by Cecilia Lyra
“There’s nothing to tell,” I say. “We’ve barely said two words to each other.”
“Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, try to get along?” Rachel asks. Her brown eyes are kind, sincere. I know she means well. But it’s a remarkably stupid question.
“You know, the two of you should really drop this. If you don’t, I won’t be able to tell you my news.” I feel my cheeks stretch in a smile.
“Oh, I know that voice.” Christina’s tone drops a register. “This is about Daniel.”
“How did you know?” I ask.
“You’ve got your Daniel glow.” Rachel shoots Christina a warning look. This is not uncommon: Christina is wary of my relationship with Daniel. She’s like me: a pessimist. Rachel’s more of a romantic.
“I asked him to leave his wife.”
Christina is staring at me, her mouth agape.
“That’s amazing, Cass.” Rachel is grinning, beaming. Sometimes it’s nice to have optimistic friends.
“What did he say?” Christina is eyeing me suspiciously.
“He obviously agreed,” Rachel tells her. “Look at her smile. She’s thrilled. I can’t believe you didn’t tell us right away.”
“You wouldn’t shut up about Julie.”
“What about your career?” Christina asks.
“I spoke to Claudia. I didn’t give her any specifics, but I explained the general situation. She said that as long as we come out with the story first, we should be fine.”
“Really?” Christina looks unconvinced.
“I’m not saying it’ll be easy,” I say. “I’ll probably have to go on a bunch of shows and talk about my personal life, but it’ll pass. Everything does. The important thing is that Daniel and I will be together.”
“Has he spoken to Tatiana?” Christina asks.
“No, he’s been here with me.” My tone is defensive. They know Daniel is staying at the Surfside Inn for the weekend. “He wanted to join us for brunch, actually.”
Christina shrugs. “He could call her.”
“He’s not ending his marriage over the phone,” Rachel says.
“Why not?” Christina asks forcefully. “He keeps telling us his marriage has been over for a long time.”
A hush falls on the table. Rachel and I exchange an uneasy look.
“So when is he doing it?” Christina asks.
“We didn’t set a date, Christina,” I say. “And I’d appreciate a little more support.”
Christina sucks the air between her teeth but says nothing.
“I’m sure he’ll talk to her soon.” Rachel places a protective hand on top of mine.
I shoot Rachel a grateful look and take another bite of my food, ignoring the bitter taste that is now in my mouth.
“This is a little off-topic,” Rachel begins. I feel myself relaxing. A change of subject is exactly what we need. “Is it weird that your grandmother left her the house?”
“Her as in…Julie?” I ask.
Rachel nods.
“Why would it be weird?” I feel my eyebrows squishing together.
“I don’t know.” Rachel shrugs. “You were her, and I hate using this word, ‘legitimate’ granddaughter. Maybe you thought she’d leave the house all to you.”
The truth: I never thought of what would happen to the house after Nana passed away. Probably because I never thought of Nana dying. As illogical as it sounds, I thought she’d live forever. If I had given it any real thought, I would’ve guessed that she’d leave it to my father. Not because he deserved it, but because she was his mother—and mothers love their children despite their flaws. But the idea of her leaving me the entire house would be unthinkable. It makes perfect sense that she split it between Julie and me, fifty-fifty. She loved us equally.
I tell them as much as I eat my last sweet potato fry.
“Would you rather she’d left it to your dad?” Rachel asks. “That way you wouldn’t have to spend the summer here with Julie?”
“Absolutely not,” I say. Growing up, the Montauk house was my sanctuary. My father has no business inheriting my sanctuary—he was the reason I needed one.
People tend to enjoy my father’s company. He comes across as calm, together. He’s good at pretending. But he never pretended with my mom and me. At home, he was himself: a temperamental bully.
