AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It sounds so easy when you say it like that.”
He chuckled and returned to his work. “Oh, it’s not. But the best things in life rarely are.”
The door opened and Cassie’s mom stood in the frame, looking between her husband and her daughter. Her face was inscrutable, and Cassie wondered how much of their conversation she had heard.
Judy took in Cassie’s pajamas and her half-empty cup of coffee. “When you’ve got a minute, will you help me with something?”
“Yeah.” Cassie stumbled over her words. “Of course. Right now?”
“When you’ve got a minute. No rush.”
That strange formality still hung in the air between them, but Cassie didn’t have time to analyze it. Her mom had already retreated into the house.
8
Cassie drained her mug in three gulps and brought it inside. Her mother was chopping vegetables for an omelet with her back to her. The smell of onions mixed with the coffee. It wasn’t an unpleasant scent, but Cassie’s stomach didn’t quite rumble.
Rather, it tightened at the memory of the woman whose kitchen had smelled like sour onions. Not for the first time since that encounter, Cassie wondered if she had gone to the doctor. And if she had, did they find signs of stomach cancer?
Cassie sniffed the air again, hoping she didn’t catch the scent of sickness on her mother.
“Did you eat breakfast yet?” Judy asked.
Having only distinguished the additional smell of the peppers, Cassie breathed a sigh of relief. “Does coffee count?”
“Not really, no.”
“I’m okay for now.” Cassie waited for her mother to say something else, and when she didn’t, she took matters into her own hands. “What did you need help with?”
“While I was cleaning out the sewing room, I came across some boxes with your name on them. I think it’s stuff from when you were a kid. I was hoping you’d go through it. Tell me what you’d like to keep and what I can donate.”
“Oh.” Whatever Cassie had thought her mother needed her help with, it wasn’t this. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed. “Yeah, I can do that.”
“They’re sitting in front of the closet. You can’t miss them.”
It felt like a dismissal, and Cassie had no interest in disobeying it. The strange charge between them that kept Cassie at arm’s length was uncomfortable, and she was much better equipped at avoiding discomfort than pushing through it. After a beat of silence, Cassie turned and headed back upstairs. She passed Laura on the way, who gave her a sleepy nod as she followed her nose to the coffeepot.
Cassie pushed open the door to the sewing room and stepped into her mother’s haven. This room told her more about her mother’s mental state than the woman would ever let slip.
Piles of yarn sat in bins and on shelves. Stacked boxes were in a corner, threatening to tip over at a moment’s notice. A small computer sat on a desk shoved against one wall, and there were sticky notes with her mother’s cursive script plastered over the entire surface. From what she could tell, they were orders from friends and ideas she’d scribbled down lest she forget them.
Both of her parents were tidy, organized people. Her mother, especially, enjoyed puttering around the house, straightening her knickknacks and fluffing the pillows. Judy Quinn took great satisfaction in being a homemaker, an enjoyment Cassie never would understand.
But this sewing room was disheveled and disorganized. Cassie wasn’t sure if it was because her mother’s projects were taking on a life of their own, or if it was because her mother knew no one would step foot in this room. She could be as messy as she wanted in here, and no one would be the wiser. It was an odd sort of freedom.
Cassie caught sight of the boxes stacked in front of the open closet door. There were four of them bursting at the seams. Her name was scribbled on each one, and she noticed Laura’s boxes stacked behind them. Had Laura been required to throw out pieces of her childhood, too, or was that reserved for the least favorite daughter?
Cassie shook her head to clear away the anxious thoughts. They lived like mosquitoes in her brain, buzzing and poking her with their needle-sharp comments. She knew her family didn’t hate her, but sometimes the lies her brain told her were so convincing, she believed them despite evidence to the contrary.
Cassie would wait a little longer before having a conversation with her mother about the last ten years of her life. Going through her childhood belongings seemed like the easier option. Besides, she had another motive.
Maybe she’d learn more about Sarah Lennox.
When faced with the option to either confront the divide between her and her mother or delve deeper i
nto the murder of her childhood best friend, Cassie chose the latter. What did that say about her?
The contents of the first box were musty, but the delight in seeing her childhood toys overrode the annoying tingle in her nose. She pulled out a stack of Animorphs books and smiled. She only had the first six, minus the fifth one, but that hadn’t mattered. Cassie had read them so many times, she still saw the stories in vivid detail through her mind’s eye.
