How I Came to Sparkle Again (32 page)

It was strange how all winter she had known her mother wasn’t coming back, and she had appreciated how Jill was a nice babysitter, but now as she looked at this room, the permanency of the situation hit her again. Things had changed and they weren’t changing back.

She had noticed how her dad looked at Jill. She had noticed how Jill looked back. And while it made her uncomfortable, she never really saw it as much of a threat—until now. Until this moment when her father had carved out a part of their home for Jill. What did it mean? Was she part of the family now?

Cassie felt angry but didn’t know whom to feel angry at. Jill obviously was the outsider and an easy target. But her dad … Was he forgetting? Was he forgetting all about her mom? Was it happening? Was this how it happened—so slowly that it was easy not to notice, or at least in small amounts that were easier to swallow? She felt mad at him, too—mad at him for not freezing the moment in time when their family was together and happy, when everything was right in the world.

At the same time, she knew it was stupid to be mad at either of them. She knew Jill wasn’t trying to be her mother. She knew her dad could never forget. She knew this was just how things were now.

Still, as she looked at the new bed and all the empty space, she shook her head. She did not like it. Sure, she wanted Jill to be comfortable here. She just didn’t know if she wanted Jill to be
that
comfortable here. Cassie already had a family, and Jill wasn’t it.

chapter thirty

SNOW REPORT FOR APRIL 6

Current temperature: 36F, high of 38F at 3
P.M.
, low of 34F at 4
A.M.

Mostly clear with occasional showers. Winds out of the south at 10 mph.

94" mid-mountain, 106" at the summit. 0" new in the last 24 hours. 0" of new in the last 48.

Cassie had thought about the bedroom all day, so by the time she got home, she was ready to let Jill know where she stood. It wasn’t going to be pretty. She walked into the house and found Jill sitting at the dining room table reading her father’s paper. Coach Ernie’s dog, Amber, lay at her feet.

“Hey! I found a couple things for you while I was searching secondhand stores for copies of
Siddhartha
for Uncle Howard. Come look!”

Cassie suspended the speech she had prepared long enough to look at two cookbooks—one Thai and the other Italian vegetarian. “Thank you,” she said.

“How was your day?” Jill asked.

Cassie paused and bought herself some time by flipping through the cookbooks while she considered whether this might be an opening to say what she had wanted to say all day. Then she looked over at the paper Jill was reading and noticed it was the classifieds page. Jill had circled two ads. “What are you shopping for?”

Jill paused. “I’m not shopping for anything. Was your day okay?”

“Yeah, I guess it was okay,” Cassie answered. She sounded agitated. “Why won’t you tell me what you’re looking for?”

“Why won’t you tell me what’s bugging you?” Jill answered.

“What’s bugging me is how you and my dad look at each other, and how he took my mom’s things out of the laundry, and now he’s changed a whole room for you. Is he why you took this job? To position yourself to be his next wife?”

Jill was taken aback and paused to regroup. “I took this job because I needed the money. Over the last five months, though, I’ve grown to love you like family.…”

“But you’re not my family,” Cassie said. Finally, the words that had been building up pressure inside her all day exploded out like gas.

“You just made it so much easier to tell you what I need to tell you,” Jill said.

“What,” Cassie said, more like a demand than a question.

Jill set down the classifieds so Cassie could see. “This isn’t how I wanted to talk to you about this. Look, Cassie, I won’t be able to afford to keep this job much longer. Ski patrol season is over. Even with both jobs, it wasn’t really enough to live on. When my divorce is final, I’ll need the salary and insurance I had with my old job. I’ll need to go back into nursing.”

Cassie stared at her as if she had been betrayed. “Does Dad know about this?”

“I talked to him a little bit about it.”

“He didn’t tell me,” Cassie said.

“I don’t know why he changed up the room, Cassie. It’s possible it’s to make the job more appealing for the next person. I don’t know. I do know he’s not ready for a new woman in his life. He’s a great man. Of course I notice that. But we’ve all been through a lot. And my hiatus here is about up.” Jill put her hands up. “I’m no threat. You don’t have to tell me I’m not family.”

