They all stood in silence then Grady said, “Are you going to press charges against Cassie for assault?”
“What? No,” Oliver replied. He glanced at Cassie then looked away. “Of course not. I think I understand her reaction.”
“Good. That’s generous of you, Mr. Browning.” Grady pushed Cassie gently toward the slope. “Then let’s get you to the house so you can meet your grandmother. Maybe get cleaned up a little bit. Maybe a lot.”
Cassie let Grady help her up the slope because she seemed to have zero propulsion abilities on her own.
I have a grandmother, she thought in disbelief. I thought there was no one else but Jack and Corie and me.
When they reached the flat driveway, Cassie stopped, frightened anew. Now there was someone else who’d waited a lifetime to meet her, and what was she going to think of the granddaughter who’d beaten up her attorney?
“Relax,” Grady said gently, reading her mind. “She’s going to love you.”
“I assaulted her lawyer.”
“He’s not pressing charges, and she probably didn’t see all that from up here, anyway. She’ll be proud of you that you...” He hesitated and she knew he was trying to put a positive spin on it. “That you can take such good care of yourself. Come on.”
By the time they reached the middle of the driveway, Cassie could see a tall, slender woman in a red raincoat, knee-high boots with tack detail and a sou’wester hat. Snow-white hair was visible below the hat.
The woman took several steps out from under the cover of the overhang and smiled tentatively at Cassie. Cassie wanted to smile back but her bottom lip quivered and her face scrunched up. This was the woman once removed from the mother she couldn’t remember. She was a connection to the past.
The woman opened her arms and came toward her. Cassie ran into them. Eleanor Manning didn’t seem to mind the mud.
* * *
GRADY UNLOCKED HIS door and ushered both women and Oliver inside while Ben called in to the station. Cassie turned to him, her expression still startled. “Will you call Corie and Jack, and ask them to come over?”
Ben made two more calls.
When he was finished, Cassie introduced him and Grady to Eleanor Manning.
The woman hugged Ben. “You’re Jack’s adopted brother,” she said. “I’m so happy to meet you. Is this another brother?” She extended a hand to Grady.
“Only in spirit,” Ben explained with an expression of fondness they seldom betrayed to one another. “He’s my partner on the Beggar’s Bay police force.”
She looked from one to the other, seeming a little perplexed. “So there’s something between you, Grady, and my granddaughter?”
“Tenancy,” Grady said. Well, it was a half-truth. “I helped her leave Texas when the paparazzi found her, and since Corie was about to be married here, it made sense that she stay with me.” He pointed to the loft. “That’s her space.”
“I see.” She looked upward. “Oh, that bunting is beautiful.”
Ben took her hand. “It was so nice to meet you. Grady and I have to get back to work, but your other grandchildren are on their way. We’ll probably see you tonight.”
“I’ll look forward to that.”
“Are you going to be okay till your brother and sister get here?” Grady asked Cassie.
“I think I’ll be fine. I may have to open the bottle of Gewürztraminer, though. And, oh, I forgot! I’ve got a truck full of groceries.”
“Ben and I’ll get them in. I’ll check with you in a little while and see what you want to do about dinner.”
She put her arms around his neck and held on for a minute. He was big and solid, and her head and her world were spinning. Then she remembered he probably wasn’t comfortable with the hug. She drew back. “Sorry,” she whispered.
“Did I complain? You’re sure you’re going to be okay?”
“I am. They’ll be here soon. Go back to work.”
Cassie directed Oliver to Grady’s bathroom, sat her grandmother—her grandmother!—on the sofa and brought her a glass of wine. Then she hurried upstairs to clean herself up. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and was horrified. She was a physical mess, and she thought that the mess she was inside showed through, too.
She showered, washed her hair and then wound the partially dried mass into a knot. She changed into her jeans and yellow sweater. By the time she came down, Jack and Corie were arriving in Jack’s truck.
Both looked astonished and nervous as Cassie made introductions. Eleanor cried a little more, Jack and Corie moving to sit on either side of her on the couch. Even Oliver, in Grady’s police department sweats, looked emotional.
“I’ve wanted to find you for so long,” Eleanor said, composing herself. “But I had no information. And even just twenty years ago you couldn’t find everything online like you can today.”
“How did you find us?” Jack asked.
Eleanor smiled sympathetically at Cassie. “It was the news story about you,” she said, reaching across the angle that separated the chair from the sofa and patting her knee. “Oh, don’t look horrified. I know what happened. I talked to your friend Fabiana.”
“You did?”
“I called, trying to reach you, and she explained what had really happened that night in Ireland, and how you’d heard from your siblings and gone to Texas to meet them. So, I called Texas and spoke with Teresa. She told me you’d all come here. She had your email address but not your physical address, so I told her not to tell you I was coming.” She looked suddenly reticent. “You know. On the chance you wouldn’t want to see me.”
“What?” all three asked simultaneously. Then Jack added, “Why?”
“Because I’m the mother of the woman who was such a bad mother to you.” The words were spoken with a rasp in her voice, tears held at bay.
