Page 47

47

CALIFORNIA, 2011

“ Cassie? ” I gasp, my sister’s name feeling like sandpaper on my lips, so used to banishing her existence to the depths of my consciousness. “So, she knows you’re here?”

Zoe nods enthusiastically. “It was actually her idea to find you.”

“But how…? Why now…?” I stutter.

“After Mum died and I found the tape again, I couldn’t stop listening to your song:

“ There are things I could never teach you, no matter how hard I try,

Because only you can decide how high you fly,

I can set you on your way and catch you if you fall,

But only you will know… I would die for you.”

I struggle to keep the steering wheel under control as Zoe’s angelic voice fills the car.

“But the more I listened to it,” she says, breaking off, “the more I needed answers. So, I lost myself in a bottomless pit of conspiracy theories, wishing I’d asked Mum more when I had the chance. But Cassie helped separate fact from fiction, though she said if I really wanted the truth, I’d have to find you . Because only then would I be able to put the final pieces of the jigsaw together.”

“Is she here?” I find myself asking, fearing I already know the answer.

She nods, and an inexplicable anger floods my veins as I remember the way I steadfastly rejected Hannah’s protestations that her “aunt” had picked her up from school, so sure that it was an impossibility. And the accusations I threw at Brad when he said my sister had been on the phone come back to haunt me, my conscience shamed by the memory of how I would rather believe him to be having an affair than for his claim to be true.

Was it Cassie at the convention center? Had she mounted the despicable attack against the seals just to call my reputation into question? Ripping it to shreds…

“I understand why you’re here,” I say. “But what does she want?”

Zoe shrugs her shoulders. “I think she’s been feeling much like I have since you both lost your dad. She feels angry and aggrieved that they didn’t resolve their differences before he died…”

I shake my head, shocked by my naivety. All this time, I’ve assumed they’d maintained their relationship long after mine ended. I tortured myself with picture-perfect imaginings of how they must have supported each other through the aftermath. How he walked her down the aisle. How he played grandfather to her children. But how could he have?

The letter he’d so painstakingly written comes back to haunt me, his every word etched with profound regret as he played out the consequences of his actions over and over in his mind with each letter he scrawled. What must it have taken for him to tell the truth after all this time?

“… And she doesn’t want to make the same mistake with you,” Zoe goes on, snapping me out of my maudlin reverie.

“I think it’s a little late for that,” I say.

“Well, I think she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to prove you wrong,” says Zoe, looking at me. “She’s determined to make sure that nothing remains unsaid between you.”

An intense heat consumes my entire being, crushing me with panic and claustrophobia.

“I guess she’s ultimately looking for a happy ending,” says Zoe, seemingly oblivious to my distress. “And she thinks you’re it.”