Cassie scowled at her and then marched off to her bedroom and slammed the door. She wished there had been a way to take the cookbooks with her without looking like a sellout, but there wasn’t, so she left them behind. How soothing it would have been to look at pictures of food and lists of ingredients. What a welcome relief it would have been to step out of all the noise in her mind and think about something else. There was so much noise in her mind, she couldn’t hear her own thoughts. So many conflicting things. So much confusion. So much raw emotion—abandonment, anger, guilt.

She opened her math book and began converting fractions to decimals. Part of her hoped that she would hear a knock on her door any second and that Jill would come in, sit on the edge of her bed, and somehow make everything okay. The other part of her hoped that Jill would knock on the door, open it, and then fall down when Cassie threw her math book and hit her in the head with it. But Jill didn’t knock on the door.

Instead, she just left Cassie a plate of food in the refrigerator, brushed her teeth, and crawled into her new bed. Cassie had heard each step through the thin walls. For a moment, she considered knocking on Jill’s door, but she didn’t know what she would say. Maybe
I love you like family, too.
Or maybe
How could you leave me?

chapter thirty-one

SNOW REPORT FOR APRIL 12

Current temperature: 38F, high of 40F at 3
P.M.
, low of 33F at 4
A.M.

Mostly cloudy with occasional showers. Winds out of the south at 15 mph.

286" at the base, 454" at the summit. 0" new in the last 24 hours. 0" of new in the last 48.

It was Jill’s second night at Cassie’s since the “exchange.” The first night may not have counted, since Cassie had stayed at the library until it closed, then come home, eaten leftovers out of the fridge, and gone straight to bed. They had avoided each other the next morning as well.

Cassie was gone when Jill first arrived on this late afternoon as well. She went to the kitchen and began to cut celery, broccoli, onion, zucchini, and carrot for a stir-fry. She cut the celery, zucchini, and carrot diagonally, the way Cassie liked.

She had been wondering how she might have handled that moment with Cassie better. She had felt backed into a corner. It was hard to tell someone you loved them like family only to have them remind you that you aren’t their family—even if it was a hurting little kid. Still, she was the adult, Jill thought. Some damage had been done, and a ten-year-old was unlikely to have the skills to fix it. Fixing something was a difficult idea, though. Words can’t be unsaid. Feelings can’t be unhurt.
Sometimes,
Jill thought,
you just have to go on.

So when Cassie came home, Jill served up dinner, and they sat together awkwardly at the dining table. Jill asked Cassie about her day, and Cassie answered. Cassie complimented Jill on dinner, and Jill said thank you.

And then Cassie said, “I wasn’t really mad at you. It’s just sometimes I want my mom back so bad.”

“These are tough times,” Jill replied, because the other replies weren’t true. She couldn’t say,
I understand
. She didn’t understand. She understood a little, but no one really understands what it’s like to be anyone else. And she couldn’t say,
That’s okay,
because it wasn’t okay to be hurtful, even when you’re hurting. “The best we can do is be more gentle with one another in the future.”

“I don’t want you to leave me, too,” Cassie said.

It was the “too” at the end of that statement that made Jill’s eyes well up. The conversation seemed to slow down. “I meant what I said, Cassie. I do love you like family. I don’t want to leave you. Life is complicated. I’m on my own now. My choices are pretty limited.”

“I know,” Cassie said, as if she understood.

Things felt different. It was as if they were on different sides of a river. But at least now there was a bridge.

chapter thirty-two

SNOW REPORT FOR APRIL 23

Current temperature: 30F, high of 33F at 3
P.M.
, low of 26F at 4
A.M.

Cloudy, winds out of the southwest at 10 mph with gusts of up to 20 mph.

Lifts closed.

As Cassie and Mauricio walked out of the Sparkle Public Library, Cassie heard a woman call Mauricio from down the street.

