GRIFFIN

by Paula Cox

  Tiana obliged. She tucked Shana in and gave her a kiss. “Did I really scream out loud?”

  Shana nodded emphatically. “You said you couldn’t breathe.” She paused. “Does it have something to do with Uncle Thad?”

  Oh, Jesus. How much do they know?

  Tiana was certain Cassie hadn’t told them anything—she’d never do that—but what if they’d heard something at school? No doubt they’d bragged to their friends about their Uncle Thad, the professional UFC fighter. Had someone filled them in on what had happened? On the gory details?

  How the hell could she even begin to explain any of that to two little girls?

  “No, it’s not about Uncle Thad. It was just…a bad swimming dream, that’s all. Happens sometimes. Even adults get scary dreams. But for every scary one there are a thousand amazing ones, like the ones you guys will have when you put your heads down and think of building magic ice palaces.”

  “Will Fausto be there?” asked Shana.

  “Of course. You’ll have to build a special room for him, one without a fireplace.”

  “You can borrow it, too, Auntie Tiana, so you won’t get soaked again.”

  “Thank you, sweetie. That’s a good idea.” Tiana then crouched to kiss Len goodnight. “See you in the morning, kiddo.”

  “Can you tell me what your bad dream was really about in the morning?” Len whispered in her ear. “My sister gets scared, but I can take it. I’m old enough now. You can tell me.”

  “Okay, but it’s nothing that bad, I promise,” Tiana lied. “Play me on the Xbox tomorrow?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Nice one. G’night, kiddo.”

  “Night.”

  On her way out, Tiana felt like closing the door after her, so she wouldn’t wake them up again. Screaming for help across the landing from two little girls didn’t exactly put across the cool aunt image she was hoping for. On the contrary, it was borderline unforgivable. And if it happened again, she would probably have to move out. Cassie—not to mention the girls—would try their best to dissuade her, but Tiana had come here to get better, not to drag everyone down with her. When it came to screaming out in the middle of the night, a problem shared was a problem doubled.

  She left the girls’ door ajar, just as they liked it. When she got back to her own bedroom, Cassie was there, already changing the bed sheet.

  “I’m sorry, Cass. I really didn’t mean to wake you guys up.” Tiana cringed as she eyed the sweat-soaked sheet bunched on the floor. “It’s getting embarrassing, huh.” It wasn’t a question. “How many times is that now?”

  “Never mind about that,” replied Cassie. “You’re safe. That’s all that matters. And what are a few damp sheets?”

  But Cassie did look overly tired and worn out. The bags under her eyes, the slouch, and the persistent yawning made her appear ten years older than she really was—thirty-one. Her fiery auburn hair had darkened over the years, so that it was now practically black. She had a paler complexion than Tiana and had never gotten even a slight California tan. Her abundant freckles gave the fleeting appearance of one, until you got close and realized she was milky-white all over. Boys had teased her about the freckles at school, but she had never let it get to her. And she’d met Avery, the love of her life, at college. He admitted the freckles were one of his favorite things about her; they’d drawn him to her, and the rest was history.

  Avery owned a successful transportation company that had started off with two trucks and now operated with a fleet of over sixty, all across the US. It kept him away from home more than Cassie liked, but he was good at what he did and loved doing it: a rare combination these days, they all agreed. He’d bought them this nice home in Faircrest Heights. And when the girls were old enough to take care of themselves, he’d promised to support Cassie in whatever career she chose.

  “Same dream?” she asked Tiana.

  “Huh?” It took Tiana a moment to adjust—she’d been trying like hell to blank out the nightmare. “Oh yeah. Can’t seem to shake it. I know the doc said it’ll take time, but it’s nearly every night now, sometimes more than once. It’s kicking my ass, Cass.”

  “You’ve made noises before, like you were being choked, but you’ve never screamed out.”

  “I feel really bad about that. Maybe it’s not a good idea me being so near the girls’ room. I mean, they’ve got school in the morning.” She thought it over and seriously didn’t want to move out on her own. Not yet. “What if I slept on the sofa?”

  Cassie fetched a fresh pillow cover from the linen closet and threw it to her. “What will that achieve, besides making you more uncomfortable?”

  “At least that way I might not wake everyone up?”

  “You don’t think a scream from the living room would wake everyone up? Trust me, you woke up half the neighborhood with—” A creaking floorboard outside the room clued Mommy in to a certain midnight reconnaissance mission. She flung the door open and caught Len and Shana red-handed. They both squealed and ran back to their room, giggling. Cassie marched after them, reading them the riot act. They’d be bog-eyed zombies at school tomorrow if they didn’t go to sleep immediately, she warned. And zombies lost all their fun privileges.

  When she returned, she closed the door behind her. “If I see them yawn once during breakfast, I’ll knock their impish heads together.”

  “It’s not their fault. I woke them up.”

