. All those things you just mentioned are Cass, because we’re all what our lives have made us into.” He released her fingers and got to his feet. “Cassandra’s just a name on the front of a book. It’s Cass I want to know.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “SERIOUSLY?” SETH PUT the basketball between his feet so it wouldn’t roll away and straightened to stare at Luke. “You’re really thinking of leaving the lake?”

  “Not until spring. You’ll be able to stay with me until you graduate. Even after that, I’ll keep the house. It’ll be available for the family when it’s not rented out. I’ll probably retire here.”

  “In about a hundred years, about the same time you get the bathroom finished.” Seth picked up the ball again, dropping a shot cleanly from three-point range. “I thought you loved it here.”

  “I do love it here. I also love Pennsylvania and engineering.” Luke caught the ball and dribbled it to the side of the concrete court that was part of the lake’s playground adjacent to the clubhouse. “You knew I’d go back there someday.”

  “No, I didn’t. I mean, I did, but not really. It’s been years and you haven’t missed engineering since you came here. Why now all of a sudden? The orchard’s going great and you’ll even have the new cider press next year to make life easier. You’ll be able to sit around the Ground in the Round and drink half caff breakfast blend all day long.”

  Luke hadn’t been in the coffee shop since the week before. It was unbelievable how much he missed it.

  “I haven’t decided yet. I just wanted you to know I was seriously considering the job.” He shot, frowning when Seth snatched the ball before it tipped into the rim. “I’m aging, you know. You need to give me a break now and then.”

  “What does Cass say?” Seth gave him the ball with a hard bounce pass.

  Luke ignored him and went in for a layup. He hadn’t talked to Cass in the three days since Tuesday night. She was avoiding him as studiously as he avoided her. Neither Zoey nor Royce had mentioned her to him. He assumed they hadn’t talked to Cass about him, either, although he saw the worry in Zoey’s eyes and the questions in Royce’s on Wednesday when he stopped by the farmhouse to drop off one of the fresh turkeys he’d picked up at the Detwiler farm.

  Seth rebounded, then tossed him the ball. “Luke?”

  “Let it go, Seth.” Luke shot again, from the free throw line, and tried to ignore the stab of pain brought on by saying the words let it go.

  “What are we doing on Christmas?”

  The change of subject was so sudden, Luke had to give his mind a moment to catch up. They’d spent Wednesday night and Thanksgiving Day with their parents, then driven back to the lake to get Seth home in time for basketball practice on Friday morning. Luke had worked in the house all day, putting finishing touches on window trim. He’d cut some tiles for the bathroom shower and given up when he couldn’t concentrate on the pattern.

  “I don’t know,” he said, when his mind wouldn’t cooperate fully with the question—focus really was becoming a problem. “Mom would like everyone to come to Michigan. The girls would like to gather in Pennsylvania. What would you like to do?” Luke didn’t care about the holidays—he hadn’t since Jill’s death—but Seth was still a kid. They mattered to him.

  “Stay here.”

  Luke started to protest, to remind him that their parents were already giving up a lot by allowing their youngest to spend his last year in high school away from home. But Detroit had never been Seth’s home. He had no friends there, no family ties beyond Mom and Dad.

  “I’ll ask.” He shook his head when Seth offered him the basketball. “Maybe everyone would like to come to the lake for Christmas. What do you think?”

  Seth laughed. “I think your house is nowhere near big enough.”

  “If they’ll come, maybe we can rustle up a rental that will hold everyone. There are always cancellations, plus central Indiana doesn’t exactly scream tourism during the winter months.”

  “Do you think? Will you ask them?”

  “No, you can ask them. If you get good answers, I’ll start nosing around for a place big enough to house a bunch of Rossiters and Friesens.”

  “Can we invite Royce and Cass and Zoey and Damaris to have Christmas with us, too? They’re like family. I can just hear it if Zoey and Mom were both in the kitchen, can’t you?”

  “Let’s not get the cart before the horse. Talk to the family first, and we’ll go from there.”

  They walked home in the brisk air, jogging sometimes to stay warm and bounce-passing the basketball back and forth across the narrow gravel road. The lake was smooth and gray and Luke regretted having already put the boat in winter storage—a ride would have felt good tonight.

