Page 165 of Family Affair
“You’re silly.” She smiled. He didn’t understand. She hadn't either, thinking herself mad so many times. “Since the first time I saw that photograph of you at Dan’s house, I had the right puzzle piece in my hands. It just took me too long to find the correct fit. I know exactly who you are.”
He sighed, a deep, contented sigh of a man whose world had tilted and righted itself again. She knew because she was in the same boat with him.
“I will never regain my old name.”
“Because of the Stevie Stark murder case attached to Frank?”
“That, and because there is no proof to my claim. Alex burned it.”
“Do you want your old name back that much?”
He looked at her with surprise in his eyes. “It’s what I have always wanted. It kept me going all these years, the hope that one day the lies would come to an end.”
“They did.”
“And yet I’m Cade.”
“And you are. But Cade also died on that stormy night. You aren’t the Cade who died. You aren’t your brother. You made a new man, from the broken pieces of Frank and the new reality you’ve been given. You’re both Cade and Frank, and you’re neither. You’re you. Oh, why is it so hard to find the right words?” Drugs kept pulling at Coco’s mind, threatening to take her out. Her tongue felt as useful as a slice of bologna in her mouth for all its ability to form words. Her mind was wandering. She gripped his hand tighter.
“Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t leave you. You’re all I have. You’re all that matters.”
Still gripping his hand, she let herself float giving in to the drugs and the sleep they induced. She knew he wouldn't be there when she woke up, but it didn’t upset her.
He was real.
