* * *
“SHE’S YOUR AUNT. Why are you so nervous?” Royce scowled at the table Cass had set in the dining area of the cottage. “I thought we were the beer-and-brats segment of the family. This looks like the way Dad used to want the table set when officers came to dinner. There are too many forks and glasses.”
Cass laughed. “You’re right. Okay, let’s back it off.”
They started from scratch, using the jewel-toned placemats that had come with the house instead of the embroidered tablecloth Cass had bought at an antiques store on Main Street. They left water glasses on the table, but set wineglasses and cups and saucers out of the way on the counter. They replaced elegant tapers with squatty candles and set the autumn centerpiece back on the end table in the living room where Royce had put it when they brought it home.
Dinner was a combination of their talents. Cass had cooked a pot roast with vegetables and Royce had made a salad and deviled a pretty little platter of eggs. They’d bought dessert and dinner rolls at the Amish bakery and wine at Sycamore Hill. Cass had promised her sister she could have a glass if she wasn’t going out afterward, but a phone call from Seth Rossiter asking her to go to the late movie in Sawyer put an end to that.
Zoey was right on time. One shoe on and one shoe off, Royce opened the door. “Aunt Zoey! I’m so glad to see you!”
Cass watched the two tall, slim women she loved as they hugged each other, drew back to take a good look and hugged each other again. She was happy for Royce, she told herself, that Aunt Zoey’s love for a girl who wasn’t actually her niece was so unrestricted. She was jealous, too.
“Come here.” Zoey stretched her arm toward her. Her eyes were awash with tears, something Cass didn’t remember seeing before. Even when Marynell had died, grief had made new lines in Zoey’s face, but Cass hadn’t seen her cry. “I know we have issues, but right this minute, we don’t.”
Zoey smelled like pink Dove soap and the same kind of shampoo Cass and Royce used. Her hug, complete with strong, thin arms and a soft, wrinkled cheek against her own, made Cass know more than anything else that, at least for now, she was home.
By the time they reached the table, Zoey had handed Royce a handful of photographs. “A record of your sister’s life you can use for blackmail if the need arises.”
Cass laughed, although it took all she had not to snatch the pictures away. They were a record of a childhood she didn’t want altered by someone else’s perception. “Did Mother do that with you?”
She could have cut her tongue out as soon as the words left her mouth. She’d forgotten that Zoey had been engaged to her father first, before he’d met her younger sister. Marynell had been the first of the young, beautiful women he’d pursued and caught. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—”
Zoey shook her head. “No, it’s all right. I wouldn’t say she blackmailed. She never had to. Marynell was so beautiful we all enabled her.” She met Cass’s eyes and grasped her hand. “It didn’t make any of us bad people.” She grinned wickedly. “Even your father.”
Royce laughed, delighted, and Cass joined her. In his own way, Ken Gentry loved his daughters, but they’d both always known where they stood in his line of priorities. Even Royce, gorgeous as she was, was a testimony to his aging. He’d been fifty-two when she was born, and inevitable queries about his “grandchild” were still hard for him to take. He was generally happier just being able to show off her pictures.
“Everyone has weaknesses,” Zoey concluded, “and mine combined with your parents’ created quite a cluster of pain and sorrow.”
Seth came as they were finishing dessert, and Cass excused her sister from cleanup duty. Before the cottage’s front door closed behind the young couple, awkwardness slipped inside.
“I should go.” Zoey pushed back from the table. “Let me help with the dishes.”
Cass almost let her leave. That was how she’d spent most of her life, wasn’t it, walking the long way around to avoid being hurt more than necessary? She’d learned to live without her beloved aunt’s emotional support. Why take a chance of regaining it only to lose it once more?
Because she was thirty-five, not sixteen, that was why. Because she had a little sister she needed to set an example for. Because there were steps out of loneliness and she was ready to take a big one.
“No,” she said. “Please.” She stood up. “Will you make coffee while I clear the table? Or would you rather have more wine?”
“Coffee would be good.”
“Yours always was, even when it was half cream and two-thirds refined sugar. Did Nana know you gave it to me like that?”
Zoey chuckled. “I doubt it. It didn’t seem to have taken, though—you’ve been thin as a rail your whole life.”
When the coffee was done and they were once more sitting across from each other at the table, Cass revealed, “I got chunky in high school, when we were in Korea. Dad found a doctor who put me on a program that un-chunked me in a matter of months. I took pills that were illegal here, but that was during the Barbie-stepmother time and she used them all the time. We both survived and I stayed thin until after I was married.”
“You gained weight then? It’s hard to imagine.”
“Some. Enough to make Tony panic. So I became an exercise and fasting addict. I couldn’t stop losing weight when I was ready to and it scared me to death. My metabolism was so messed up, and it pretty much stayed that way until I got the breast cancer diagnosis.” Cass smiled, although the gesture cost her—there was nothing funny in the memories. “So now I’m your basic slug. I walk for exercise, but I do it better if there’s ice cream at the end of it.”
Zoey laughed, a big sound that filled Cass’s heart and gave buoyancy to her own chuckle. “I’m with you, sweetheart.” The older woman sipped from the coffee in front of her, then leaned her forearms on the table and met Cass’s eyes. “Where did you go, Cassandra? Did you really believe I didn’t want you here? That I ever didn’t want you at all? That the people at the lake didn’t want you? Gianna Gallagher used to ask me, but I never said where you were, just that you were all right even though I was never really sure you really were.”
“Mother could be pretty convincing. You know that. It wasn’t until she got sick that she admitted she’d made most of it up, that you’d only been concerned about me staying with Nana and Grandpa because they weren’t all that well. I should have talked to you then.” Marynell had made other confessions, too, all in one long, pain-ridden night. She’d asked her daughter’s forgiveness and Cass had given it.
She hadn’t meant the words of forgiveness, but she’d said what a dying woman needed to hear. Six months and change later, she thought she’d done the right thing, but a pardoning heart had come harder than the words had.
“Will you forgive me?” she asked. “For believing her and for not making it right even when I knew better?”
“Oh, honey.” Zoey got up, came around the table and drew Cass out of the chair and into her arms. “Marynell was who she was and she couldn’t help that. We all fell prey to her at one time or another. Let’s just concentrate on not losing each other again. What do you say?”
“I’d like that a lot.”
When they were seated again, their cups refilled and second servings of dessert on plates in front of them, Zoey said, “What do you think of Luke?”
“He must be a good businessman. The orchard looks great.”
She thought more than that, of course. Noticed more.