Cassandra and Jane lean toward me, listening intently. Jane keeps smiling, her dimple flashing, while Cassandra nods encouragingly.
Something strange starts to happen: As I talk about my potential opportunities, I begin to believe they will materialize. I feel more expansive; more self-assured. It’s like their confidence and success are infectious.
The waiter appears with three more copper cups. “Another round of Moscow Mules, compliments of the gentlemen over there.”
I glance at the table of men, and one of them raises his glass to us.
“Cheers, guys,” Cassandra calls, then she turns back to me. It’s like she’s thanking someone for opening a door; she’s gracious but completely nonchalant. This, too, must happen to them all the time.
I start in on my new drink. I feel warm and glowing inside, but I can’t tell if it’s from the alcohol or if I’m just high from their company.
Cassandra has left a perfect crimson crescent near the lip of her mug. One of the differences between her and Jane is that Cassandra seems to favor a more dramatic look, while Jane is softer. Her lipstick leaves a faint pink mark, like mine.
Even Cassandra’s jewelry is striking: a chunky cocktail ring with an onyx stone on her right hand, and dangling gold earrings. But the necklace she’s fiddling with is—
I do a double take.
It’s a simple gold chain with a sunburst charm.
I’m too stunned to speak.
First Amanda disappeared, then I thought I saw her reappear going into the subway. Then I gave her necklace to the police, and now it’s back.
Cassandra notices me gaping and pulls away her hand, giving me a better look.
“Your necklace—it’s—”
Cassandra gazes down at it, as if she hadn’t even thought about what she was wearing.
“Amanda had the same one,” I finally manage to say. It’s the only explanation.
Jane’s eyes widen. “Actually, she didn’t. I had a matching one and I lent it to Amanda. Our mother gave them to us as Christmas gifts when we were teenagers.”
Cassandra smiles, looking as if she’s reaching for a memory. “Mom told us we were her sunshine. I guess we cherish them because of that, even though we’re not close to her now.”
At my look of surprise, she shrugs. “There was a rift in our family years ago.”
Jane says wistfully, “I guess mine was lost along with Amanda.”
I want to sink into my chair. I gave away Jane’s special necklace. I have to tell her, to explain there was no way I could have known.
I swallow hard. “I think—I mean, I know where the necklace could be.”
“You do?” Jane gasps. “How?”
“Right before Amanda—before I saw her—I found it on the floor of the subway station. I forgot I even had it until a few days ago.”
Jane leans forward and grabs my hand. “You have it? I would give anything to get it back.”
Cassandra is smiling at me, like I’ve just solved all their problems. “Fate must have brought us together.”
I clear my throat. “The thing is, since I thought it was Amanda’s, I brought it to the police.”
I expect the sisters to be upset—maybe even angry. But they look strangely relieved. Jane exhales slowly and recrosses her legs. Cassandra takes a long sip of her drink before finally speaking again.
“That makes sense.”
“I can try to get the necklace back for you,” I blurt.
“You can?” Jane gasps.
“I’ll go back to the police station and explain to Detective Williams that I got it wrong, that the necklace doesn’t belong to Amanda. Besides, that’s the truth.”
I flash to Detective Williams leading me down that long, silent hallway. But I push back against the quick jab of fear in my gut: Being afraid has already interfered too much with my life; it doesn’t have any place at this table.
“That would be incredible,” Cassandra says.
“I would be so grateful,” Jane adds.
I’m riding something—endorphins, or maybe it’s the second cocktail—that makes me feel like I can accomplish almost anything tonight.
I’m desperate to know more about the sisters and about Amanda—to discover the intimate details you can’t find online. So I ask how they met her. I got the impression they’d known her since childhood, maybe because Cassandra and Jane hosted Amanda’s memorial and I saw Cassandra hugging the woman who must have been Amanda’s mother.
But when I ask if they were family friends, Cassandra and Jane look surprised.
Jane shakes her head. “No, she was from Delaware. We met here in the city.”
Cassandra chimes in, “It’s funny, we hadn’t even known Amanda all that long, but we just clicked.”
I nod eagerly, leaning forward.
“She had a rough time growing up,” Jane confides. “No one ever really cared for her, which makes it so admirable that she became a nurse to help other people. Her father died when she was five, and her mom started drinking heavily. She never remarried. Would you believe poor Amanda used to come home from grade school and find her passed out on the couch? She started making her own dinners when she was just a little girl.”
“Maybe we connected so deeply because Jane and I don’t really have parents, either,” Cassandra says. “It’s hard to understand if you’re close to your family and you’ve got grandparents and cousins you adore.… But those of us who feel a bit more alone in the world tend to recognize each other.”
Her words hammer into me. She’s speaking to my deepest longing.
“In a way, Amanda became another sister to us,” Cassandra finishes.
With those few words, Cassandra has just articulated everything I’ve been yearning for—not just lately, but for my entire life: A place to belong. A home that has nothing to do with a physical structure and everything to do with a feeling of love and acceptance.
“I do know,” I whisper. “I’m an only child.… I’m not all that close to either of my parents.”
I’ve never said those words before. I guess I’ve never wanted to admit them, even to myself.
