“Was it Karen or Nichole?” Amiee leaned in.
“Karen. She wanted to make sure we were available on Sunday and I—”
“What did you tell her?” Amiee interrupted.
“That we had no other plans and that we’d set aside the entire day for them.”
“When did you find out that Nichole was coming, too?” Amiee pressed her hands between her knees as if to keep them from flying about with gestures of joy.
“Karen mentioned that Nichole and she had timed it so they would arrive together. Nichole is taking the train from Portland and Karen is picking her and Owen up at the depot in downtown Seattle, and then the three of them will come to the apartment.”
Right away Amiee looked around and sighed. “We should clean, don’t you think?”
“Probably a good idea.” Their apartment wasn’t dirty, really. A load of clothes that needed to be folded sat in a wicker basket on the chair at the kitchen table. Amiee’s schoolbooks were tossed about the coffee table and sofa, but that was really all. The real issue was the old, outdated furniture and mismatched pieces that Cassie had managed to scrounge up at Goodwill. When she’d arrived in Seattle, Cassie and Amiee had possessed next to nothing. They considered themselves fortunate to have what they did.
“Maybe we should meet them somewhere else,” Amiee said, thinking the same thing Cassie was.
“It’ll be fine,” Cassie assured her. “Once they see our apartment they’ll understand why we’re so grateful to have my parents’ things.”
“I’ll say.” Amiee released the words on the tail end of a sigh. “I can hardly wait until we move into our new house. It’s going to be so great.”
“It will be.” In her mind, Cassie already had the furniture neatly arranged in every room. She had the perfect place in the living room for the piano, and her father’s old desk would go in the largest of the three bedrooms. The kitchen table was the very one where the family had eaten dinner nearly every night.
“I’ll teach you to play if you like,” Cassie said absently.
“Play what?” Amiee asked.
Caught in her musings, Cassie smiled and rested her head against the back of the sofa. “The piano. I’m a bit rusty. It’s been several years since I last played, but it’s something one never really forgets. I haven’t told you that my old piano was one of the things Steve and I collected.”
“Really?” Amiee said. “I can learn to play the piano?”
“If you want. But like I said, it’s been a few years.” Nearly thirteen years … that was hard to believe. In her entire marriage, Cassie had played the piano only once. It’d been in a tavern—Duke had been drinking and making a lot of noise with his friends. Because she was sober and feeling out of place, she’d been drawn to the piano. She sat down at the keyboard, loving the feel of the cool keys beneath her fingers, and experienced a pang of homesickness so strong she’d stifled the urge to cry. Before she could stop herself, she’d started playing. Without realizing it, she soon had the attention of the entire tavern.
Once Duke realized she was the one at the piano, he’d dragged her outside and said she was showing off. He vowed if he ever caught her at the piano again he’d break all her fingers. She didn’t doubt him, either. From that moment on, whenever she saw a piano Cassie forced herself to look the other way.
Any time he felt she did something he didn’t know how to do himself, then she needed to be put in her place.
“Mom?” Amiee said, and placed her hand on Cassie’s knee. “Are you feeling sick? You went quiet all of a sudden.”
“Sorry, honey. I was just thinking.”
“Did it have something to do with Dad?”
Her daughter seemed to be able to see straight through her. “Yeah. How’d you know?”
Amiee tilted her head to one side. “You get this sad look when you think about him. I know you got a letter from him. Did that scare you?”
“No. We are completely safe, honey. You don’t need to worry.” Amiee reached for her hand, folding her own fingers over Cassie’s.
“Does he know where we’re living?”
That had always been a primary concern, wherever they lived. “Nope.”
“Good,” Amiee said, nodding once.
Cassie had held on to that letter for a while now without mentioning Duke’s request to her daughter. “It pains me to tell you this, Amiee, but your father is in prison.”
Amiee shrugged as if that meant nothing to her. “It’s where he belongs.”
Cassie couldn’t disagree on that point.
“What did he want?” Amiee asked. “Money?” She laughed then and added, “As if we had any.”
“Among other things, he wanted money, but mostly …” She hesitated, unsure whether now was the time to tell her. She’d intended to wait awhile. But maybe it was time. “He wanted to stay in touch with you. He wanted to write to you. I wasn’t sure I should even let you know, but you’ve grown up a great deal in the last five years and I decided that if you wanted to be in touch with your father, I wouldn’t stand in the way. The decision is yours.”
This was a big risk. Every little girl wants her father, and Cassie had protected Amiee by not telling her everything, so she didn’t really know the worst of it. But her daughter was no dummy; she knew how Cassie felt about him, and she trusted her mother.
“Can I think about this and tell you what I decide later?” Amiee asked.
“Of course. There’s no rush; you do what feels right to you.” Cassie understood that she could be prying the lid open to Pandora’s box, but that was a risk she was willing to take.
They talked the rest of the night away, mainly about Cassie’s two sisters and their impending visit. It was bound to be an eventful weekend. Amiee asked to be in charge of cooking on Sunday and decided she would serve a light lunch. Salads, maybe. While her daughter mulled over the menu choices and pored through cookbooks, Cassie took a long, hot shower and got ready for bed.
Tired as she was, Cassie couldn’t sleep. Different subjects popped up and down in her brain, demanding attention. She so badly wanted to reconnect with Karen and Nichole. There was a lot that needed to be settled among them. Unspoken hurts. Lost years. Disappointments and enough pain to pass around for second helpings.
It wasn’t only Karen and Nichole that were on her mind, either. As always, Steve lingered in her thoughts. Their last meeting played over in her mind again and again. True to his word, he’d stayed away all week. Cassie hadn’t heard from him since their talk on Monday—not that she expected she would. If nothing else, Steve had his pride.
Everything she had told him was true: She wasn’t ready for a serious relationship. And yet her world felt empty without him.
Chapter 31
Cassie was nervous waiting for her sisters to arrive. They were due at the apartment around two on Sunday. The minute Cassie and Amiee had gotten home from church, they cleaned and scrubbed every inch of the shabby place. It helped work off some of the anxiety and kept Cassie’s mind occupied.
When they’d finished cleaning, Cassie stepped back and viewed the living area with fresh eyes. “This would make even my mother proud,” she proclaimed. Sandra Judson had been a meticulous housekeeper. If cleanliness was next to godliness, then her mother was strumming a harp at that very moment.
“Grandma said there was a place for everything and everything should be in its place, right?” Amiee said, quoting the grandmother she had never met. Little wonder, seeing that Cassie had mouthed those very words often enough herself.
They sat now, impatiently awaiting Karen and Nichole’s arrival. Cassie rubbed her palms together and glanced at her watch for the second time in as many minutes. “They should be here soon,” she told Amiee.
“Mom?” Amiee said, lowering her voice and darting a look toward Cassie. “I’ve sort of missed seeing Steve.”
Her daughter wasn’t the only one. “Yeah, me, too.”
“It’s been over a week now. He hasn’t called or anything, has he?”