18
Diane
After a night of restless sleep, I’m awake early. Dawn paints the horizon, the promise of a new day. The house is still in slumber, but I cannot keep the thoughts at bay. I make my way toward the kitchen, moving as quietly as possible to avoid disturbing Cassie, but as I round the corner, I find her already there. She’s sitting at the table, a sketchpad in front of her, lost in the maze of her fingers. Her hair is a chaotic nest of waves and knots, backlit by the light filtering in through the window.
“Do you always wake up this early?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light and casual.
“Oh, hi, Mom,” she says, resting her pencil on the sketchpad. She rubs her eyes with the back of her hand, stifling a yawn. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“No dreams?” I ask, reaching out to gently ruffle her wild hair.
“No. Just…thoughts.”
I pull out the chair opposite her and settle into it. “Thoughts can be tricky that way.”
She tries to give me a look that says everything is fine. It’s not even close. “I think… I think I’m okay with Nathan,” she saysfinally. Her voice is small, hesitant. She turns her gaze back to the sketchpad, picking up her pencil. But she doesn’t move it. Just holds it, poised over the paper. “If you want to go out with him, I mean.”
I stare at her, surprised by her words. Nathan and I have been dancing around each other for weeks now, never defining our relationship but always somehow gravitating toward one another. “That’s very mature of you, sweetie,” I say, carefully treading the thin line between motherly gratitude and an overall enthusiastic response that might scare her off. “But remember, it’s important that you’re okay with it because you really are okay, not just because you think that’s what would make me happy.”
She nods, her fingers tapping nervously against the sketchpad. “I know, Mom.”
“Listen, I heard you on the phone last night…talking to Amaya. Not all of it, but enough.”
Cassie’s face goes tight, but she doesn’t try to deny it. For a second, I think she’ll clam up, turn away and shut me out like she did when she was little and the world was too big to face. Instead, she says, “I’m glad you heard. I didn’t really know how to start talking about it.”
I swallow against a sudden tightness in my throat. "Cassie, you can always talk to me. About anything. I don't have all the answers, but I'm here to listen. And try to understand."
She nods, staring at the wall. There’s a photo of the three of us tacked up by her desk—me, hair sun-bleached and wild, grinning at the camera; Cassie, maybe eight, her cheeks flushed and her mouth open in mid-laugh; and Kyle, the gravity at the center, his arm around both of us, his smile so easy you could mistake it for ordinary happiness.
“Do you ever think about him?” she asks, voice wobbly.
“All the time,” I say, and it’s the only honest answer.
She presses her palms together, fidgeting with the cuticle of her thumb. “It’s just…if you start dating Nathan, does that mean you don’t miss Dad anymore?”
My first instinct is to recoil, to tell her no, that’s not how it works, that love is not subtraction or division, but I force myself to hold still. She needs to say the words out loud, to make them real before I can try to answer.
After a minute, she adds, “I like Nathan. I really do. But when you talk about him, it’s like there’s a part of you that’s already gone somewhere else. And I feel like if you let him in, you’ll have to let Dad go.”
I reach for her hand. She lets me, and her fingers are cold, the nails bitten ragged. I want to smooth every rough edge, but I know better. “Cass,” I say, “no one could ever replace your dad. Not for me, and definitely not for you. What we had… It doesn’t go away just because something new comes along.”
She glances at me, skeptical but not unkind. “Is that really true?”
I wish I could make her believe it with just the force of wanting. “It’s like—” I fumble, searching for the right analogy. “You remember when you were obsessed with that series about the girl and the magic horse?”
Her lips twitch. “Starlight Academy.”
“Right. When you finished the last book, you cried for a week. I thought you’d never pick up anything else. But then you found the turtle books, and it didn’t mean you loved the horse books any less. You just…made more room.”
She lets this percolate. “It’s not the same.”
“No, it’s not. But I think people are like that, too. We don’t run out of love, Cass. Sometimes we just…make more room.”
She tucks her knees up, chin resting between them, and I see the child she was and the grown woman she’s hurtlingtoward, all in the same shivering bundle. “Are you sure? Because sometimes I feel like there’s not enough room left for me.”
The admission cracks something inside me. I slide closer, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Oh, bug,” I say. “You are my heart. You will always be my heart.”
She leans in, her head heavy on my collarbone. I stroke her hair, the same way I did when she was tiny and feverish and afraid of thunderstorms. We sit like that for a long time, saying nothing.