“Jeeves, I’m home.”
Cassie’s keys clanked inside the tidy, porcelain bowl beside the front door as she proceeded to slip off her coat. Jeeves took his time greeting her—the selfish thing—determined to watch a cardinal bouncing lightly across her front yard instead. Only at the sound of his food clattering into the ornate and entirely-too-expensive-to-be-a-cat-bowl dish did he drop off the window ledge. He gave an appreciative rub against the side of her leg and dug in.
Her phone dinged as she picked up his water bowl.
The notifications from her dating app always gave a lighthearted ping whenever she received a message from an interested hunter. When she’d started the dating app a year ago, she’d optimistically called them suitors. As time went on and she got more and more acquainted with their characters, they’d dropped down to men and then humans, shortly after scum bags, and finally rested comfortably at hunters. Still, that ding was addicting and so chipper nobody could resist its siren call. Surely whoever’d invented that ding was a billionaire.
Unconsciously she fell into the familiar habit of checking the app, no less certain of her plans to terminate the profile tonight, while setting the fountain bowl in the sink and turning on the water. As it began to fill, she read the message.
Dear Cassie.
Not Kassie, not Casey, and not Hey, Smokin’ Hot Lady. So far so good.
I’ve never been on this site before.
Ah. The classic “I’ve never been on this site before, was in fact heading to the monastery to swear off hope of love forever . . . until I saw you” line. Her hand lowered an inch toward the counter.
But when I was scrolling through I saw you—
She put the phone on the counter and turned off the running faucet.
No more. Suddenly, finally, she knew without a doubt she couldn’t handle one more excruciating message. She picked up her phone again and deleted the app without a moment’s pause.
At last.
Freed.
“Jeeves, if you ever go out searching for a Mrs., make sure to skip the sweet talking.” She raked her hands through her hair. “And you have to stop talking to your cat, Cassie,” she added, then bit her lip. “And yourself.”
The house was quiet. She felt the day drag her toward the freezer, leading her to pull out the small, prepackaged box of frozen tikka masala. Three minutes and twenty-five seconds later, Cassie tucked her feet under her as she sat on the glider by the window in her modest living room. Jeeves jumped onto his sill beside her.
Some nights she turned on the television or a Pandora station just so she couldn’t hear her own breath, but tonight she couldn’t even muster that. Tonight, without her mother or Bree or teens to distract her and love on her and harass her and ultimately give her the strength to feel like it wasn’t so bad after all, she just wanted to grieve. Just tonight. Just for a few absurd, self-wallowing minutes alone.
It felt silly to mourn the loss of something that never had been in the first place, but if she had to name the feeling, that was the word she would use. Mourning.
She was all too aware that people faced harder problems every day. She knew she had every reason to be thankful: An incredible pair of parents who were healthy and supportive and lived only a handful of miles away. A wonderful older sister, a sturdy brother-in-law, and two fantastic nieces and a nephew to dote on. Supportive friends, and a job she loved. She was financially stable and, apart from the accident and its aftermath, in tip-top shape. She was truly, truly grateful.
But tonight she looked at her white-slipcovered couch and matching loveseat and couldn’t help but notice how clean, and how empty, they were. When she went over to her sister’s place, Emily was usually scrubbing something her nieces and nephew had gotten into: the walls from bright purple marker, the carpet from apple juice, the couch from where one niece had smeared her peanut-butter-and-jelly lips across it like a paper towel. In those moments Emily tended to carry a frantic edge in her tone, her eyes always roving around corners as if waiting for the next crisis—crash, tear, or stain.
Right then, there was nothing Cassie wouldn’t give for a long streak of red crayon across her perfectly white couch.
She sighed and rubbed her weary eyes before looking out the window. From the four-bedroom house and five acres inherited from her grandparents, only two other brick residences rested within seeing distance, propped along their own hills of pasture. Smoke lifted from the Smiths’, where no doubt Mr. Smith was spending the hours busily pushing the children aside as he added wood to the fire. He was a man who loved his fires.
A few stubborn leaves clung to the branches of the large maple on her front lawn. One, especially stubborn in maintaining its rich auburn hue, finally gave in and let itself drift slowly to the awaiting pile. Cassie rose and took with her the empty plastic bowl.
Time was up.
She conceded to background music and spent the next two hours in miscellaneous odds and ends, dusting the already dust-free coffee table, taking a broom across her kitchen floor. She was halfway through spraying down the toilet when her phone rang, the Jaws theme song notifying her it was Bree.
She cradled the phone to her ear as she kept working. “Hey, Bree. What’s up?”
“I’m about to do something, and I want to make absolutely sure you are going to remember how much you love me when this is all over. Do you think you can do that?”
“It depends.” Cassie picked up the scrubber. “Will I be publicly humiliated?”
“Nope.”
“Will I appreciate whatever you are about to do?”
“Yep.”
Cassie began scrubbing. “Will you tell me what you are planning?”
“Not in a million years.”
Cassie pursed her lips. This type of conversation was hardly surprising; Bree occasionally threw Cassie into situations “for her own good” and so they had something to talk about—besides a life of cleaning toilet bowls—when they were ninety years old together.
“Fine. I trust you. But don’t mess with my Thanksgiving. I’m going to be over at Mom’s all day.”
Cassie could practically hear Bree’s mischievous lips creeping upward in a smile. “You won’t regret this. Well, I take that back. There’s a small possibility you might, but what’s life without risk?”
“Wait. How much of a risk are we talking here—”
The line, however, went dead before Cassie could finish her question.