But what if…
The truth is I never loved Cassie. I tried. Not because she was my sister, but because I felt like I had to. I owed it to Rae.
I wanted a family, not just the two of us, arealfamily,Rae told me two weeks before her death.I’m going to have to hope you girls become closer when I’m gone.She’d never had much of a family herself, and after her husband left, she couldn’t accept that it was going to be just Cassie and her. Even if she’d met somebody else one day, it probably would have been too late to have another child. How convenient that she happened to hear about a girl in need—me—to fill the void. I never quite got the full story, but Rae and my mother were distant relatives. They’d met maybe once before. Yet, that was enough for Child Services to contact Rae and ask if she might find it in her heart to take in a little girl who’d lost everything.
But Cassie and I never became sisters. I was her sidekick, her punching bag, her emotional support animal, a human pet. I still remember the day I came to live with them on a freezing November morning. A week later, I joined the local school midterm. Cassie wasted no time in telling the entire class what happened to me.This is Taylor! Wanna know why she’s here?That story never left me. From then on, I was always Poor Taylor.
Sometimes I wish they’d never found me in that car. Deep down I always felt that my mother would have come back for me. She would have remembered, eventually. She would have saved me before it was too late. It was a mistake. An honest mistake.
But of course I could never know for sure. What if she really had left me to die? From day one, Cassie sensed the insecurities within me. The doubt. Did my mother love me, despite what happened? Did anyone? What about my father? Did he want me? Would he ever rescue me? Cassie found everylittle wound and picked at the scabs. Scratched them until they got infected all over again. If someone couldn’t immediately remember my name, or if Rae forgot to sign a slip from the school, Cassie would run around the house and scream,Taylor is so forgettable!I never said anything. Even as a child I understood it was the price I had to pay for safety. For having survived.
Back on my screen, Cassie is soaking deep in the bath now, a nearly empty glass of wine perched on a marble shelf next to her. She looks glowing, her eyes shiny, somewhat empty. She’s staring at the camera. At me. I take a sip of my own wine and stare back.
The fog clears, at last, and I accept what I must have known from the start. She’s doing this for me.Tome. For a while I told myself it was about Darren. Cassie was so mad when he dumped her in the spring. Breaking up had been her thing;she’dcalled the shots all these times. And then her father had the nerve to die right after that. When she turned up with Olivier, when he stuck around despite looking miserable, when she stayed with him even though they spent less and less time together, I tried so hard not to take the bait. Even when she bragged about him being French, even when she joked, repeatedly, about how she couldn’t wait to go visit his family in Paris. I took deep breaths and buried myself deeper in my work, taking any new shifts I could find, staying out of the house as much as possible.
Eventually she’d move on. She always did. It was the same with all her boyfriends. When Darren wasn’t in the picture, there was always a new one, and they knew instantly that I didn’t matter.You have a sister?they’d say when they came to pick her up and saw me lurking in the shadows. Cassie would shrug like,Oh, her?Then she’d check that her mother wasn’t listening before adding,She’s not my sister.
On the rare occasions when a guy actually paid attention to me, Cassie’s radar would light up. She’d make sure he knew what happened when I was a child. She’d bump into him everywhere, all suggestive smiles and low-cut tops.
My first kiss happened junior year with Bobby—a sweet but awkward boy with thin lips and bad acne. We went out for three blissful weeks. Suddenly, he started avoiding me at school, ignored my text messages, and didn’t answer the door when I went to his house, even though I could see him through the window. It had to be Cassie’s doing, though I never found out for sure.
I didn’t lose my virginity until I was twenty, to a coworker at the restaurant where I waited tables who only spoke to me when no one else was watching. I wish I could say I was proud enough to stop seeing him, but soul-crushing loneliness makes you do strange things.
My first—and only—real relationship started a few years later with Jayden, a guest at the inn who was passing through, from Buffalo. He was a writer, staying with us until the beginning of a three-month creative retreat in the Catskills. He had wavy hair and wore only plaid shirts. Cassie was with Darren then, sleeping at his place most nights. She didn’t notice Jayden’s interest in me until it was too late to sway him.
I’d visit him at his retreat any chance I got—I’m not sure he got much work done, and the other writers looked at us with a mix of disdain and envy—and I counted down the days to the end, tears streaming down my cheeks. But right before he was due to leave, Jayden asked if I’d ever thought of getting out of town. I could come back with him to Buffalo, see something different. A blink and I was driving off with him and the two duffel bags I’d packed in a hurry.
I got a job at a bar, rented a room above it, and spent my free time waiting for Jayden to call, which, after the first month, happened less and less frequently. He was always writing, always working, and yet always asking to borrow money.
Over a year, that’s how long it took me to discover he had another girlfriend and that she had a toddler, his child. One might think that would have been enough for me to leave. It wasn’t. I continued to pretend, to accept any scraps of attention he was willing to give. I’d gotten out of thathouse, away from that family where I never belonged. I had my own life. I called Rae most weeks but I must have spoken to Cassie all of three times while I was there.
And then, one day, it was Rae who reached out. She’d been diagnosed with lung cancer. The doctors estimated she had months to live, a couple of years at most. She could use a little help at home, both of her daughters by her side. It was my choice to go back, but it didn’t feel like one.
I pour myself another glass of wine and put my phone facedown on the tiny nightstand. Taking a long sip, I try to focus on the warm notes, the fruitiness. I can still walk away. I can be here, but not with Cassie, notbecauseof her. I can put that life behind me and look forward.
Except I can’t.
I’ve lost everything.Everything.Family and love and even my home. I shouldn’t have gotten on that plane. I shouldn’t have started following them. Shouldn’t have stolen her bag.
But there was nothing to stop me.No one.
So I grab my bag and retrieve Cassie’s wallet. I’d give a million dollars to see the look on her face if she found out that I’m the one who stole it, thatIhave the credit card she so urgently needs. Of course I don’t have a million dollars; Cassie does. But, emptying the contents on my bed, I discover something else: her hotel key card in a paper sleeve marked with the room number. Maybe it doesn’t work anymore. Maybe she reported it as stolen and the front desk issued her a new card, deactivating this one in the process.
Or maybe it does.
And maybe I’m done watching her live this grand life of hers through a screen.
Maybe I’m done with Cassie altogether.
I gulp down the rest of my wine and put the card in the back pocket of my jeans. After slipping into my ballet flats, I pull my hair into a low ponytail and cover it with my cap.
I worry about her, Rae whispered to me before she died.I don’t know how she will look after herself. Promise me you’ll be there for her.Rae had tried to squeeze my hand, but she had no strength, no more fight in her.She is your family. She has been for most of your life. Promise me you’ll look after Cassie.
The pleading tone in her barely there voice had tugged every which way at my heartstrings. I was haunted by this moment for a long time. This woman had brought me into her world, but now she acted like I was merely on the edge of it. There was no varnish on her feelings anymore. In death she knew who her true daughter was.
Rae was so weak then, her mind unable to focus for more than a few minutes. So I don’t think she realized this: I didn’t actually promise. I never uttered the words. Deep down I always knew I’d have to put Cassie behind me, somehow, someday.
I think that moment has come.
