Hope Blooms

by Jamie Pope

  “Because I have to. Because there will be another school. Or somewhere they’ll be another shooting. Or one day you’ll see a man who looks or sounds like Terrance and you’ll have to learn to really get through this. I’m here for you, but I think you need more than me.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I think you should see somebody—a counselor or a therapist—somebody you can talk to.”

  She shook her head. “I talk to you. I’m better. You see that.”

  “You need to talk about Terrance to somebody who is not me, to someone who didn’t share a past with him.”

  “I’m sick and tired of talking and thinking about Terrance all the time!” she yelled at him. “I’m tired of talking about him. He’s dead. I’ve spent a year in bed mourning him. I devoted my life to him. I was a good wife! I gave up—”

  “What? What did you give up?”

  “Everything,” she whispered. “I went along with what he wanted. All the time. I lived where he wanted, and watched what he watched, and ate what he liked, because I wanted him to be happy.”

  “Why did you do that?” he asked her softly, already knowing the answer and feeling the guilt for it. “That’s not what he expected from you. He loved you just the way you were. He would have been happy anyway. He wanted you any way that he could get you.”

  “Yeah, he loved me so much he lied to me our entire marriage. The whole thing was a lie and he knew it.”

  “What did he know?”

  “He knew that if I found out the truth about why you left, I would have never married him.”

  “You say that, but I’m not sure I believe it. You’re mad at him, but I saw how you two were growing up. You got each other the way nobody else did. You loved him, and he was good to you. He loved you. I wasn’t inside your marriage, but I know he wasn’t a bad husband.”

  “I loved him like a sister, not like a wife, and that’s why I felt guilty. That’s why I couldn’t get out of bed for a whole goddamn year. He died never having a wife who was in love with him. I tried. I tried to fall in love with him. I should have been in love with him. He was good to me, and he was smart and funny, but I couldn’t. I beat myself up for not being able to, and that’s why I bent over backward to try to be a good wife. But he knew about us all along. He knew that I was in love with you and he pretended like he knew nothing. He acted like you were the bad one for leaving. I put him on a pedestal and he let me. I can’t believe he just went along with it.”

  “Why did you marry him if you didn’t want to?”

  “Because when you left me, I felt unlovable. Like there was something wrong with me. I thought that if I didn’t marry Terrance, if I threw that good guy away, that I would never find another one.”

  “Why aren’t you mad at me?”

  “What?” She looked at him, bewilderment crossing her face.

  “You’re blaming Terrance for what? For fighting for you? For doing what I should have done? You should be mad at me, not at him. I walked out on you. I made you hide our relationship from everybody. You should hate me. But you don’t. You don’t blame me for anything, and sometimes I wish you did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m afraid that one day you’ll realize how much you really do hate me and disappear from my life again.”

  She locked eyes with him, and her lost look was gone in that moment. “I did hate you. For years. Every time I thought of you, my heart hurt. Do you know what it was like after you left? At first I didn’t know what to think. I thought you were hurt or dead, and I was so worried that I couldn’t sleep at night. But when I realized that you just didn’t want to be with me anymore, it killed me. Because I thought I spent all that time loving you for nothing. And the worst thing about it was I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I couldn’t make love to my husband without comparing him to you, without thinking about you! I spent the entire first year of my marriage wondering about you, dreaming about you, wishing he were you. You made me disloyal in my heart.” She touched her chest. “You made me feel like a fool and I hated you for that.”

  “I’m sorry for that. I haven’t said it, but I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry I had to walk away. There are times I can’t forgive myself for what happened between us. I’m not sure how you ever could.”

  “I was so mad at you, Wylie—don’t think that I wasn’t. Even now I look at you sometimes and get angry with you. But hating you doesn’t do me any good. Not then. Not now. Hating you didn’t help me to love my husband more. It didn’t help me be a better wife. It just made me miserable. I’m done with being miserable.” She shut her eyes. “I’m done with feeling guilt. I feel happy here. I laugh here. I’m making friends here.” She opened her eyes and looked directly at him. “Why are you questioning that?”

  “Because you left a whole entire life behind. Because you’re avoiding your parents and the house you lived in and the town we grew up in. You may not want to look back right now, but at some point you’re going to have to.”

  “Why? I don’t have a life there anymore! How many times do I have to say that?”

  “Maybe that’s not where you want your life to be, but you did have a life there, and friends and family and a community, and even if you never want to live there again, you have to have some closure. Especially with Terrance. You haven’t been to his grave, Cass. You never even said good-bye.”

  “You should talk. You never said good-bye either. You never made your peace with him.”

  “I’ll make my peace in my own way. I lost Terrance before you, but this is not about me. This is about you. My life is here now. This is where I want to be. This is my home and my future. I don’t get to walk away, but you do. You need to decide what your future is, what you want in life.”

  Her eyes widened in shock. “You think I’m going to walk away?”

  He shook his head. He hoped she wanted to make her life here. He prayed that she would, but in the end she could decide that this life wasn’t for her at all. “I don’t know what to think.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out and it confirmed what he already knew.