A memory overtakes me. A family dinner, when I was seven, maybe eight years old. My father asked my mom if she added onions to the stir-fry. My mom slurred something incomprehensible—she was having a particularly bad day. By my count, she’d had at least two extra glasses of whiskey. My father repeated the question. This time, my mom started laughing.
That set him off.
He got up from his seat, pushing his chair back with a crash. He slammed his fists against the table. “Are you laughing at me?” My father was a big man. He looked scary. Threatening.
He began ranting. I was used to his rants.
“There aren’t any onions,” I said loudly. I had ordered the meal myself. I’d made sure to say no onions.
“And how would you know?” he asked, turning to me. He resented my interruption. His tirades were a twisted sort of therapy for him. A way to purge his demons. To feel better about himself. He required an audience, but it had to be a silent audience.
“Because she ordered it,” my mom said.
The rant continued—he accused her of being in a vegetative state. “You don’t cook, you don’t work. You don’t do anything.” He went on, spewing vile, odious things. Calling her useless. Lazy.
I knew that sooner or later my mom would interrupt him. She always did.
I was right.
“My money pays for this house. It pays for our life. So if I’m lazy, then you’re nothing.” Her speech was still garbled, but less so. Their fights had an odd sobering effect on her.
I braced myself for the worst. The money card always made it worse. Our lifestyle was only possible because of my mom’s money, which she’d inherited at the age of seventeen. We wouldn’t have been able to afford a house in Dover on my father’s salary. This bothered my dad tremendously. He was power-hungry, status-obsessed. He felt that life had shortchanged him, sticking him with a middle-management position at a bank. He enjoyed the assumption made by his peers, which was that he was the sole breadwinner in our family and the admiration that came with it. That he seldom talked about his job only upped his stock because it made him seem modest. But whenever my mom reminded him that the real power, a.k.a. the money, lay with her, he’d lose it.
“How dare you talk to me like that?” he roared.
“You better shut up, Stephan. Or our neighbors will find out that you’re not the gentleman you pretend to be.”
“I don’t give a damn about the neighbors,” he said. But he did take it down a notch. Because he absolutely did care. She did, too. What they didn’t care about was me. “You better show me some respect.”
“Or what?”
What he did next was something he’d done many times before. He reached for my mom’s china cabinet and began throwing its contents on the ground. Plates. Saucers. Teacups. One by one, they shattered into a million sharp pieces on the hardwood floors.
My mom flung herself at him, yelling for him to stop. The dishes had been in her family for generations. But he didn’t stop. Instead, he swatted her like a fly. I heard the familiar thud of her thin, frail body hitting the floor. I raced to her. She hugged me, burying her head in my arms. I looked up. I was prepared to beg my father to stop. But he was already walking away, a satisfied expression on his face. He wanted her to show him respect—and, in his mind, she finally had. To him, fear and respect were one and the same.
Fights like these happened all the time. My father never walked up to my mom and hit her—he saved his initial anger for inanimate objects. But if my mom dared intervene—and she usually did—he’d become physical. He’d throw her on the floor. Pull her hair and toss her against a piece of furniture. One time, he slammed he
r head against a wall. He never knelt down to check to see if she’d been badly hurt. That was my job. It had been my job for as long as I could remember.
One day, after a heated argument, my father walked into my room. I was curled up in a ball, crying. I’ll never forget the words he said to me—or his casual tone. “I know you don’t like to see her getting hurt, Cassie, but sometimes your mother needs to be reminded that I’m still the man around here.” He seemed to believe his own excuses.
I wish I’d had the presence to point out that being aggressive didn’t make him a man. I wish I’d told him that he wasn’t just hurting my mom—he was hurting me. Witnessing abuse, whether verbal or physical, scars children for life. It’s a form of abuse in itself. I was a hyper-vigilant, anxious kid, incapable of kicking back and having fun. Looking out for my mom was my job, my burden. And I knew that wasn’t how things were supposed to be. When I went to my friends’ houses, it was their moms who looked after them—not the other way around. But that wasn’t my reality. There’s a term for this role reversal in my profession: parentified child. A child who feels responsible for caring for their parent.
