Page 3 of Free to Dream
As I make my way down the stairs, I pass family photos I’d carefully arranged on the stairwell walls. Each one is in black and white, meticulously framed. The earliest photo dates as far back to the day that Em and I won our rights to be declared legally emancipated minors. My eyes land on the photo that was taken the day Ali, Corinna, and Holly all graduated from their schools, and then to the one of us closing on the formerly dilapidated mansion on Main Street which, for a long time, served as not only our office, but our home.
Phillip, Emily, Alison, Corinna, Holly, and I aren’t what you would call a conventional family. We adopted one another as we found each other, gradually becoming a cohesive unit. You’d never know that it all started when a thirteen-year-old boy ran into a room one night and rescued a nine-year-old girl from the kind of torture people keep hidden from their children in polite households. Until we found each other and believed that the promises we made to one another were steadfast and true, none of us believed in the concept of anything.
Not pride, not beauty, and sure as hell not love.
Which is what makes the fact that the six of us own and operate Amaryllis Events, a wildly successful wedding and event service in New England, astounding.
Every single one of my family members are brilliant. From Phil and the way seasonal hues are embraced in his floral arrangements, to Em’s magical skills in finding just the right design for every bride and groom. Corinna’s sinfully decadent cakes, Holly’s stunning memories captured on film, and Ali’s deft capability to keep all of us out of every possible legal and financial mishap there could be, my pride in my family knows no bounds, even when I want to strangle them for being dramatic and overbearing. Even when I’m being driven to the edge of insanity because every one of them are lunatics in their own right. Their goal in life is to break me of my obsessive habit of organizing everything. Yet nobody minds when we’re on schedule for the weddings we plan and coordinate. My OCD isn’t going to change anytime soon.
I plop my chin in my hand and look at the list I left on the counter last night of things I have to complete today. Working out is the first item on the list. I figure that joyous task can wait until the sun starts to rise over the Berkshire Mountains. Items like reviewing my work calendar and grocery shopping, as well as laundry, are also listed. The final reminder for today is our family dinner.
I thump my head on the counter. While I normally love spending time with my brother Phillip, his husband Jason, and my sisters, they’re observant as hell. Phillip will take one look at me and determine that I’ve had less than six hours of sleep. He will undoubtedly ask about it, and that will spark my entire family into the fray.
It’s not the questions I mind. To be honest, I'm just weary of answering them again. The nightmares are always more frequent this time of the year. Probably because it was around this time, almost twenty years ago, that Phillip picked me up and saved me from a life worse than death.
I have no memory of my life before Phillip found me in that rancid little room. I had been bound and beaten, and so defeated. My wrists and legs were so bruised from the tape, from trying to pull away. My body was shaking from the repeated sodomy I’d endured that particular night and from the energy I expelled kicking the thin wall, praying for a miracle. Phillip picked me up gently and carried me away, having to soothe me like I was a wild animal. Twenty years later, there’s a part of me that still can’t wrap my mind around why he did what he did. I’ll just forever be grateful he did.
We’re free, but we weren’t supposed to be. No one would have believed that six individuals, children at best, surviving together under the circumstances would be safe. It’s a good thing we weren’t a bet. We never would have made the odds board.
Mentally berating myself for thinking of the past, I decide it’s time to stop reminiscing and check off another item on my list for today, starting with the laundry.
Rinsing out my coffee cup, I place it in the dishwasher before going upstairs. After starting a new load of laundry, I change into my running gear and head back to the kitchen.
Before I step outside of my home, I check the towels with a red pen.
* * *
Hours later,I’ve long since cooled off. I’m inside my office in leggings and a sweatshirt. After I returned from my torturous three-mile run and cleaning up, I quickly made my way into our office located in a converted mansion off Main Street in Collyer.
Collyer, Connecticut, population 21,522, is the sleepy little town the six of us had been looking for our entire lives. In our wildest dreams, as kids trying to survive, we never could have imagined the beauty of this town. Collyer is close enough to New York City when we need some excitement, or to celebrate some milestone in our lives. Gorgeous oak-lined streets boast several hundred-year-old trees whose colors are already turning a gorgeous bouquet of gold, red, and orange to celebrate the coming of fall.
After Phil—at age twenty, Em and I at age eighteen—finally helped Ali, Corinna, and Holly become emancipated, we started talking about where we would move to get out of the South. As someone who used to help him study to get his GED, I think it was the longest amount of time Phil had ever spent in a library before or since. Since we lived on such low overhead and with all of us working (including Ali, Corinna, and Holly, per their emancipation requirements), we had amassed a fairly substantial amount of money to put down on the start of our dream.
Now, sitting at my desk with my planners in front of me and my iPhone synchronizing with my Outlook calendar, I take a moment to look out my window, admiring the view I rarely get a moment to enjoy.
I admit it, I’m freakishly organized. It also makes me feel in control knowing company meetings are marked in blue, unmovable events are marked in pink, phone calls in green, and family events in purple. I find my spirit calms when my lists have items marked off and are not rolled over to the next day. I like knowing events are completed, on time, and under budget. My Erin Condren planner and iPhone calendar play off each other, making me highly effective. Adding an “rsvpBOOK” entry makes me one happy little Chief Executive Officer for our company. I lead my siblings, whose talents are many, though they lack the organization gene that is directly related to how our business flourishes.
Take Phillip for instance. I mean, what’s so hard about using the family calendar feature on our iPhones to indicate when Jason’s parents will arrive in town for your wedding so we can have the guest room at the farm ready for them? Leaving a sticky note under the windshield of my car during a summer storm so it’s blurred to resemble a Rorschach test is not an effective way of communicating important information. Hello? We’re a wedding planning service! Call and leave a message on our work line! He’s often an absentminded artist, but for all that is holy, there are days I’m amazed our business has stayed afloat.
Taking a final look at my planner and phone to make sure the calendar events are synchronized, I quickly scan back and forth, paging through the week before, letting out a slow, relieved breath. The scheduling is in place with enough time for contingencies.
Our family business has quite a few events taking place this week. Running a business the size of Amaryllis Events takes not only long hours, hard work, and talent, but quite a lot of planning and organization. Hence, why I’m CEO.
I suddenly realize it’s after ten and I haven’t eaten. I grab a protein bar, and as I munch my way through it, I jump in surprise when my office phone rings. I wait for the second ring before answering.
“Amaryllis Events, this is Cassidy Freeman. How can I help you?” I tuck the phone against my chin as I make my way to the other side of my desk.
“Yes. You can stop showing up for work when we have no events planned and making us look like complete assholes,” my sister Emily complains.
Out of all my sisters, Em, who is my complete opposite physically, is most like me from a comedic standpoint. Laughing, I sit down in my desk chair for a quick bitch session. I have plenty of time. “I’m not the only one here, Em,” I say mildly. “Phil is here as well.”
“That’s because Phil’s husband gets up at the ass crack of dawn to leave for work in the city,” Emily smarts back. “Phil just wants to blow out of work early some night this week, I’ll bet.” We both crack up, knowing Em speaks nothing but the truth about our brother.
“Seriously, Cass, you know if it wasn’t for Jason, Phil’s ass would still be gracing his gazillion thread count sheets. He would be bitching and moaning for one of his precious little sisters to bring him his coffee made to his liking. And like the little worshiping morons we are, we know one of us would succumb to his dumbass demands.”
My lips tip up before I laugh. “Em, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—thank God he married Jason.”
“Seriously, Cass, why are you at work on your day off,again?” Em questions, sounding concerned. “Is something bothering you? Is it the dreams? Are they back again?”
