His brother Tucker was in my class and he dated everyone, but he was such a nice guy you didn’t even mind it. Libby Worth—” she turned in a thoughtful half circle trying to get her bearings “—she was in my class, too. Her brother, Jesse, was a senior. They lived on the farm out by the winery. As a matter of fact, I think the winery used to be part of that farm.” She turned the rest of the way, heading back toward their cottage.
Royce stayed in step with her. “Who else do you remember?”
“Sam. We dated for a while.” The prom had been the last time they’d gone out. “His dad worked at Llewellyn Lures and his grandfather owned the hardware store. It was called Come On In. Sam had a bass voice you could lose yourself in. Gianna used to say he was Sam Elliott in training.”
“The hardware store’s still there,” said Royce. “I saw it when we drove through tonight. It was just down the street from the bulk food store where we got the pie from the Amish bakery.”
“We should probably get another one of those, since all that’s left of that is the pan,” said Cass drily. “Between that and the pizza, I’m still feeling fairly miserable, and we’ve been walking for at least a half hour.”
“I’m walking. You keep starting and stopping. There’s a difference.” Royce gave her a sisterly elbow that felt better than Cass could have begun to explain. “Come on. Who else?”
“Let me think. Nate Benteen. He was one of the best high school golfers in the country. He was so much fun! He and Holly kept us laughing all the time.”
“Which one was your BFF, the one you’d have stayed in contact with forever and ever if you had any normal social skills?”
“That was cold. And we didn’t say ‘BFF’ then,” Cass retorted. She walked a little farther, separating herself a few steps from Royce. Maybe her sister wouldn’t notice that her breathing had somehow gone awry or that the color had left her face—she’d felt the blood drain from her cheeks as soon as Royce asked the question.
She would say she didn’t remember if her sister pushed her for an answer. Chemo brain hadn’t entirely left her, after all. Getting lost in the middle of a conversation was nothing new. Rather, it was exhaustingly old. So was being pale and washed-out and a mere tracing of who she’d once thought she was.
“Cass, wait up.”
She realized her pace had taken her away from Royce as if her intent was to leave her behind. “Hey.” She stopped. “Can’t keep up with the old lady?”
“Y’know what?” Her sister caught up with her and tilted her head, waiting. Cass couldn’t look away from the blue-green eyes she knew were replicas of her own, a gift from their father.
“No,” she said lightly. “What?”
“You don’t have to answer me. I get that you’re the grown-up and I’m the kid. But don’t make things up or fluff things like those ‘alternative facts’ they talk about on television. If you don’t want to talk to me, just say so. I’ve been on my own most of my life, just like you. I can deal with it fine. I’ll see you back at the house.”
Royce took off at a run Cass couldn’t have kept up with on her best day, so she didn’t try. She went down to the path that followed the curves of the lake and sat on a park bench. She thought of those friends she’d told Royce about. They’d been closer than anyone she’d met in all the years both before and since. Although there’d been much to grieve for in that time, she mourned nothing more than the empty space she’d created in herself when she left the lake without looking back.
Cass closed her eyes, leaning her head back because suddenly it felt too heavy to hold up. With the scent and sound of the lake filling her senses, she remembered that year and gave herself permission to wallow in it.
Her father had been in Iraq, her mother in a new state, job and marriage that didn’t allot room for a recalcitrant daughter. Her grandparents had been willing to keep her for the school year, but not one minute longer. She was sixteen when she arrived at the lake, five feet eight inches of long brown hair and attitude. Especially attitude.
By the time she’d been there a week, improved posture had given her an additional inch and her hair had been streaked by the sun in a way she’d maintained until chemotherapy robbed her of it fifteen or so years later. She’d made more friends than she’d ever had at one time. She’d even been recruited for the high school volleyball team. “We suck,” Arlie had said complacently, “but we have so much fun.”
And they had. She’d spent as many nights at her friends’ houses as she had in her grandparents’ cramped cottage. She’d never missed attending a football or basketball game and the volleyball team had managed—for the first time in a history the length of which they exaggerated when they talked about it—to garner a winning season. She’d asked Mr. Harrison, the high school principal, if there was a writers’ club in the school, expecting to be either ignored or forgotten. Instead, he’d said there wasn’t such an organization at the present time and suggested she form one.
She wondered if the Write Now group still existed. Holly had thrown in with her to start monthly meetings. It had been a thrill, but not really a surprise, ten years before when she’d been in an airport bookstore and found a Holly Gallagher romance on the shelves. Cass had bought that book and at least one copy of the dozen the author had released since then. Sometimes in reading them, she thought Holly had written subliminal messages directly to her; however, life had taught her not to be fanciful, so she always set the notion aside. Mostly.
Sometimes, hidden in the chapters of her own Mysteries on the Wabash stories, Cass left messages to the friends she’d left behind. Of course, those friends didn’t know who Cassandra G. Porter was—they’d never understand the messages.
The sound of footsteps on the paved lake path brought her out of the pleasant reverie of memory, and she straightened in her seat on the bench.
“Hello.” The voice was cheerful, welcoming. A blast from the past that made Cass’s heart feel as if it blossomed in her chest, one whose name had been in her mind only seconds before. “Beautiful night, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She cleared her throat to make her voice audible, but her breath still hitched and hesitated on its way in and out. “It is.”
Not only did she know the musical voice of Holly Gallagher, she recognized the tall profile of the man who walked beside her. Jesse Worth. Always quiet, always a loner, and one of the good guys she’d known in her life. He’d been a gifted artist, but he had gone into the navy after high school and eventually become a veterinarian, opening his practice on the farm where he’d grown up.
Panic rose in her throat.
Cass hadn’t thought it through long enough before she came back. She hadn’t considered that she’d come face-to-face with the one person who would never want to see her under any circumstances. The one who’d loved Linda Saylors—the BFF Royce had wondered about—as much as Cass had. The one who would remember more than anyone else that Cass should have been sitting in the van seat Linda had occupied. The one who would know that on that prom night so long ago, it should have been Cass who died, not Linda.
* * *
LUKE STOPPED BY Zoey’s the next morning as he often did. It gave him a chance to keep her up on business concerns and to see if she needed anything done. She would never ask, but he was nosy enough that he could