  He needed something to feel good.

  “I’m going over to the orchard for a little bit,” he told Seth when they got back to the house. “We’re behind on some things after the season rush. I need to start catching up.”

  Seth’s head appeared through the neck of the hoodie he was taking off. “Want me to go with you?”

  Luke ruffled the boy’s hair, shorter and neater than his own. “I need some quiet time, and I’m sure not going to get that with you around.” He stepped back toward the door. “If you get into that food Mom sent home with us, don’t eat it all. I’m still the favorite son.”

  “Nope. You’re old and worn out, so she likes me best now.” Seth’s eyes, mirrors of Luke’s own, were troubled despite his teasing rejoinder. “Hey.”

  Luke sighed, but waited with his hand on the doorknob. “Hey what?”

  “This thing with Cass… I don’t know how you screwed it up. But you’ve always been the fixer. For me, for Jill, for Zoey. You need to do it for yourself now, too.”

  Anger and hurt and frustration twisted inside him, and Luke wanted to yell at his brother. When does someone do the fixing for me? I’ve been broken for ten years. But the knowledge that the kid standing there in a sweaty T-shirt would go to the ends of the earth to do exactly that stopped him.

  “Sometimes,” Luke said instead, “I just can’t.”

  *

  “YOU MEAN YOU can’t even stay until after the dance?” A wobble in Royce’s voice at the end of her question betrayed her upset. “You’re barely off crutches, Mom. Surely the army doesn’t need you right this very minute.”

  Damaris looked past her daughter to meet Cass’s eyes. Help me out here.

  But Cass shrugged and shook her head slightly. She was on Royce’s side in this one. She might not tell her sister she was, but she was.

  “Honey, I don’t know how to make you understand that what I do is important. When they tell me I’m needed by Wednesday at 0800 hours, they don’t mean Saturday after my daughter’s dance. You’re an army brat—you both are—so you know I don’t have a choice.” Tears slipped from the corners of Damaris’s eyes as she sank into a kitchen chair, making her look not only tired but distraught. “Believe me, if I did, I would choose to be here. I want to take pictures of you in your dress and tell Seth not to keep you out too late and to drive carefully. I’d like to sit in the living room with Zoey and watch old movies on TV until you get home and then go to bed really fast, so you wouldn’t know I was waiting up.”

  “You could have retired when you got hurt, Mom.” Royce hadn’t reached the point of being resigned to the inevitable yet—her voice was still all hurt child. “You’ve given the army twenty-five years. When is it time for you? For your family?” For me? She wouldn’t say the words,
but Cass knew they were there at the tip of her tongue. She’d thought them herself a hundred times about her own father by the time she was Royce’s age.

  Damaris knew it, too. “I’m sorry, baby. I wish it were different.”

  “Me, too. Happy Day-After-Thanksgiving to us.” Royce turned away, going to the back stairway without looking at either her mother or her sister. “I’m going to bed.”

  When she was out of earshot, Cass spoke quietly. “Three more days, Damaris? Really?”

  Her stepmother, always militarily straight even when she’d been in a wheelchair, slumped. She looked older than the forty-seven Cass knew her to be. “Yes, really. I tried, Cass. You have to know that.”

  She did know that. Cass relented, stepping over to hug the woman sitting at the table. “I know. I wish I’d had you long before I did. But it’s going to be hard for her. I understand that it’s hard for you, too, but it’s not going to seem that way to her.” She shook her head. “Actually, unless she’s a lot different than I was, she won’t care if it’s hard for you. Sixteen and selfish tend to be synonymous.”

  Cass didn’t say things like “She’ll come around,” because she knew Royce wouldn’t. At least, not quickly enough to make her mother’s leave-taking an easy one. “I’ll take care of her,” was all she could think of to make Damaris feel better.

  “I will, too.” Zoey came into the kitchen in her robe and slippers, and went to the window over the sink, looking out into the darkness. “She’ll be fine.”

  Cass looked at the clock. “I’m going for a walk, and then I’m going to come back and work for a while.”

  Zoey frowned at her. “Do you think walking at ten o’clock at night is a good idea? It’s supposed to snow tonight, too.”