Jane and Cassandra look at each other, then they both turn to me with what feels like heightened interest. “I didn’t realize we had so much in common,” Jane says.
Her words hover between us, like a gossamer thread. I’m here with these two incredible women who seem to be turning into friends. It seems that the data is true: Sharing personal information and emotions leads to increased feelings of closeness.
We talk for another hour, and I’m surprised by how interested the sisters are in everything about my life—from my weakness for chocolate to how Jody clearly feels discomfort with my presence in Sean’s life.
All the while, I hold tight the knowledge that I now have a reason to see them again.
I tried to make my appearance mirror theirs tonight.
But it’s much more powerful to know that the deeper, hidden parts of us match.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CASSANDRA & JANE
Twenty years ago
“THIS IS YOUR ROOM, Cassandra,” their stepfather said, opening a door to reveal what looked like a page out of Teen magazine: The centerpiece was a white canopy bed with a frilly pink duvet and decorative pillows. There was also a glossy white dresser and matching desk. Seashell-colored paint—so fresh the scent still filled the air—covered the walls.
“And, Jane, yours is here.” He crossed the hall and opened another closed door to reveal an identical bedroom.
The sisters looked at each other before moving in separate directions, their socks gliding soundlessly over the thick carpeting. They’d never not shared a room.
But they knew what was expected of them even before they felt their mother’s sharp nudges: “Thank you!” they chorused.
“It’s so beautiful,” Jane added.
Their stepfather nodded—he was a man of few words—and turned to descend the stairs, which creak
ed heavily under his weight.
The fancy bedrooms were just the beginning of the changes that lay ahead: Their mother had already told them that new clothes, a transfer to their town’s private school, and piano lessons would soon follow.
“Why don’t you girls freshen up. Dinner is at six,” their mother instructed as she hurried to catch up with her new husband. “I’m making Dover sole and asparagus.”
Even their mother was different now—she used fancier words, and she’d stopped smoking. She’d begun going for manicures in town rather than painting her own nails. She gestured a lot more, too, with her left hand—the one with the big diamond on it.
Cassandra looked at Jane and shrugged. It was as if their mom had been replaced by Carol Brady. But their stepfather was no Mike Brady; his slightly bulging eyes and full lips reminded them of a frog.
“What’s Dover sole?” Jane whispered, and they both burst into giggles.
There was one other big change: They now had a stepbrother, a handsome, golden-haired, athletic teenager who came to spend every other weekend with them. Even his nickname—Trey, because he was the third male to inherit the same name after his grandfather and father—was cool.
The first time they saw him, the sisters were sitting on the edge of the pool in the backyard, dangling their feet into the cool chlorinated water. He raced through the yard and cannonballed into the deep end. When he broke the surface, the girls were laughing and shaking droplets from their hair.
“Hey,” he said, effortlessly treading water. “Want to see who can hold their breath underwater the longest?”
During those two weekends a month, Trey breathed life into the house that felt like a museum when their stepfather was around. Trey hoisted them up and carried them around on his shoulders and whispered secrets about his father—such as that he kept a bottle of Viagra in his nightstand. In the basement game room with the big wooden bar and giant TV, Trey taught them to play pool, leaning over them and adjusting the angle of their cues. “Don’t rush your stroke,” he’d say.
Trey snuck shots of Jack Daniel’s or tequila from the bar and handed them his glass, laughing as the sisters took the tiniest sips possible and crinkled up their noses.
He complimented their mother and always opened doors for her—winning her over instantly. He called his father “sir” without any trace of sarcasm. When Trey spotted the cleaning lady struggling to carry the heavy vacuum up the stairs, he leaped to his feet to help her. Adults adored him.
“Trey is a true gentleman,” their mother was fond of saying. “I couldn’t have asked for a better stepson.”
Then, a few months after the sisters moved in, Cassandra and Jane discovered a small sparrow lying stunned on the patio, having crashed into the glass doors.
“The poor little bird!” Jane cried.
Cassandra took charge. “It’s looking at us. We have to help it.”
They ran inside and found a sturdy shoebox—their mom had acquired quite a few by now—then began filling it with paper towels from the roll in the kitchen.
“We can feed it worms,” Cassandra said as their stepbrother sauntered into the kitchen in his lacrosse uniform from his Saturday-afternoon game.
“Feed what worms?” Trey grabbed the container of milk out of the refrigerator and drank it straight out of the carton.
“We found a bird,” Cassandra told him. “It’s hurt so we made it a nest.”
“His name is Tweety,” Jane added.
Trey put the milk down on the counter and followed them outside.
The bird was in the exact same position, its shiny dark eyes staring up at them. The girls squatted next to it.
“Should we just pick it up?” Jane asked.
But neither girl made a move to do so.
“You guys are so lame.” Trey laughed. “Want some help?”
“Could you put Tweety in the box?” Cassandra asked.
He’d stepped closer to the bird. He bent down and looked at it. “Hi, little guy.”
Then his foot—still in his lacrosse cleats—lifted high into the air and came down.
A sickening crunch filled the air.
Jane and Cassandra stared, uncomprehending, as their stepbrother said, “It was gonna die anyway.”
