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How did you get in?
All these thoughts cross my mind. Do they come out? Do I make words of them? Nope.
Instead, I clear my throat. “Hey.” The throat clearing didn’t help. I still sound like a toad that’s croaking at twilight.
He steps in further. Just one step, as though he’s worried I may flee, much like a rabbit trapped by a coyote.
“You’ve been keeping to yourself,” he says. Which is really kind of him, all things considered.
I swallow sawdust. “I’ve had a lot—”On my mind.Scratch saying that. Sounds stupid. Sounds selfish and self-absorbed and self-centered and a million other ‘self’ words. What the hell is wrong with me? How’d I ignore this man like that? After all these years of loving him? After losing him.
I suppose it all became so much to bear after my mother disowned me. And my father stopping by, you’d have thought that would help, but it didn’t. He didn’t come out and say my mother sucks for doing what she did. He simply said that she was complicated and that he was okay with being her second best. Whatever the hell that’s about.
“Take a ride with me?” Josh asks, his voice flat and emotionless.
Maybe he speaks like that because he doesn’t want to put any pressure on me. Any more pressure than I’m already putting on myself.
“Okay,” I say because I owe him that. Because I want to be near him. I want to breathe the same air. I want to feel the same way I used to feel. I want Joshua Tamez and Cassandra Ransom to be what Josh and Cassie used to be.
The ride’s not short. He pulls out of my apartment and drives and drives until a sign proclaims that the town of Victoria is two miles away. It’s chilly outside. Not surprising. It’s raining, which matches my mood.
Before we left Austin, he’d pulled into a Starbucks, snagged a couple of lattes and breakfast sandwiches. That’s probably the first thing I’ve eaten in a couple of days, and I hadn’t even realized how hungry I was until I took the first bite. I made short work of finishing the double bacon cheddar sandwich and have been sipping on the latte concoction the whole drive. Needless to say, it's cooled down a lot.
“Why Victoria?” I ask as he enters the off-ramp and yields into merging traffic.
He flips the turn signal on and glances behind him before he gets into the left lane and turns. “I’ll let you know after we get there.”
And I have no clue where there is or why we’re going there, or what we’ll do once we are there.
Moments later, I see a sign. Riverside Park. I’ve never been to this park before, despite the fact that Boar Creek’s only thirty minutes from Victoria. Then, we’re pulling up to the city park off McCright Drive and driving toward the children’s park. There’s a covered pavilion in the near distance. We get out of the car, and Josh leads the way there. He’s carrying both of our almost empty lattes in one hand and is holding my own hand in his other one.
I’m still stumped. Why here? Why drive so far to talk to me?
We plant our butts on the plastic and metal picnic table benches facing the colorful playground equipment that must be a slice of heaven for the kids that come here. There are a few children accompanied by ever-so-watchful mothers playing on the equipment. Squeals and laughter fill the air.
I’m about to burst with curiosity and find that for a few brief moments, the dark clouds that have been weighing me down for days are at bay. “What’s going on, Josh?”
“They come by here every day.” He glances about. “At least, they used to.”
I follow his gaze, though I’m still clueless. “Who?”
“Them.” He points to a woman with a little girl with pitch-black hair, an aquiline nose, and dark, dark eyes.
“Who is that?” I’m expecting to hear the worst. Like that’s the woman he got pregnant or something. Except the little one’s around three. And we were together back then. And I don’t think he cheated on me. At least, I think she’s that age. Maybe she’s a big two-year-old or a small four-year-old.
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“It wasn’t easy to find her. They sealed the adoption records.”
I’m starting to have an idea, but it’s such a far-fetched and unlikely one that I’m unwilling to breathe life into it. And yet, it makes my stomach roil and a throbbing starts behind my eyes, one that signals a hell of a headache. Headache? Maybe heartache is more like it.
“She’s ours, Cass.”
I feel like I can’t breathe. A queasiness grabs me with the fierceness of a shark taking its prey. My stomach… God. It’s—
I lean over and begin to gag. The gagging results in full-blown retching. I lose the contents of my stomach, such as they are. Brown latte and yellow stomach bile mix to form an ugly, ugly Picasso. Josh holds my hair back, murmuring sounds that should sound soothing but they can’t because the ocean in my ears is drowning them out. I feel like I’m drowning, and vomiting, and sinking and…
