Page 8 of Free to Run
Keene
If it wasn’t for the cleaning people Cassidy had arranged, I’m certain I wouldn’t be relaxing with a beer, contemplating tonight’s family dinner at the farm. Instead, I’d likely be searching the internet for a hazardous-waste company that could come and eliminate the mutant life-forms certain to be left growing inside my fridge.
Taking a deep breath, I inhale the clean scent of lemon. It’s good to be back, knowing I’ll be staying in my own space for longer than a few days for the first time in months. I hate hotels.
Absentmindedly, I rub my forehead. A picture on the credenza of me and Cassidy dancing at her wedding captures my attention. If I’m brutally honest, I still struggle with such conflicting emotions whenever I think of her, which is often.
Thank God I no longer wonder if she’s safe and happy. That, I can say is true, with one hundred percent certainty.
I can’t figure out my feelings, and that annoys the shit out of me. I’ve been forcing myself to confront them, to get to a place where I’m comfortable around this new status quo.
For so long, my search to find out what happened to my missing sister was a mission of justice, a right to be wronged. Simple, definable, and relentless. I never said it out loud, but in the back of my mind, I imagined it would end with my finding her dead. It’s why her real name is tattooed on my leg. A brutal weight to carry with me as I traveled through this life.
Now, that weight is gone.
If I had any faith left, I might conclude that my tattoo was the catalyst that brought Cassidy back to me, but I prefer to think it was something in the recesses of her mind, calling her home.
Moving toward the credenza, I pick up the picture. Cassidy looks like our deceased mother, so much so that I can’t believe I didn’t recognize her from the first meeting the second our eyes met. I can’t believe I let my bitterness blind me to what was right in front of me.
It’s next to impossible for me to reconcile that less than a year ago, I was still searching for her. And where did I find her? In Collyer, planning a wedding I was going to attend. My company was responsible for completing a background check on her siblings, their business, and her—the adopted family my company had investigated in the past.
Even more incredulous was the fact that Cassidy managed to fall in love with Caleb, my best friend since childhood. He’d disregarded all the odds stacked against him, including my own warning about the ethical compromise of getting involved with someone we’d previously investigated.
Still holding the picture, I brace my other forearm against the pre-war windows, squinting against the light flooding into my condo. The first time I met Cassidy, long before I realized she was my sister, Caleb brought her to a party we were all at. I confronted her, asking flat out if she thought it was ethical for her to see him because she was in a business relationship with his family. Cassidy, knowing her self-worth, and not devolving into my game of one-upmanship, managed to turn my words back on me. I smile, remembering that conversation.
After my initial suspicions about Cassidy’s identity lodged in my brain and wouldn’t leave, I practically stalked her. Hell, who am I kidding? There’s no “practically” about it. I accessed data I never should have been privy to, proving my suspicions. When I read what her life had been like in the years between, I raged. I went into the darkest place I’d ever been, knowing it was due to our father’s infidelity that she was even gone.
Forgiveness wasn’t something I deserved to ask for and never thought I could earn. I couldn’t go back and change her first impression of the big brother who was supposed to protect her.
Cassidy’s so damn strong. She grabbed my hand and dragged me from my darkness. Together, we’ve managed to come out of that stronger than ever.
I rub my thumb over her smiling face in the photo. I was holding her during what she christened the “brother-sister” dance at her wedding. I was shocked since I fully expected her to dance with her adopted brother, Phillip.
I remember asking, cautiously, “Are you sure you want that dance to be with me, Cassidy?” I wanted it, and I struggled to be fair. It was my sister’s wedding, after all, and she deserved to have exactly what she wanted. At the time, I didn’t want her to include me because she felt obligated, yet it pained me when I said, “Phil has been your brother longer than I have.”
Cassidy’s smile softened. Sitting on her double lounger overlooking the lake her house is built on, she leaned on my shoulder and said, “Keene, honey, trust me, please?” Looking up at me through eyes like my father’s, ones I never thought I would look into again and not feel hatred, stole my soul. “Phillip will be walking me down the aisle. I think he needs to know in his heart that he’s giving me away to a wonderful man. That’s his duty as my brother, and you and I deserve to have our moment together.” Tears tangled with her dark lashes. “If you don’t want to…” Her voice trailed off with uncertainty.
“I do.” My voice was gruff as I choked back my emotions.
She pinched my ribs lightly. “That’s what I’ll be saying to Caleb, you goof.”
We both laughed, taking away some of the stress of the moment, right before she gutted me.
“What was Mama’s favorite song?” she wondered aloud.
“Lean On Me,” I answered immediately. Our mother used to sing it all the time. Cassidy was a baby; she wouldn’t have remembered.
Cassidy’s face had turned contemplative. I sang to her softly, like I did when she was a baby. By the end, tears were falling down her face as she said, “That’s perfect for us, isn’t it? We’ll have each other, and Mama will be with us as well.”
I swallowed hard. Unable to speak, I clutched my precious sister to my chest.
That day, there wasn’t a dry eye during the ceremony or when we had our “brother-sister” dance. The look on Cassidy’s face as she held on to me during our dance is something I will hold in my heart as one of the most cherished memories of my life. Especially after finding out not long before she was pregnant with my niece or nephew.
When I realized Cassidy was my sister, I wanted to rip her away from her life with her adopted family and give her everything she missed in the twenty-five years she was away from me. I wanted to be the center of her world and make her the center of mine. I even begrudged, albeit less so, the time she spent with Caleb. But the time she spent with her adopted family, the Freemans? It ate at my gut. She was supposed to be mine to protect, but I had failed, abysmally.
The Freemans’ love and acceptance of us is a reminder that I couldn’t keep her safe. It doesn’t matter that she was four and I was ten. The tattoo I see on her neck is a constant reminder that it wasn’t me who managed to pull her out of a living hell, long before I could even start looking for her.
Setting the photo down as I walk into the kitchen, I debate on whether or not to have another beer but decide against it since I have to drive to Connecticut tonight for a family dinner—with a certain blonde who showed me what heaven was like and knocked me on my ass from the first night I met her.
