Letting Go (Triple Eight Ranch) - By Mary Beth Lee Page 0,60
Are you staying?”
Cass looked back down at her expensive shoes and slid them across the floor. The sink drip, drip, dripped in the background like a backup singer for the forever flighty sister. The good one. Perfection even now in all that big blue-eyed sadness she couldn’t hide.
What did she even have to be sad about anyway?
Anna wasn’t going to ask because if she said those words she’d scream them, and they might just be so loud the astronauts on the space station would hear them. Mr. and Mrs. Nelson next door definitely would. They’d just love an excuse to call the cops on her. She could see the headlines now.
Convicted child abuser’s ex-wife screams at perfect sister and makes her cry.
At least she didn’t have a job to get fired from this time.
She tamped down the anger. The fear.
And re-asked the question she could instead of the one she didn’t dare.
“Well, are you?”
*****
Cass closed her eyes. She should’ve just kept on reading her e-mail. Why was her sister so mad at her? She could understand hurt. But it wasn’t like they never saw each other. It wasn’t like she didn’t send money and presents and letters. It wasn’t like she hadn’t offered Anna a place to stay on more than one occasion. Shoot, on every occasion she’d needed over the last ten years.
She’d even tried to pay for her sister’s college, but no. No way would hardheaded Anna even think about allowing that.
Instead, she’d spent her time partying, playing, flitting from one guy to the next. From one husband to the next. From one disaster to the next.
Goodness. Delia asked if John was in jail as easily as asking if he was sick or working.
Cass dragged her shoe across the floor taking comfort in the old worn pattern she’d loved to create as a kid.
Right two grooves, left two grooves. Right two. Left two.
Eighty-three vertical slabs of wood made up this section of the floor. She’d counted them time and again over the years. Counting them now helped her calm down. She couldn’t go home. Not yet. Not when home was such a minefield. She almost laughed at that. It was something else when home was a bigger emotional mess than this place with a sister who what…despised? No. Hated? Not right. Distrusted…that was it. A sister who distrusted her and a mother who wouldn’t get out of bed and three little girls thrown into the mix.
A faint memory of John’s safe arms wrapping her tight played in her mind, and if she closed her eyes, she could barely, just barely, smell the spicy scent of his aftershave. And if she focused on that, she could forget the yearning deep in her belly, the tiny fissure in her chest when first Delia and then the baby, the sweet, sweet baby Dani, threw herself into her arms.
Why? Why was life so unfair? God why? And why was she so ridiculously angry with a man who was so giving? It wasn’t his fault.
“Well, are you?” Anna’s voice anchored her in the present, and Cass grabbed onto its anger and its force with all she had, pushing those other thoughts, those empty thoughts, away.
“Yes. Of course I’m staying. Why would I leave when I just got here?”
Anna wasn’t going to let it drop. “Oh, I don’t know. Eighteen years kind of makes you wonder. Besides you’ve got your life in Kansas. I’d understand if you left.”
Her life. She almost laughed. Instead she turned her remorse onto her sister.
“Do you want me to go, Anna? Is that what this is? You call me, demanding I drop everything and come here right away. And now you invite me to pack my bags right up and go on back to Kansas?”
“So much for we’re a great big family.”
“This isn’t a TV show, Anna.”
Anna rolled her eyes the same way Justine had at supper. Cass figured she’d probably stomp back to her room if they weren’t too old for that nonsense.
“I know it’s not a TV show, Cass. I just needed to know if you were staying or going. I needed to figure out…”
Like Anna ever figured out anything first? “Figure out what exactly?”
“It’s not some crazy out of the blue question, Cass. You stayed gone for eighteen years. And yes, we’ve seen you, but you haven’t been here. Here with us. I just needed to know. My kids need to know. Momma needs to know. I’m not going to apologize for asking.”
And with that Anna