  “You need to think about what you want out of life, Cassandra.”

  “What about you? What do you want?”

  “For you to be truly happy. I don’t ask for much, but today I am. I want you to talk to somebody. I want you to get counseling.”

  Chapter 18

  “Thank you for coming to get me,” Cass said two weeks later as she took the bags out of Nova’s Jeep and put them in the back of her car. “I didn’t want to go off island alone.”

  “You know I’m always up for a trip off island. The shopping is much better there.” Nova dug through her own packages, searching for the things she had brought for Mansi that day. “I really like those boots you got.”

  “You could have gotten them,” she said as she eased herself onto one of the old chairs in front of Mansi’s house. Fall had finally arrived in full force. The heat left the air much sooner in the day and the sky was already growing dark, but Cassandra was coming to love this time of day. The cool air, combined with the smell of the ocean in the distance, made her feel at peace, even though peaceful was the last thing she should be feeling.

  “You know I don’t wear anything with less than a four-inch heel.” Nova sat next to Cass. She could feel Nova’s eyes searching her face. She didn’t have to look at her to know that she was curious about why Cass had needed her company that day. “Why did you need to go off island to go to the doctor anyway? There are a few good ones here.”

  “I did go to one here earlier in the week. I’ve been feeling a little run-down lately. The doctor thought it was a virus, but wanted me to go off island to get some more extensive blood work done. It’s no big deal, but since I spent so long in the hospital after the shooting, they wanted to be extra careful.”

  “Tanner told me that Wylie told him he has been worried about you. Wylie always is worried, but does h
e have a good reason to be?”

  “You’ve been talking to Tanner?” Cass raised her brows and grinned at Nova. “He’s awful cute, girl. You sure you haven’t been dating him?”

  Nova rolled her eyes. “Please. That tall, arrogant pain in my ass is the last person I would want to date.”

  “You could just sleep with him. That would be nice too.”

  “Cassandra Miller!” Nova’s eyes went wide with horror. “What has gotten into you?”

  She giggled, the laughter bubbling out of her. “I don’t know. Your brother thinks I’m depressed.”

  “Well, are you?”

  “No. Not like I used to be. I didn’t care if I lived or died. But I do care now. I feel happiness now. Being here has helped me so much. But he doesn’t believe me. He’s making me see a therapist.”

  “Making you? I know my brother can be controlling, but I didn’t think he could make you do anything you didn’t want to do.”

  “He asked me to go and I want to make him happy, so I’m going. He’s not controlling at all, Nova. He just wants the best for all of us, so stop picking on him. He loves you.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “I can’t help it. It doesn’t feel right to be nice to him. Makes my damn skin just crawl. Is seeing the therapist helping?”

  Cass nodded. “More than I thought it would. He says the real reason I stayed in bed for a year wasn’t just because of the shooting, but because it opened up a bunch of issues between my husband and me that we never dealt with in our marriage. These were issues that might have caused our marriage to collapse in the long run.”

  “How does he know that? He didn’t know you or your husband. How could he make such a crazy statement?”

  “He’s right,” she admitted. “I knew Terrance was unhappy before he died and so was I. But we never said anything about it. We were best friends growing up and we used to talk all the time, but we found ourselves seven years into our marriage not talking at all. He tried to be closer to me, taking a job at my school and seeing some of his counseling clients from his home office so we could be together more. By that point in our marriage, though, we were essentially roommates. We put on a good show to the world. Hell, I put on a good show for myself. I pretended I was happy. I had a good guy. We had nice things, a nice life. I should have been happy, but I wasn’t. I got pregnant because I thought it would fix things between us, give us something to bond over. And for a while it did, but it would have never changed the fact that I was married to a man I wasn’t in love with.”

  “Wow.” Nova went silent for a moment, her eyes thoughtful. “You learned all that about yourself in one session? Maybe I should go to him too.”

  “Two sessions.” She smiled. “Maybe you should go. There’s no shame in talking to someone else.”

  “Nah. Most of my shit needs to stay buried in the deep, dark hole I put it in.”

  “Hey!” Teo bounded out the front door. “I didn’t know you was here. I thought you wasn’t coming today.”

  “Sorry, Teo. I had to go to the doctor after I left the cultural center today, but I brought your mama back with me.”

  “Hi, Mommy,” he said softly as he turned around to look at her. “I had a good day at school. I got a hundred on my sight word test. Miss Cass helped me learn to write the words.”

  “That’s real good, baby,” she said quietly. There was heaviness in her voice, almost like she was sad. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  Cass stopped herself from shaking her head. Teo was clearly proud of himself. Reading and spelling didn’t come easy for him, but he worked so hard at it. If Nova spent just a little more time with him, she would know that.

  “A hundred!” Cass grabbed his shoulders and playfully shook him. “You are such a hard worker. I’m so proud. Go get that paper so I can see it!”

  Teo’s face bloomed into a smile as he scurried off to get his paper.

  “I think you might want to start reading to him at night, Nova,” she told her gently. “He wants to show you how good he’s doing.”

  “I work late a lot,” she said, making an excuse.

  “Bullshit. Read with your kid.”