Trey turned and walked away, leaving them kneeling on the stone patio, as their shock turned to tears.
They sobbed while they wrapped the little bird’s body in another layer of paper towels, and while they wrote TWEETY in Magic Marker on the box they’d intended as an infirmary bed but that was now a coffin. They decorated it with drawings of flowers and rainbows and picked the prettiest spot in the garden, under a yellow rosebush.
After they finished smoothing the dirt over the grave, Cassandra and Jane held hands.
“We’re sorry,” Cassandra said. “We should have protected you.”
They avoided their stepbrother as much as possible after that. But he was still drawn to them. He’d snap the strap of Cassandra’s training bra and, when he passed Jane in the hallway, call out, “Plain Jane coming through!” Even though he had a bathroom of his own, he often went into the one Cassandra and Jane shared when they were getting ready for bed.
“Just looking for the Tylenol,” he’d say as he pushed open the door without knocking. It always seemed to happen when one of them was in the shower; he must have listened for the running water. The sisters would try to cover themselves as he leered at them through the rippled glass.
* * *
But they didn’t have to avoid Trey for long. Seventeen months after their mother had put on a long white lacy dress—as if she were a first-time bride—and wept prettily while saying her vows, their stepfather kicked them out of the house and filed for a divorce.
The changes and chaos in their life bound them even more closely together, especially as their mother turned bitter and even more remote. Cassandra and Jane, entangled by secrets and similarities, never let anyone else into the protective bubble they erected around their sisterhood. They were always together. Supporting each other. Defending each other. Loving each other.
Protecting each other.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SHAY
There are 1.3 million stepfathers in the United States. More than 1,300 new blended families form each day, and more than 50 percent of children under 13 live at least part-time with one biological parent and one stepparent.
—Data Book, page 21
Twenty years ago
ON MY ELEVENTH BIRTHDAY, which fell on a Saturday, my mom took me shopping at the local mall. She told the saleswoman at Lord & Taylor that I needed a special outfit for a special occasion. I wasn’t the kind of girl who dreamed about pink ruffles or tulle—I preferred soccer and math puzzles. But when I tried on the royal-blue knee-length dress with the sash around the waist, I felt special.
I wore it right out of the store, to the nail salon, where my mom and I sat in big leather recliners and got mani-pedis. A little later, as we pulled up to the ranch-style home where we now lived with Barry, I saw my stepfather standing on an aluminum ladder, wearing faded jeans and a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt, hammering in a loose roof shingle. I felt Barry’s stare as I walked toward the front door.
“Welcome back, Fancy-Pants,” he called down to me, and I gave him an awkward wave, keeping my head low.
I was still wearing the velvet dress that felt so soft against my skin when my mom called me to dinner—my favorite, spaghetti and meatballs—so I carefully spread a napkin over my lap to protect it.
My mom usually served Barry first, but tonight she filled my plate before his.
“Hey, hon, can I have a little more gravy for my pasta?” Barry was from the Bronx and always said gravy instead of tomato sauce. After I first heard him use that term, I wrote it down along with other regional sayings in my Data Book, such as bubbler—which a girl in my class who was from Rhode Island called the water fountain—and pop instead of soda, and freeway, which people on the West Coast
and especially in California call highways.
“Of course,” my mom said, spooning more tomato sauce atop his spaghetti.
Barry went through two Coors at dinner—and I’d seen him throw out an empty can on his way to the table. Two beers a night wasn’t unusual. But three or more meant trouble: He was angry … with the boss who didn’t pay him well enough, the jerk in the BMW who’d cut him off on his commute home, or the politicians who kept taxing his hard-earned money.
When my mom went to the kitchen to get dessert, Barry followed her and brought back a fresh can: The tab made a popping sound as he opened it.
“‘Happy Birthday to you,’” my mom began to sing. She held a platter with a dozen chocolate-frosted cupcakes: another of my favorites. I closed my eyes, wished for a puppy to cuddle, and blew out the candles.
“Let’s see if your wish came true!” she said brightly. “Come on, the present your dad sent is in the backyard.” She set the platter down on the table, and I was so excited that I didn’t mind waiting for the delicious-looking cupcakes.
She held my hand as we walked, still moving with the grace of the dancer she used to be. I already had two inches on her by then—and I was rapidly gaining on Barry. The only features I’d inherited from her were a cleft in my chin and a narrow, slightly upturned nose. By contrast, she and Barry—who was short and muscular, with thick dark hair and Mediterranean coloring—were a perfect physical match.
A shiny red ten-speed bike with a big bow on the seat leaned against the garage.
“Surprise!” my mom shouted.
I felt my eyes prickle—a dog would be my best friend and would always keep me company—but I recovered fast, biting my lower lip hard so my mom wouldn’t know.
“Can I ride it now?”
My mom looked at my dress. “How about we have dessert, then you change and go? It’ll still be light out.”
Barry hadn’t moved from the table when we returned. He was holding his can of Coors with his left hand. He’d lost the tip of that pinkie to a circular saw on one of his construction projects years ago, and the nail was missing. “Like your gift?”
You Are Not Alone Page 9
