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CHAPTER 26

Cassie

I’d always loved snow. It didn’t happen often in our part of Kansas, so, when it did, I went a bit crazy. Most of the time my love affair ended just before frostbite struck, with Gran nursing me and my cold for a couple of days. The upside? I had a good excuse for skipping school.

I tried to recall the image of Gran with her bright lavender eyes. It hadn’t even been a year since she passed away and my memory of her had started to become a bit hazy. I yearned to hear her voice again, but it took more effort with each passing day.

“Here, sweetie! Nice, warm and with as many marshmallows as I can stuff into it.” Clarissa placed the mug of cocoa on the coffee table. She peered through the window at the prairie outside, now covered in a white blanket. “I hope Wood isn’t going to be stuck in town. I’ve cooked his favorite stew.”

“I’m sure it’s not as bad as it looks out there.” The quilt I had on my lap wasn’t keeping me warm enough, so I grabbed the mug. “Thank you for the cocoa.”

I stared down at the tiny marshmallows floating on top of the creamy chocolate, and watched as they slowly started melting into the warm liquid. It looked so soft and mellow: I wanted to dive into it… and maybe drown inside.

I shuddered and kicked myself out of my funk. You’ve definitely reached rock bottom when suicide in a mug of freakin’ cocoa had become an option. A muffled giggle escaped from inside me.

“What’s so funny?” Clarissa frowned at me. Marriage looked good on her. Her mass of red curls sprayed over her shoulders and her skin glowed.

I’d washed my hair that morning but that was about it for my beauty routine. “Thanks for letting me stay.” I’d arrived four days earlier and I should have driven straight to Gran’s farm, but it was empty there. So I’d crashed at Woodie’s. I hadn’t had to explain anything. My friend had welcomed me with a hug.

“Our home is your home.” Clarissa offered me a sweet smile and it warmed me inside. “You can’t always be strong, ya’ know. Sometimes you have to let the people who love you take care of you.”

“I don’t want to impose—”

“—Stop, Cassie.” She shuffled in her armchair and hunched forward. “I’ve known you since we were kids and I’ve never seen you back down from anything. I’ve never seen you cry or show any fear. You’ve always been the girl I watched from afar. And God forgive me, because I was so jealous of you, so jealous of how Josh and Woodie looked up to you, how they worshiped the ground you walked on.”

“You can relax now. You bagged Woodie. Josh and me… We’re hardly rom-com material, are we?” Tears glistened in Clarissa’s eyes and my throat constricted. “Damn, I’m such a bitch. Please forgive me.”

“Apology accepted.”

“You’re right though… I don’t let people in. The biggest mistakes in my life were because I thought I didn’t need anyone, that I could manage on my own.” I took a first sip of hot chocolate.
Eek,
Clarissa hadn’t spared the sugar. “The truth is that I was never alone. I chose to be because I didn’t give a chance to my friends and Gran to be there for me. I never let Josh be my Superman.”

Clarissa burst out laughing. “Superman? Are you blind, girl? Josh is more of a Thor or—”

“—Captain America. For sure, that’d come in handy in Washington.”

We kept laughing together and I watched Clarissa drink some of her own chocolate. Suddenly she bolted out of the armchair, her hand stuck over her mouth. She rushed out of the living room and disappeared into the downstairs bathroom..

You had to be deaf to miss the retching that followed. Granted, the cocoa was loaded with sugar but not enough to make her puke. I hurried to the kitchen, wetted a cloth and went to wait outside the bathroom. Shortly afterwards I heard the flush and Clarissa appeared in front of me. She wasn’t glowing anymore. Her skin had turned a washed-out green and some of her hair stuck to her forehead.

I took her in my arms and led her shaking body back to the sofa where I’d been squatting the whole morning. There, I covered her with the blanket and started patting her face with the damp cloth.

“I’m so embarrassed. I can’t believe…” she started rambling, but I hushed her. I went back to the kitchen for a glass of water. She gulped it down in one go, which wasn’t a good idea. I had
a lot
of experience of puking my guts out. I’d been one of those girls for whom
morning sickness
stretched to pretty much every hour of the—

Wait a sec!
“Are you pregnant?” Clarissa’s eyes rounded like saucers at my question and some color returned to her cheeks. “You
are
pregnant.”

“I’m sorry. We didn’t want you to know.”

I shifted backward on the sofa. I was missing something here. “Why? Is there a problem with the pregnancy? Because I know a great ob-gyn in Kansas City and we can figure out a way for you to—”

She covered my hand with hers. “No, Cassie. All is fine so far, except for the vomiting.” She gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. “We just thought it’d hurt your feelings because of what’s happening with Lucas.”

It took me a while for my mind to wrap around what she’d just admitted. When it finally did, tears began to form in my eyes. “I might never get Lucas back, but I’ll be damned if I can’t be happy for you and Woodie to have your own baby.”

“We didn’t want the news to make you even more sad.”

“Sad? I’m thrilled. I’m so thrilled you might finally see me cry.” My voice had gone all wobbly and I hid whatever sobbing fest I was going to throw by taking her in my arms. I hugged her tightly. I’d never hugged a girl in my life before, except for Gran. But Gran wasn’t really a girl and she was the one doing the hugging most of the time.

“It’s nice to see you’re human after all,” she mumbled in the hollow of my neck.

The cell in my jeans pocket beeped. I parted from my hugging partner and we swept our tears off our cheeks at the same time. The text had to be from Josh. I hadn’t spoken to him since leaving Kansas City last Friday, but he’d written me several sweet, if slightly mysterious messages. I still had no idea what was going on.

Josh (13:12): On my way out of town in the car. Should be in SH in about 2 hrs.

My fingers started to type.