“She wasn’t all bad,” Jack said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “There was a brief period of time when she was clean and sober, when she was nice to be around. And then...” He hesitated. Cassie knew the words were still hard for him to say. Corie reached across their grandmother to touch his hand. “You bear no guilt in that, Jack,” she said firmly.
Eleanor covered their hands with hers. “I know she went to jail for you. When I was trying to find her, I came upon the prison record and there was an addendum attached that explained what happened, assuring the court of your innocence.”
Jack accepted that with a nod. “Right. I have to make that adjustment every day. I just so wish it could have been different.”
Eleanor leaned a shoulder into his. “I know, but that would require that she had been different, and she wasn’t.” She looked from one grandchild to another. “I can tell you about when she was a girl, if you want to hear it. Some of it good, some of it...not.”
The siblings looked at one another, consent passing among them. “Please,” Jack said.
Eleanor smiled at him. “I also have to make that adjustment you make every day, because she was such a beautiful child, fun, talented, happy.” Eleanor seemed forlorn then brought herself back to the moment, apparently making today’s adjustment.
“In high school, it was the old story. Everyone experimented with drugs and she admitted to trying them. The real trouble didn’t start until she was invited to be a backup singer for a minor rock star who came to town to judge a high school talent show. She was so thrilled, and we were happy for her, not knowing that drugs were a way of life for him and a lot of his band. She left to tour with them, called us a couple of times a week, then just once a week, then finally not at all. We literally lost her in a matter of months.
“We located her once in the depths of her addiction. Her father was furious with her, but I went to her. She refused to see me. I tried over and over, and I don’t know if she was emba
rrassed by who she’d become or if she truly didn’t care about us anymore.”
Grief was visible in her eyes. “Her father gave up, but I tried to keep track of her. It wasn’t easy. The singer she’d connected with died in a car accident, the group disbanded and she left the business for a while. I just couldn’t find her. And I had to look on the sly because your grandfather was just so hurt and angry. He passed away last year.” She turned to extend a hand to Oliver, who stood to the side with a cup of coffee while they talked.
“Oliver is the son of a good friend of mine.” He came to take her hand. Cassie moved aside to make room for him. “He was studying law and had to take a year off to earn his tuition, and worked for a skip tracer. I hired him to find Charlene. That’s when I learned that she...died in jail.”
She shook her head as though still in disbelief. Then she brightened suddenly. “We learned that she connected with men who could keep her in drugs, except for Donald, who was a drug counselor. And while that’s awful, I also learned that I had grandchildren. We found the names of the men she’d been with, and the names of her children, but each search for one or the other of you led to a dead end.
“Jack’s name changed when he was adopted, and we didn’t know that because the adoption was closed. Corie went to live with her father, but when we tried to track him down, we learned he had died and his widow had no idea where you were and, what was worse, didn’t seem to care.”
She shook her head again, her expression darkening. “I couldn’t believe that could happen. Then Oliver found that Cassie was fathered by Charlene’s drug counselor.” She shrugged at the obvious professional betrayal in that.
“He explained to me,” Cassie said in his defense, “that he knew he’d been wrong, but he’d loved her very much. She must have been something when she was clean.”
Eleanor wiped at a tear. “She was.”
She blew out a steadying breath and went on. “We’d heard he’d moved to Maine when Charlene went to jail, but we couldn’t find him. Someone in the office where he’d worked told us he’d left counseling after Cassie was sent home to him, and opened his own business, but he didn’t know where. Someone thought he might have moved to Europe.
“That’s when Oliver cast a wider net. There was a supermodel named Chapman, and we knew that was Cassie’s last name. About the time we discovered that, I saw the news story about you. There was a close-up of your face.” She dug into her purse and produced a photo that she handed Jack. Cassie went to stand behind him and look over his shoulder. “That’s your mother at seventeen.”
The young woman in the photo sat on the hood of a Corvette, long-legged and coltishly slender, laughingly posing like a starlet with one hand on her hip and the other at her hair. Cassie thought it could have been her if her own hair was darker and her eyes more fearless.
“I knew I’d found you,” Eleanor went on. “Then, as I said before, it was a circuitous route to finally discover where you were.” She laughed. “Poor Oliver. I’m the one who suggested he get a photo of you. I’m making an album, and I wanted to start it from the very beginning. I had no idea you’d mistake him for paparazzi.”
Cassie went back to sit beside poor Oliver. He looked a little like Daniel Radcliffe. She guessed he was in his midtwenties. The bruise on his face stood out on his cheekbone and, though she’d dressed the knuckles she’d stepped on accidentally, he cradled that hand in the other.
“I’m so sorry,” she said for probably the fifth time that afternoon. “Why didn’t you just tell me the other day in front of the bakery what you were doing?”
“Because Eleanor asked me not to make contact. To just let her know when I’d found you and she’d hop on the first plane.”
“It’s all my fault,” Eleanor said. “I had no idea a simple camera would elicit such a reaction.”