He looked up, said to Cassie, “Come on,” and started to walk toward the woman who had called him.

She was short—not much taller than Mauricio—and her long dark hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail. Her nose bent a little to the right, and her smile was big and generous.

“Mama,”
Mauricio said, “
se llama Cassie.
Cassie, this is my mother, Esmeralda.”

Esmeralda shook Cassie’s hand.
“Mucho gusto,”
she said.

“Mucho gusto,”
Cassie repeated back.

Mauricio and his mother began to converse in Spanish, and although Cassie didn’t understand what they were saying, she picked up on a few things. She heard the word
casa
and saw Mauricio point toward her house. She heard the word
padres
and saw Mauricio shrug. He gave a long explanation of something, and at the end, she heard, “…
no … mama.
”

Whatever he said elicited a huge sympathetic response from Esmeralda. Cassie realized he knew. Even though she had never told him, he knew.

“My mother says to have dinner with us,” Mauricio said.

“Enchiladas,” Esmeralda said enticingly. It was impossible not to like her instantly.

“I have to ask my father,” Cassie answered.

Mauricio translated and then said to her, “I walk with you.” He hugged and kissed his mother good-bye.

Esmeralda reached out for Cassie’s hand again.
“Hasta luego,”
she said, and held Cassie’s hand for a moment. Cassie nodded and smiled, and then they parted ways.

As Cassie and Mauricio walked toward her house, she said, “Your mother is nice.”

“Yes,” Mauricio said.

“My mother is in heaven,” Cassie said plainly, figuring she wasn’t telling him anything he hadn’t figured out.

“Where?” he asked.

“My mother is with God,” Cassie restated.

“I thought maybe,” Mauricio said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Cassie thought she heard pity in his voice and was sad that their friendship would be ruined now. She always knew that one day Mauricio would learn enough English that the topic would come up and their friendship would run its course.

“My dad is with God,” he said.

This Cassie did not expect. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“He work at store. Men come…” He mimed a gun and shot it. Then he shook his head.

“I’m so sorry,” Cassie said, and even though when you’re ten, you don’t put your arm around your best friend if he’s a boy, she did anyway, but just for a second.

Mauricio looked over at her. “We eat enchiladas tonight.” The conversation was over, at least for the time being. And to Cassie it seemed they were still friends.

*   *   *

Mike called Jill, and when she answered he said, “Quick! Cassie’s having dinner at Mauricio’s. It’s my big chance to have dinner with a grown-up who isn’t a firefighter! Are you free? Would you be my dinner date?”

“Sure.” She laughed.

In his fake ladies’ man voice, he said, “I’ll walk over and pick you up.” Then he returned to speaking normally. “How much time do you need?”

“By the time you get here, I’ll be ready,” she said.

“Sweet,” he replied, and hung up. He wrote Cassie a note, combed his hair, popped a breath mint, put on his coat, and left the house. Every second of this rare freedom counted.

As he knocked on her door, he realized he hadn’t picked up a date in fourteen years. Should he have brought flowers? No, that would have been over the top. Regardless of where his thoughts sometimes went, they were just friends, right? Just friends.

She opened the door. She looked pretty. Should he tell her she looked pretty? Would that be nice, or would that be creepy because they still had a professional relationship? Instead, he simply asked, “What are you hungry for?”

“Food,” she answered as she shut the door behind her. “Any kind.”

“I’ve been craving Chinese,” he said. “What do you think about that?”

“Perfect.”

As they walked to the Golden Dragon, Mike noticed new buds on most of the trees. He noticed some crocus in Julie and Jason’s yard, pushing their way out of the dirt. He noticed the chickadees singing. Everywhere, life was returning.

At the Golden Dragon, he and Jill slid into a booth together, and suddenly the date took on a whole new level of real for him. Sure, on one hand he was just having dinner with a friend. But on the other hand, he wouldn’t have been doing this if Kate were alive, and that made it strange.