Cassie (13:13): Meet me. You know where…

It was time for me to let Josh in.

Good!
I heard Gran say out loud, as though she was standing next to me.

I think she really was.

CHAPTER 27

Josh

The drive from Kansas City should have stolen my attention. I’d been squinting through the blowing snow to see the road ahead so hard my eyelids ached. But even a force-twelve hurricane wouldn’t have stopped me and my Honda rental. I was on a mission.

I drove past the city-limits sign welcoming visitors to Steep Hill, ‘The Legendary Cattle Town.’ As kids, Cassie and I used to make fun of it. Later, there was no road sign I’d dreaded more than that one. It wasn’t funny anymore. It meant heartache and betrayal. Today the road sign meant friends and family. Friends I chose. Family I had made.

It’d been a long road back to Steep Hill, not just on today’s drive. It’d been a five-year long road that’d taken me away from Kansas and from myself. But I’d found myself again and I was returning home.

I carefully merged onto the side road that led to Sweet Angel Point. The path was twisty and the wheels of the car skidded on the ice patches. If there was one thing my father had taught me well, it was how to drive. I hadn’t been that good a teacher with Cassie, unfortunately.

When I made it to the top of the hill, I gently applied the brakes. There were no other cars. I padded around the hood of the car, my feet crunching on the thick layer of snow. The weather had cleared and the cold rays of sun made the prairie around me glisten. I rested my back against the trunk of the cottonwood tree and let myself indulge in the snow-padded silence.

Cassie would arrive soon.

A whistle sliced through my thoughts. I straightened up. It’d come from close by. I checked my surroundings.

“Come on, Champ. Eyes up!”

I stumbled away from the tree, my gaze searching for the voice hidden within the branches. I circled around the trunk and there I found two legs hanging from a branch in the upper reaches of the tree. A head and a mass of blond curls soon emerged into view.

“Cass, are you fucking nuts? You’re going to break your neck.”

I extended my arms upwards, in an attempt to catch her should she fall.

“Relax. Unlike you, I kept climbing trees even as an adult.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better. Can we try and figure out how to get your skinny ass down here?”

“Do you remember the last time you were up here?”

“Of course I do. I proposed to you from the branches of this goddamned tree. I can’t believe the lengths I went to extract a ‘yes’ from you.”

“Actually, you didn’t propose to me. I
proposed
to you, remember?”

“Yes. I wanted it to be your choice.” Cassie shuffled on the branch and my stomach leaped into my throat. “Please, Cass. I’m begging you, please come down. You’re scaring the shit out of me.”

If I’d been in need of a therapy before, it wasn’t the case anymore. Lately, I’d been professing my deepest fears to anyone who would listen.

Cassie continued. “Our first times are always here. The first time we made love, the first time you told me you loved me, the first time we got engaged.”

I was trying to devise a safe plan to get her down so I absentmindedly answered: “We only got engaged once.”

“You’re right. The second time is scheduled for today.”

My brain played catch-up and my own voice sounded dumb in my ears. “You’re going to propose?”

“No, you are.” My eyes were glued on her so I couldn’t miss the cloud falling over her face. “I mean, if you want to.”

“Cass, I hate to break it to you but you never signed the divorce papers, so, technically, we’re still married.”

“I know that.” The playfulness had gone out of her voice and she was all seriousness now. “But I’m up here because I want to give you the choice again, just like you did when we were seventeen. You said then that I had to do it out of free will.”

“So you want me to propose to you
freely
?”

“If you don’t want to, you’ve got plenty of time to drive away. It’s going to take me a while to get back down.”

Despite the fact that the girl I loved was twelve feet above me, clutching a cold tree on a snowy afternoon, I couldn’t keep the burst of laughter inside. My reaction drew a frown from Cassie so I stopped. “Cass, if I didn’t control myself, I’d propose to you pretty much every day. And before you say anything, I’m aware that was a very cheesy line.”

“Cheesiness suits you, Champ. So feel free to shower me in it as much as you want.”

“Point taken, but please come back to sea level.”

It took ten hazardous minutes for Cassie to climb down the tree, lots of twisting and turning and swearing. I gave her clear instructions that she kept ignoring.

“Okay, Cass, well done. I’m right behind you so turn around slightly and I’ll catch you.”

I expected Cassie to turn and loop her arms around my neck so that I could help her back to ground level.
Gently
. Instead she launched herself onto me, causing me to stagger backwards and lose balance. I crashed on my back with Cassie on top of me.

She was light as a feather and I recovered quickly, hunching back up with Cassie on my lap. Patches of snow were caked over her face. I gently wiped them off. “I think your climbing is about as bad as your driving.”

“I think you might be right.”

After our days apart, having her in my arms, her warm breath brushing against my face was worth freezing my ass off in the snow for. I leaned closer to her so that the tip of my nose touched hers. I turned my face slightly the way I knew she loved.

“I’m still expecting you to propose, ya’ know. It won’t be on your knees, but on your butt. Still okay by me though.”

I welcomed back the sparks as they returned to her eyes. I brushed a wisp of hair away from her face. “Before getting to that, I want to tell you about Kansas—”

“—Don’t,” she hushed me. “Not yet. Your mom told me once that any strong family starts with two people committed to each other, trusting and helping each other, growing together… I want this proposal to be about us merging our lives because we love each other, not because we have to.”

“Cass, I’ve wanted to marry you since you stomped on my foot back in first grade. I just couldn’t do it then because we were six and it’d have been illegal.”

“I want you to propose to today’s Cassie, not first-grade Cassie, or even worse senior-year Cassie. When I say ‘yes,’ it’ll be to the man you are now, not the boy you were then.”

“So you’re going to say ‘yes’?”