Julie was a parentified child as well, although her mother’s excessive reliance on her manifested itself in an altogether different way. We both had to grow up too soon. We both learned how to take care of our mothers before we learned how to take care of ourselves. Maybe this is why we were able to keep our father’s secret for so many years: we were used to being burdened by our parents.
But Rachel and Christina don’t know about any of this. They know my father and I don’t get along. They know that he was verbally abusive. That Julie and I don’t speak to each other anymore. That’s it. I can’t bring myself to share further, to unpack the messiness. It’s too traumatic, too painful.
“Let me put it to you this way,” I say, looking at my friends. “If I had to, I’d spend a year here in Montauk with Julie to keep my father from getting the house.”
Rachel and Christina are both stunned into silence. I don’t usually speak with such finality, such anger. That I would about my own father is probably disconcerting to them. Shocking, even. I don’t mind.
They don’t get it—and that’s fine. They don’t have to.
Twelve
Julie
Tuesday, July 3rd
I read somewhere that the sense of smell is closely linked with memory—more than any of the other senses. I didn’t believe it at the time. How could a scent be more powerful than hearing a song, or seeing a picture? But now, as I inhale, I understand. The whiff in the air—a blend of olive oil, Mediterranean spices, and nutmeg—is enough to transport me back in time. If I close my eyes, it’s almost as though Nana is here, cooking with me.
Almost. Because I’m missing an ingredient.
The problem is, I have no idea which one.
I’m searching Nana’s spice cabinet—sniffing each bottle like a deranged dog—when I hear Cassie coming down the stairs. She looks pretty in a pair of white denim shorts and an oversized striped green and white T-shirt. She’s holding a book in her hands.
From an early age, the Fire Princess has cultivated the habit of losing herself in stories. One time, the Sky Princess picked up one of the books to read aloud to her, but she kept changing the story, adding a second hero, or altering a sequence of events. The Fire Princess teased the Sky Princess for having too much imagination. Does the Fire Princess remember that day?
“I’m making pasta,” I say. “Want some?”
I expect her to say no. It’s all she’s been saying to me: no. We haven’t shared a single meal together. But something passes through her face. Indecision, maybe. I feel a tingle of hope.
“I can open a bottle of wine.” We’ve been living together for almost a week now and I’ve noticed her drinking a glass in the evenings.
“Sure,” she says.
It’s not much. But it’s a start.
She turns and heads outside. I watch her lie on the hammock and thumb away at her phone.
It makes me feel like a nine-year-old girl again: being in this house, trying to get her attention.
Over the years, I’ve developed a theory about why Cassie and I didn’t get along that first summer. Sisters are either older or younger. Older sisters tend to boss their younger sisters around. Younger sisters learn to share more easily—they’ve never had their parents all to themselves. The age difference acts as a mold, shaping their relationship. It gives them a thing.
When Cassie and I met, we didn’t have a thing. We were the same age—my two-week seniority meant nothing. We didn’t know how to act around each other, how to navigate our newfound sisterhood.
From the start, I could tell Cassie didn’t like me. Sophie had warned me that she wouldn’t. Cassie was used to being the only one, the family princess. Unlike me, she hadn’t known I existed until very recently. I expected her to pout when Nana developed pictures of me to put up around the house. I expected her to be jealous that she’d have to share her beach house with me. I expected her to be bothered when Sebastian took a liking to me (cats usually like me) and began following me around the house, grazing his soft fur against my legs. But Cassie didn’t seem to mind any of that.
Instead, she acted as though I was invisible. The one exception: the bizarre looks she gave me when Nana put me on the phone with Daddy. Since she heard us speak, I’d notice that, on occasion and always when she thought I wasn’t looking, she’d stare at me as if I was a riddle she was trying to figure out.