  “Don’t sweat it, sis,” she said, then looked down at the damp sheet and cleared her throat. “Okay, bad choice of words. But maybe we do need to talk about it. You know, about the best way to help you get over…what happened.”

  “The doc said there’s no magic formula. Everyone’s different.”

  Cassie sighed. “I could have told you that.”

  “When I told him you’d invited me to stay here, he said it sounded like a good idea. To try and feel normal again. Safe.”

  “Yeah. There’s that.”

  Tiana knew her big sister was holding back. “But…?”

  Experience appeared to etch its way into Cassie’s tired, flustered frown, as though she knew an obvious truth that Tiana and her doctors had somehow missed. “I’m not sure how to say this.”

  “Straight up,” Tiana told her. “Let’s start there.”

  “Okay. Straight up? I don’t think you’re achieving anything by hiding out here like this. All you’re doing is pretending as if nothing happened. I thought it might work, but you don’t seem to be getting better; you seem to be getting worse. When you say normal, I think that’s part of the problem. None of this is normal for you. It is for me, but not for you. And the part about feeling safe? I don’t think you’ve got that either. Let me put it this way: if Thad were to suddenly turn up here at the house in the middle of the night, would you feel safe? Would being with me and the girls make you feel safe?”

  Tiana shuddered at the thought. “Um, not when you put it like that, no. But Thad’s gone. It’s about moving on, right?”

  “Not when your mind is stuck on that endless loop. You’ve obviously not moved past what happened that night.”

  “Tell me about it. But what can I do? It’s not as if I want the nightmares. They just happen.”

  “I know. But I don’t think hiding from what happened is helping you either.” It had been a while since Cassie had put her arm around Tiana—they’d never been huggers—but it sure felt good. To know in her bones that her older sister was still looking out for her, that she was using her much more “regular” and “rooted” life experiences to help her find a solution—it was more of a comfort than Cassie could ever know. “I think you should pick up where you left off.”

  “Huh? How?”

  “Before Thad abducted you that night, you were making progress, I seem to recall.”

  It stung Tiana to even think of Dax Easterling, how much she missed him, how much she wanted to disassociate him from Thad’s death, but it was too close and too painful to even consider. “Don�
��t.”

  “Don’t what?” Cassie asked.

  Tiana pulled out of her sister’s embrace. “Don’t make me go there. It hurts too much.”

  “And what if he’s hurting too? Did you know he stayed in the hospital for three days and hardly left?”

  “I don’t want to think about that.”

  “For how long? He’s out there and he loves you. How long are you going to punish him for something that wasn’t even his fault?”

  Bitter thorns began to press the backs of Tiana’s eyes. The tiredness suddenly caught up with her. It—combined with the sharp memories—made her feel weak and weepy. “I shouted for him, but he never came. He never showed up.”

  “Not his fault. He’d have died to protect you if he could have, and you know it.”

  “But I died instead. And you know it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Somebody survived, but it wasn’t me. I’m still there on that bed, waiting for help that never comes. Don’t you see? I never will feel safe because I wasn’t saved. I can’t change that, and neither can he.”

  Cassie shook her head. “I’m not having that. He did save you. He got to you in time, then he called for an ambulance. You’re here now because Dax Easterling broke every traffic law in Los Angeles to reach you. I don’t see what else the guy could have done!”

  “Then why don’t you go fuck him!?”

  Cassie slapped her hard, and Tiana knew right away that she deserved it. The sharp thorns behind her eyes couldn’t hold the bitterness at bay any longer. Tiana started to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said, covering her face with her hands. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t know why I said that.”

  Once again, her big sister held her tight. “It’s alright. It’s all alright. I know you didn’t mean it. And I don’t blame you for anything. You didn’t do anything wrong—do you hear me? You and Dax didn’t do anything wrong. No. You two hooking up was the only good thing that came out of that whole mess.”

  “I think I’ve lost him, Cass.” For the first time in a long time, Tiana found herself crying for someone other than Thad. “I think I’ve pushed him away. He’ll never want to see me again.”

  When Cassie didn’t respond, Tiana hoped that her big sister might be hatching a plan of some kind. But the longer the silence lasted, the more convinced she became that Cassie had come to the same conclusion. Tiana had fucked things up with Dax, and there was no going back from that betrayal.

  There had been many casualties that night. And no matter how hard she tried, she might never recover from it. Not even with her big sister looking out for her.

  In Frozen, familial love was the magic remedy.

  But this was no fairytale.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Open Season diner on the outskirts of Faircrest Heights, a short drive from where Tiana was living with her sister, looked like a popular truck stop diner. It was situated in a small retail park on a busy junction. Its menu, as the name suggested, specialized in red meat platters, the kind that would leave even Davy Crockett in a torpor. Dax had never met Cassie before. He half-expected her to be a female trucker with two chins and two asses, based on her choice of breakfast eatery. And he really wasn’t in the mood to be shouted at by some beer-swilling broad who talked trucker slang. Not when it involved Tiana.

