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Cass let Robbie drive her SUV, and she sat in the middle of the backseat, a place she hadn’t occupied in quite some time.Sariah rode in the front passenger seat, which left Jane to ride on Cass’s right side.
She’d squeezed as close to Harrison as she could get, practically sitting in his lap, both of her hands covering one of his.They’d been talking about his build, his crew, and his family for the past half-hour, and it still felt like Sweet Water Falls sat a good distance down the road.
“So you own a construction firm?”Jane leaned forward and looked at Harrison.Cass watched her, not sure what she was looking for.No matter what, she wouldn’t let her twins bully Harrison this weekend, or make him feel unwelcome here.They’d made it impossible for her to return to Hilton Head, and she really wanted to be with Harrison.
For several days there, she’d questioned that.Perhaps her twins saw something she couldn’t.But the moment she’d laid eyes on him, all of those doubts and fears had disintegrated.Her feelings had grown deeper and stronger, not weaker, and she squeezed his hand as he said, “Yep, that’s right.”
“How long have you been doing that?”Sariah asked from the front seat.Her voice was crisp yet pleasant, and she reminded Cass so much of herself.
“Oh, ‘bout twenty years now,” Harrison said with a sigh.“Most days, I don’t regret it.”He chuckled.
“Why would you?”Sariah twisted to look at him.She really looked at Cass, and then dropped her gaze to her and Harrison’s hands.Her lips pursed slightly, but she held her tongue.
“It’s hot in Carolina,” Harrison drawled.“Like Texas here.And the tourism business doesn’t care about cement supply chain, and sometimes there’s some…difficult people to deal with.”He glanced at Cass, who gave him a bright smile.“Your mother understands.She’s working with some of the fussier women on the island right now.”
“You are, Mama?”Jane asked.
“Yes, dear,” Cass murmured.“I have several clients on Hilton Head, one of whom is a country club remodel.”And it hadn’t been easy doing everything from Texas when her clients were in South Carolina.She’d kept all of that to herself, of course.Her daughters had never really understood how much Cass did behind the scenes to make sure everything looked and ran smoothly on the surface.
The conversation switched to what Sariah had graduated in—English and education, thus her months in Taiwan this summer—and then to what Robbie was studying—computer science.No one asked Jane what she was doing, and Cass wondered if she felt bad about that.
She reached over to her daughter and gave her a smile too.“What about you, Janey?Are you going to head back out into the world soon?Go to school?”
Jane didn’t seem to mind the question, and she’d definitely become more relaxed since she’d been on the road.Cass had spent a couple of weeks with her now, and yes, there was definitely something different about her.She couldn’t put her finger on exactly what, because Jane had always been the more laid-back of the twins.
Maybe not this laid-back, but much looser than the tightly laced Sariah.
“I don’t know, Mama.”She leaned her head against Cass’s shoulder.“I’m sleepy.”
Sariah muttered something from the front seat that sounded like, “You took too many of those things,” and she looked from the side-back of one daughter’s head to the top of the other.
“What things?”she asked.
No one said anything, and new apprehension filled the SUV.Her house sat on the outskirts of Sweet Water Falls, and they passed the first road that led to the furthest ranch on the west side of town.
“Sariah?”
“Nothing, Mom,” she said, her tone somewhat exasperated.
“What things, Jane?”she asked, not about to let this go.
“It’s nothing, Mama.”Jane giggled and looked up at her.“Just a tiny CBD gummy.”
Cass blinked, her eyes growing wider and wider.“You take those?Jane, how many did you take?”
Her smile seemed stretched now, and it wasn’t diminishing.Cass looked over to Harrison, who wore a stoic expression on his face.Neutral.He wasn’t going to get involved.“Sariah,” Cass barked.
“She takes too many,” Sariah said.She twisted back again.“Where’s the bottle, Jane?”
Jane seemed to be floating, and she certainly wasn’t going to assist.Sariah let out a terribly exasperated sigh and grabbed Jane’s purse from the floor.It wouldn’t have mattered if Jane didn’t want her to; her reflexes were nothing compared to Sariah’s.
She pulled out the bottle—which looked like a vitamin bottle.In fact, Cass had thought Jane was taking gummy vitamins for the past few weeks—and uncapped it.“This is empty.”
She looked at Jane with fear in her eyes too.“Jane, you must’ve had five or six of these.”
“Five or six,” she said, still grinning strangely like the Cheshire Cat.“I’m fine.I’ve taken more before.”Her head lulled against Cass’s arm again, and she wanted to hold her up, keep her together, until the drugs wore off.
