Page 36 of Cascade

I slide it out to bring it to her, and the notifications light up on the screen. It’s a voicemail transcript from her dad. I guess she missed his call.

I toss the trash bag into the can out back and I know I shouldn’t look down and read what he sent her, but I catch the words “bitch” and “selfish,” and I lean against the back door in shock as I read the transcribed ravings of the worst man I know.

The preview I have access to cuts off somewhere in between him calling her ungrateful and accusing her of abandoning him on a major holiday. I see there is a series of other notifications from him from the past few days. He must have been leaving her similar messages all week, demanding that she what? Provide him with a meal for Thanksgiving?

I feel sick to my stomach that she is so caring, so willing to give so much of herself to her patients and the one person in her life she’s supposed to be able to rely on attacks her this way. I start when I feel her hand on my arm. “Opal.” My voice is hoarse, my throat thick. “I didn’t mean to read this, but what the fuck, baby?”

Her eyes sink as she takes the phone back from my hand. “I would have deleted it. I don’t need to read it to know what it says.”

“He talks to you this way?” She nods. “Like all the time?”

“It’s not him, Archer. It’s the alcohol. He is angry and grieving and depressed and hasn’t had anyone.” She shrugs.

“He’s had you,” I tell her. “And he fucked that up, Precious. He fucked that up and I don’t want you to have to put up with that abuse anymore.”

“What am I supposed to do,” she challenges me. “If I block his number, how are the police going to reach me when he gets arrested? How am I going to claim his body when he dies in a frozen alley someday and gets picked up by the garbage men?”

“I’m really not sure that’s how next of kin contact information works, but I see your point.” I can see her trembling and I know I’m way out of my element here. “Opal,” I tell her, “There’s nothing I know how to say to make you feel better here. But I need to let you know that I care about you, and it makes me fucking irate that anyone on earth talks to you this way. Let alone your father. I fucking hate that you’ve had to just deal with all of this.”

She stares off into my parents’ back yard, listening as the creek bubbles through the frozen ground behind my family’s land. “I’m not going to let you pity me, Archer.” She grits her teeth and her hands ball into fists.

“Pity you? Jesus. Opal, I’m in awe of you,” I tell her. I see my brother and Asa coming to look for me to keep helping with dishes. They catch sight of the glare in my eyes and duck back into the kitchen. “What would help right now?”

“I was fine,” she tells me. “I was bonding with your damn sister and telling your parents about my research. I was ignoring my father. You are the one who is upset here by my trashy father’s alcoholic ravings.”

I nod. “That’s fair. But now you’re upset with me.”

“Well, yeah!” She yells. And then I realize something.

“But you haven’t stormed off yet or started ignoring me.” And then I grin, because that’s some major progress for Opal and me.

She rolls her eyes. “If I weren’t so full I probably would leave,” she says. And she goes back inside, leaving me to scour the pans while Asa tries to explain football to Hunter.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Opal

I STOP BY my apartment after dinner with Archer’s family. I told him I wanted to go alone and grab my laundry and supplies for Oscar. I need time to just think after our argument out back.

I feel so many layers of emotion from today, it’s like I have whiplash.

The house smells…better. Only very faintly of skunk. I know I should grab my cat and move back. Staying with Archer is too risky. I’m only just starting to figure out how to understand my emotions, how to rationally assess whether I’m upset about something important or “making a big deal out of nothing,” like my father ground into my head on repeat growing up.

In my last session with Pam, she encouraged me to assess the source of my concerns. I get her point—that I need to learn to trust my instincts, and really look at all the data that shows I’m usually pretty good about knowing what’s going on in a given situation.

But I still feel like such a stunted human compared to Archer. He has this rich network of people who love him, who support him. People he can call for advice. Decades of experience being told his ideas were great and just the freedom of walking through the world trusting his own thought processes. What have I got to offer him?

I chew on my cheek, because Archer seems to want me at his place. Staying with him.

And it’s like a fantasy being there. To wake up beside him every day, or sometimes jolted from sleep by his face between my legs.

Whenever I try to bring up moving back to my place, he gets overcome with lust and I forget to bring it up again by the time he’s had his way with me. I blush and grab a week’s worth of clothing from my dresser. I move all my birth supplies to my car just in case any of my patients go into labor while I’m playing house.

When I get back to his place, Archer is asleep in bed with my cat on his bare chest. I think about how visceral his anger was for me—not at me, but for me, because someone had done something to hurt me and that very idea shook Archer Crawford to his noble core.

My phone rings again and when I see that it’s my father, I decide for once to answer it.

Snow starts to fall the next morning as I make my way to Ivy’s aerial silk studio for Abigail’s baby shower. The inside has been transformed—the long silks tucked up into dips and colorful waves. Diana has brought in tables and chairs, and Ivy has placed bean bags and giant cushions around the room for people to lounge, gather and talk.

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