  He sat at a window table, so he could keep an eye on who came and went—a habit he’d adopted recently, ever since Thad Hollis had gate-crashed his party. A few skinny girls in tight jeans entered. They were too young to be Cassie, who was Tiana’s older sister. She would recognize Dax, she’d said, so he had to just wait for her to come to him.

  It made him nervous. More nervous than he’d expected. He tried reading a few pages of a Steve Jobs biography on his Kindle e-reader but wound up re-reading the same sentence four times. He put it away and ordered a double espresso. Two more women entered the diner. The first had a loud, coarse laugh and resembled a squat Mrs. Fratelli from The Goonies. The second was long-legged, rangy, thirtyish, and had dark auburn hair under her blue beret. She looked really tired but was still attractive, the same way Tiana was when she was flustered about something.

  He’d already gotten to his feet when she addressed him and said, “Hi Dax. I’m Cassie.”

  “Nice to finally meet you,” he replied and offered her a seat.

  “Did you find it okay?”

  “Sure. It does kinda stand out.”

  She took off her knee-length, cream leather coat. The dark sweater underneath suited her and revealed her figure. She was slightly skinnier than Tiana, not quite as busty. And she wasn’t self-conscious at all. Cassie clocked the group of guys at the bar checking her out but managed to shut them out completely. He hated to use the word ‘worldly’…but she was not fazed at all by men and was way surer of herself than her sister was.

  “Thanks for the invite,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to call Tiana.”

  She nodded. “Why haven’t you, if you don’t mind me asking? We were both wondering about that.”

  Okay, so she didn’t beat about the bush. Neither would he. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to call her. When I saw her in the hospital, she clearly blamed me for what happened. And she was right.”

  Cassie tilted her head to one side, as if she was mulling over what he’d said, deciding if he was being honest or just making excuses so he wouldn’t have to see Tiana again.

  “I heard you stayed in the hospital for two whole days,” she said.

  “Closer to three.”

  “We must’ve just missed each other.”

  “Yeah. My sleep pattern went to shit. It’s still not right.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “But you know what? I’d do it again,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.” Again the judging gaze, the pause for deliberation. He felt as though he should maybe swear under oath. “Before we get into all that…I’m famished,” she said, signaling for the waitress. “I’m nothing without a big breakfast. How about you?”

  He could tell her how he’d already consumed his protein and energy content for the morning, shortly before his dawn run, and that if he pigged out here, he’d be throwing a wrench in his carefully calibrated diet and fitness regime. But damn it, all this talk of hospital waiting rooms and sleep deprivation was depressing; and nothing gave him an appetite like feeling depressed.

  “I make it a point never to be out-eaten on a first date,” he said.

  She managed half a smile. “You don’t go hungry much, then, I’m guessing. No offense.”

  Wow. Sass.

  “Whatcha tryin’ to say?”

  “That you’ve dated a lot more than Tiana has. Maybe you don’t know what a big deal this is for her, you being in her life like this.”

  Sass with the sober inside.

  “Sure I do,” he replied. “Why do you think I’m here?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.” But she didn’t give him a chance to respond right away. Cassie didn’t even look at the menu. She ordered a full breakfast with an egg and bacon, hash browns, pancakes and maple syrup—and orange juice instead of coffee. Dax went with the same, only without the juice, plus extra hash browns and a second fried egg.

  “So how’s she doing?” he asked. “Her throat should have healed by now.”

  “Her throat, yes. Her spirit, not so much.”

  The image hit Dax while his guard was down. It reopened a wound deep inside, in that place he couldn’t defend even if he wanted to. She was still there, raw and hurting. She had not recovered. And he had not been there for her…again.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She gets angry. Out of the blue she gets irritable, snippy. Sometimes she shouts and screams, especially if I try to confront her. It’s defensive, I think. Like they say, attack is the best form of defense. She’s lashing out at the slightest pressure. I think she still feels helpless, as if a part of her is still stuck in that night. Other times she go
es the other way and gets really down on herself, depressed. I think I hate those funks worse than the outbursts because she’s bottling it up. It’s eating away at her. I’d rather she goes a few rounds with me and gets it all off her chest. The moping around just puts her back in that headspace—feeling trapped and helpless. I think that’s her biggest problem, Dax. On some level, she just doesn’t feel safe. She’s in retreat, running from it, almost in hiding. I really don’t think it’s helping her. Of course, I’m no shrink, but—”

  “Shrinks don’t have all the answers. You’re her sister. You know her better than that.”

  “She has seen a counselor,” Cassie explained. “He said it would be good for her to spend time in normal surroundings. So-called normal surroundings.”