Cassie’s behavior aside, I was having the best summer of my life. I was in awe of the house (a whole house just for the summer!), the beach (right in front of the house!), and the throngs of beautiful, glittery people. I loved everything about the Hamptons. Small, Colonial-style shops on Main Street. Day trips to Block Island. Lunch at the Yacht Club followed by strolls down Westlake Marina.
But what I loved the most was Nana.
Nana’s love for me was instant. She became my grandmother from the moment we met. As soon as she saw me, she pulled me in a hug. She said she’d been waiting my whole life to meet me. She pointed to my eyes and then to hers and we both smiled: they were the same.
She wanted to know everything about me. We started with my favorites—food, color, subject in school. Did I prefer white meat or dark meat? How did I like my eggs? What kind of music did I listen to? The truth was, I hadn’t stopped to consider most of her questions. I hadn’t developed tastes of my own yet. It was assumed that I enjoyed what Sophie enjoyed, an expectation that extended to my palate (olives, sharp cheeses, mushrooms) and acoustic predilections (Richard Cocciante and Jean-Jacques Goldman). My mom was French, which meant that I was French. And, in my house, being French meant looking down on all things American, especially when it came to food and pop culture.
Nana changed that.
It was my grandmother who unwittingly encouraged me to look inside myself. To think of what I wanted, what I liked. I don’t think she realized what she was doing. To her, she was just asking questions. But in reality, Nana was giving me permission to be a kid. I was worry-free that summer. I didn’t worry about making dinner—that was Nana’s job, one she seemed to enjoy. I didn’t worry about Sophie working late and forgetting to pay a bill or to sign a permission slip for school. I didn’t worry about consoling Sophie when my dad canceled plans or forgot an anniversary. All that free time allowed me to discover who I was. I found out how I liked my eggs (scrambled, with goat cheese on the side and diced tomatoes), I listened to new music (I was blessedly free to dance along to the Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls), and I concluded that I didn’t much like chicken at all.
And best of all: I developed a sense of style.
Sophie had taught me about clothes—or couture, as she called it. I knew which fabrics didn’t go well together. That thin belts worked better with wide waists, and thick belts with small waists. I knew not to mix shades of white without a bold-colored accessory. Useful knowledge, but it ha
d nothing to do with personal style. Sophie’s own sense of style was impeccable, of course. Elegant, understated. Except it was a bit too classical for my taste.
Nana had a passion for colors. She’d boldly mix fabrics and prints—rules be damned. Because of her, I fell in love with vintage clothing. I developed an eye for the eccentric. I like to think that I managed to combine the best of my two worlds. I knew all about haute couture—I still loved the classical cuts of Chanel and Prada. But I also grew to appreciate Pucci and Missoni. I knew how to pair vintage designer items (a few of which Sophie was able to secure because of her new job at Posh) with my regular clothes. My outfits became fun, unique.
And it was all because of my grandmother—and that first summer we spent together.
Not everything was perfect, though. Cassie still mostly ignored me. By the tail end of summer, I had given up on getting her to like me. It saddened me, having a sister who was a stranger. But I was also used to it.
And then the spider incident happened.
I was lying on the beach when the giant, spindly thing landed on my bare stomach. I shrieked in terror. I’d never even seen a spider that big, let alone touched one. Cassie came to my rescue. She swatted it off while I flapped my arms wildly. That’s when she lost her balance—and fell on top of me. Our collective clumsiness and my recent hysteria sent us into a laughing fit. We must’ve spent ten minutes clutching our bellies, hiccupping.
Her words took me by surprise.
“My mom told me to spy on you,” she said, when we stopped laughing.
We were lying on the beach under a large, yellow umbrella that Nana insisted Cassie put up every time because of her fair skin.
“You’re doing a really bad job then,” I said.
“Because I’ve been keeping my distance?”
“I don’t think spies are supposed to say they are spies.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“Why not?”