Jack and Corie began to laugh. Cassie was indignant for a moment then she saw the humor in it. When Eleanor and even Oliver joined the laughter, she did, too.
“I wanted you all to know that your mother was a great person until drugs and selfish choices set her on a path to self-destruction. I’m sorry it made life so hard for all of you.” Everyone sobered. “The night her boyfriend died must have been so traumatic for you.” She put a hand to Cassie’s cheek. “And you girls were just babies, two and four.”
Corie tucked her arm in Cassie’s and leaned her cheek against her shoulder. “We were lucky to have each other. We followed Jack when he went to see what was happening and when...when we saw... Jack shooed us back to our rooms, but we hid in the broom closet.”
It came upon Cassie as a complete surprise—the old fragment of a memory—the darkness, the fear, the inability to escape.
The silk against her face.
She leaned away from Corie suddenly, impressions flickering like old movies playing too fast. The silk against her face had been Corie’s hair. She stared at her startled sister.
Eleanor had stopped talking.
Jack asked worriedly, “Cassie?”
The panic began to inch up her body. Her breathing became shallow and the need to race away screaming tried to overtake her.
“Cassie, what?” Corie asked gently, wrapping an arm around her with big-sister firmness. “Tell us. It’s all right.”
She was unsure how to explain what she felt. How, how did what could only be suspicion seem so right on?
“I, uh,” she said, having to clear her throat. “I have...claustrophobia.” Even she realized that was an odd response to what they must be seeing in her. She should explain that, but thoughts banged around in her mind. Was she wrong? She didn’t think so.
“You mean you feel claustrophobic right now?” Jack asked. He had stood to come around to her but stopped.
“No. I mean I have the condition.”
Jack and Corie looked at each other, and Cassie knew.
Jack sat near her on an ottoman. “You can’t possibly remember that night. You were only two years old.”
Cassie’s panic began to recede. She could deal with this. She was among family. They’d been through it together. She pulled her arm out from under Corie’s steely grip and wrapped it around her shoulder, squeezing gently.
“I don’t think it qualifies as a memory.” She had to think about breathing, drawing in air, pushing it out. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve been afraid of small spaces. Actually, it’s more than fear, it’s a recoil from something I couldn’t remember.” She smiled at her sister. “Until I just felt Corie’s hair against my face.”
A tear slid down Corie’s cheek. “We were hiding together in the broom closet,” she said. “Mom’s boyfriend was beating her and Jack shoved us back toward our room and went to help her. I didn’t want to leave him, so I went to the closet and brought you with me.”
“You held me so tight.”
“You were afraid of the shouting and I didn’t want you to run out and get hurt. I watched through the louvered door.”
“It was dark.”
“And a very small space.”
Cassie exhaled, understanding finally what had plagued her into her attacks all these years, though she remembered only the sensations and not the night.
“Then Jack shot Brauer and it was over,” Corie said. “I ran out to try to defend him, sure he was in big trouble, but Mom sent us all to bed and told us to pretend to be asleep. The police would be coming and she didn’t want them to know Jack did it and that I saw it.”
Cassie tightened her grip on Corie, feeling her pain. Jack knelt in front of them and held them both in his arms.
After a moment Eleanor leaned into them. “Kids, I don’t know what you can do with a memory that awful but put it away. You can’t forget it, but you don’t ever have to think about it.”
They clung together then Eleanor finally straightened
and said in a hearty tone of voice, “You might find it comforting to know that you come from basically good people. My parents worked for an aircraft manufacturing company, and your grandfather and I owned a small clothing store. We sold it to an employee when it was time for Bill to retire.”
They drew apart, fascinated by this new information. “Where do you live now?” Jack asked.
“In the LA area.”
“Are you happy there?”
“I’m sure I’ll be happier now,” Eleanor said. “I have everything I need, except all the people I’ve loved who are gone.”
“Can you stay with us for a while?” Jack asked. “My parents—my adopted parents—have a guesthouse that’s sitting empty.”
“Why don’t you ask them to come over?” Cassie stood, too. “I can throw something together for dinner. Meanwhile, how about tea or coffee and some of Grady’s mom’s cranberry bread?”
The assent was unanimous.
In the kitchen, Cassie prepared a tray while Jack called the Palmers. Cassie could hear the excitement on the other end. The call was over in a minute.
He hung up and told her, “Of course she can have the guesthouse for as long as she wants. And they’re coming right over.”
She turned to smile into her brother’s good-looking face, feeling sympathy for the young boy who’d taken on the responsibility of his sisters, endured that horrible night, then had his family torn apart. She went to put her arms around him and hold him tightly.
“I’m so sorry you’ve been through so much,” she said.
They stood apart and he shook her gently by the shoulders. “Like Eleanor said, that’s over. And here we are—with a grandmother! I didn’t even know she existed.” He feigned a serious expression. “Thank you for not killing her attorney. That would have been hard to explain to her. She might have changed her mind about getting to know us.”
“Yeah, I kind of went off on him. But I was feeling down and...you know...inadequate.”
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