  Nova’s eyes went wide as she opened her mouth to respond, but Teo came flying out the door, his test in hand, and he didn’t stop at Cass. He was heading toward his mother when he tripped and fell, landing hard on his hands and knees. Again he looked to his mother as his eyes filled with tears, but Nova sat there, almost like she was paralyzed, like she couldn’t comfort him. Like she couldn’t act like his mother.

  “Oh, Teo.” Cassandra left her seat and pulled Teo into her arms. “You fell really hard that time.”

  He looked back to his mother before he turned to Cass. “I—I hurt my hand real bad.” He held out his bright red palm to her.

  “We’ll fix it.” She kissed his hand. “We’ll put some ice on it and then I’m going to take you to get some ice cream because you worked so hard on your test.”

  She took him inside and placed him in Mansi’s care for a moment while she went back outside.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “What?” Nova looked up at her, wide-eyed. “He’s all right, isn’t he?”

  “He’ll be fine, but that’s beside the point. He wanted you, Nova.”

  “He’s got you. You’re just as good.”

  “I’m not as good! I’m not his mother! I don’t know what your problem is, or why you can’t stop getting in your own way and just love him. But you’re hurting him every time you send him away, every time you push him off on somebody else, every time you ignore him. Don’t you know how lucky you are to have him? He’s beautiful and sensitive and smart, and he thinks you don’t want him. And the funny thing is, he still adores you. He loves you and wants to be around you, but you’re screwing up things. One day he’s going to look up and hate you. What are you going to do then? I lost my baby. Some maniac shot me in the stomach and took my baby away, but you’ve got one here and you are throwing him away. And if you can’t woman up and be the mother he deserves, I’m going to take him from you. I may not be what he wants, but I’m a hell of a lot better than someone who can’t be bothered to love him like he deserves.”

  * * *

  Nova’s red Jeep was parked in front of his house when Wylie pulled up that evening. He wasn’t surprised to see it there. Nova had been there a lot in the last couple of weeks. Not to see him, but to see Cass. Nova’s relationship with Cassandra was growing closer by the day. The last thing he expected when he brought Cassandra here was that she would become best friends with his sister. He had thought she was too delicate for his sister’s strong personality, but he should have known better. Cass wasn’t as weak as he first thought she was, and Nova wasn’t as tough as he expected. Still, he wondered how the women would fare when they went their separate ways. Nova said she was moving away, and Cass . . . He still didn’t know what her plans were or if she had any. She had gone to counseling twice, and both times she had come home red-eyed and blotchy-faced.

  She told him it was helpful, that she would keep going, but he wondered if that was true. He wondered how long it would take before he would come home and find her gone.

  He got out of his truck, with the pie she had asked him to get for dessert in his hand. Thanksgiving was coming soon. Her parents would be here soon. He studied his house as he walked up to it, searching for faults, for things Cassandra’s father would judge. But there wasn’t much. The porch was freshly painted. Cass had placed pumpkins and gourds on the steps. There was a planter full of mums by the door. For the first time since he moved there, he took pride in his house, which was slowly morphing into a home.

  “Wylie James.”

  He turned to see his sister, still in her Jeep, teary-eyed.

  “Nova? What’s the matter?”

  She stepped out of her car and rushed over to him, but she wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Your girlfriend took my kid.”

  “What? Without your per
mission?”

  She shook her head. “I knew she was going to take him. She told me she was, but—”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t think she’s going to give him back.”

  “You want to explain to me what happened?”

  “She blew up at me. She thinks I’m a bad mother. Maybe I am. Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe I’m afraid to screw him up like Mama screwed me up, but I love him and I don’t want her to keep him,” she said in one breath.

  “Well, then go in there and get him.”

  She shook her head. “I want to. I should have, but sometimes I think he might be better off with you guys.”

  “Damn it, Nova. Stop it. You’re not her. You’re not a drunk. You’re not a screwup. You love your kid.”

  “But I’m fucked up, Wylie. You don’t know what it was like. You don’t know some of the things that happened to me.”

  “No.” He shook his head. He didn’t know what Nova’s life was like after she left the last time. And part of him didn’t want to know. He hated to think how unhappy she might have been. “You could tell me. You could talk to me. I’m not so bad, you know.”

  “I—I know. I don’t want to tell you. I wish I didn’t even know about it myself.”

  “I don’t want you to go, Nova,” he told her. “Cass told me you wanted to move away from the island, that you wanted to leave Teo with us. You know I’ll keep him, raise him like he was my own, but if you leave him here, don’t think you can just traipse in and out of his life whenever you want. Don’t think you can be gone for a few years and then just pop up and act like nothing happened. It’ll hurt him, and I won’t let you hurt him. So go if you want to, but know running away from here won’t solve anything. And leaving him behind won’t do Teo any good. Your boy needs you and I want you to stay. You’re my family.”

  She nodded. “Sometimes I hate you, Wylie, but I love you too.” She wrapped her arms around him. “You’re good to me. Thank you. I think I’m broken sometimes, but I’m going to try harder with him. With you too. I don’t think I can stand losing either one of you.”