Page 262 of Mad Girl

“Well, now, dear,” she said, lowering her glasses to eye me, “you asked.”

“I didn’t ask for details.” I shivered, thoroughly repulsed. “How do you know that about them, anyway?”

Eleanor tapped her earlobe. “I have a knack for discovering these things.” She obviously noted the grimace still present on my face, because she added, “I once overheard Libby saying so to a friend, Elliot. I’m not depraved.” Her gaze drifted back to the news. “Oh, when they first met, your dad was head over heels for Libby—invited her to the house on breaks, asked her to spend entire summers with us, even traveled to Iceland with her family once. He and Libby were inseparable during their time at boarding school together—during college, too. All three of them were. Your dad, Libby, and John.”

“But my dad and Libby were together first?” I asked.

“They were.” She tapped the eraser end of the pencil against her chin, pensive. “But something must’ve happened, because suddenly she was with John. And then, a little while later, she went back to Nicholas. She went back and forth between the boys for a while. In fact, I found it difficult to keep track of which boy she was seeing at any given time. Gabe always said—well, I won’t tell you what Gabe said. What your grandfather suggested back then actually was depraved.”

I could only guess. Namely, the throuple theory. Which must’ve seemed downright scandalous to someone like Eleanor. Especially in the early 2000s. “Wow,” I said. “My dad and Libby. Just—wow.”

“If you want to know the truth,” said Eleanor, “I wasn’t very fond of Libby when they were kids. I didn’t particularly like the idea of her being with my Nicholas at all—until that awful mother of yours came along. Next to her, Libby looked like an angel.”

I scoffed at this. “What was so bad about my mom?”

“Oh, that girl was diabolical,” Eleanor said, her gaze wide and serious. “A horrible human being. She made your father miserable. I kept telling him to forget about her, to walk away, but he kept letting himself be pulled under her spell, kept forgiving her, kept letting her stay. Until the day she finally did something he couldn’t forgive.”

“What did she do?”

Eleanor blinked, as if coming out of a trance. “She abandoned you, dear.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, chest expanding with a sigh. Every time I asked about my mother, they led me here. Always here. To this inevitable dead end.

She abandoned you.

But it never felt like a full explanation, Casey. Never felt like the full truth.

“I have another question,” I rushed to say as Eleanor glanced down at her crossword, her pencil poised midair. “Did you ever know a girl named Cassandra?”

Eleanor lowered her crossword, her gaze holding mine. “You know about Casey,” she said. A statement, not a question.

“He told me.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Told you? Of his own free will?”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, he was kind of forced to after I snooped around in my dad’s office.”

“That’s what I thought.” Smirking, she said, “Your mother introduced me to a girl named Cassandra.” Her eyes glazed over as she stared off into the distance. “Beautiful girl. Kind and considerate. Sweet. Grew up in foster care. Didn’t have a family. Didn’t have the means to support herself. I offered to support her financially, just until she got on her feet. I tried—repeatedly—but she refused to accept financial help. She didn’t want to be a burden, she said…not to anyone.”

So it was my mom who had introduced your biological mother to Eleanor, which definitely made sense. They worked at the bar together. They were maybe even friends. It sounded like Cassandra had turned to a reliable adult for help, and Eleanor had offered to support her, giving Cassandra the ability to raise you on her own.

This endeared Eleanor to me—that she would try her best to keep a mother and child together meant she wasn’t as cold as I thought. She did have maternal instincts. I could’ve thrown myself across the sofa to hug her, but of course I didn’t.

“What about John?” I asked. “He didn’t know?”

“According to Cassandra, he knew of the pregnancy early on, but she told him she planned to terminate it. She said he begged her to keep the baby, to let them be a family, but she told him no, then quit at the bar where she worked. She moved without telling him, making it impossible for John to locate her. She thought it would ruin his future—his good name—to be tied down to her, and the Harrises thought so, too, apparently, when John had taken her to meet his family once. But John didn’t agree. He wouldn’t listen to reason, she said. He wanted to be with her no matter what. And, tragically, she wouldn’t let him.”

“Except if she had,” I pointed out, “there would be no Michael.” And that would be a tragedy, too. A world where Michael didn’t exist. Michael or Bree.

“That’s true,” said Eleanor, dropping the pencil and picking up her tea. She traced the cup’s gilded rim with her finger. “But John was devastated when Cassandra disappeared. Your mom and dad had just returned from Europe when John came over to see Nicholas, and even I could see that John was a mess. I hadn’t met Cassandra yet—didn’t know she existed—but it was apparent someone had broken his heart. The boys started their sophomore year of college, John and Libby got back together, and Victoria ran off to California—again.”

“Again?” I asked.

“Yes, she had a habit of doing that, often devastating your father. Then one day, close to Halloween, Victoria appeared on my doorstep, clutching the hand of this beautiful pregnant girl—Cassandra. After making the introduction, Victoria asked me to keep her own whereabouts a secret. She didn’t want your father to know she was in Boston for the weekend, you see, and I was more than happy to comply. What Nicholas didn’t know wouldn’t break his heart—again. By then, Cassandra was in her second trimester and needed a plan. And John, for his part, seemed to be in better spirits.” She held up one finger. “Until Libby told him she was pregnant right after Christmas break, and then John—well—John lost it.”

“Lost it?” I’d always heard John had trouble wrapping his mind around being a father, but none of the adults had ever gone into much detail. “How do you mean? Lost it how?”

“Oh, he went on these horrible drinking binges. Your dad spent many a night dragging him away from that bar where Cassandra had worked. In fact, John had caused such a ruckus there that the bar owner forbade him to come back. He’d deteriorated to the point where Libby asked your dad to step in and be a father to Michael, because she worried John wouldn’t be able to handle it. Your mother had been gone for months by that time, and your dad was still single. Single, mind you, but still reeling from losing her. But Nicholas, he put his own heartache aside to focus on John, and a few months before Michael was born, he was able to pull John out of it. He was probably the only person who could.”