For Better or Worse (16 page)

If she’d known he was still seeing that woman,
this wouldn’t have happened. He shouldn’t have been on that plane . . . that’s
what killed her.

If she’d known he was still seeing that woman,
this wouldn’t have happened. He shouldn’t have been on that plane . . . that’s
what killed her.

Cassidy squeezed her eyes shut. The words
repeated like a broken record.

That’s when she had her first attack. She
became dizzy and fought to breathe. It felt like someone was smothering her
with a pillow.

From a distance, she heard Matthew’s panicked
voice. “Roarke! Auntie! Come quick. Something’s wrong with Cassidy!”

They rushed her to the hospital, but after a
thorough examination, the doctor said she was fine and her symptoms were not
life threatening. No one could understand why she’d collapsed, and they kept a
close eye on her afterward, worried her parents’ death had taken a greater toll
than they originally thought. They had no idea the role she’d played in their
deaths, and she never told.

Her young world had fallen apart the year her
parents died. Her mother had deserved to know the truth, and if she had, maybe
her father wouldn’t have boarded the plane with that woman. Maybe her mother
wouldn’t have been so crushed that she gave up the will to live.

Maybe . . . just maybe, a lifetime of pain
could have been avoided.

****

Cassidy sat with her arms folded around
herself. The death of her parents had been traumatic, and she’d learned to hide
her feelings and pretend all was well, even when it wasn’t.

Antonio brushed a tear she hadn’t even known
had fallen on her cheek. “What happened had nothing to do with you. You were
just a kid.”

“I wish I’d said something. It’s so hard to
forgive myself for what happened. I should have told someone. I could’ve told
Roarke. He would’ve known what to do.”

“You have to stop, Cass. Your father made the
choice to have an affair, and he made the choice to board the plane with his
mistress.
His
actions hurt your family, not yours. There was nothing you
could’ve done to prevent it. No one knows what the outcome would’ve been if your
mother knew the truth. She may have even suspected, for all you know. It was a
complicated situation, and you were a child. You couldn’t understand everything
going on around you.”

“Yeah.” His words did little to console her,
though she recognized the truth in them.

“Babe, you deserve to be happy. You need to
stop punishing yourself for something you had no control over.”

“My mother stayed on my father all the time for
everything. If he missed one of Matthew’s football games, she yelled at him. If
he came home late, she yelled at him. Even though they stayed together, she
never trusted him again. I could hear them through the walls of my bedroom. She
was consumed with it. And it made me feel sorry for him. I was mad at her. Why
couldn’t she leave him alone? I thought he wasn’t doing anything wrong. But he
was.”

“Your father may have been sneaking around on
your mother, but I’m not sneaking around on you. I’m not going to do what he
did.” He tilted up her chin to look into her eyes. “I’m not going anywhere.
Everything I want is right here.”

A film of tears distorted his face. “I’m sorry
I act the way I do. I know it’s not fair to you. I get these ideas in my head,
and I go off on a tangent. You’re crazy to put up with me.”

“Yeah, well, the great sex makes up for it.
Besides, I can’t let you go and unleash all this crazy on the world.” He
grinned, and she grinned back.

“So we’re stuck with each other?”

“Looks that way. For better or worse.” He
pulled her onto his lap. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise. You’re my heart,
mami
.
I can’t live without my heart.”

She pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. “That’s
the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

He stroked her cheek with his finger. “Are you
going to be okay?”

She took a tremulous breath. “Eventually. But
sometimes I . . .” A fresh round of tears flowed from her eyes. With trembling
fingers, she wiped them away. “I feel so terrible. And I still miss them.”

Antonio tightened his arms around her. His skin
was warm against her cheek, and his unique male scent comforted her as much as
the security of his arms.

“It’s okay. Let it go,” he murmured. He rubbed
a hand up and down her back, soothing away the pain. “It’s all right. I’m right
here.
Estoy aquí
.
Estoy
aquí, mami
.
”

He rocked her, gently, and didn’t stop until
she was all cried out.

****

Confession was good for the soul.

Even though Cassidy knew blaming herself for
her parents’ death was irrational, guilt had plagued her for years. Confessing
to Antonio had eased her conscience and given her a new perspective on how she
viewed life and relationships.

During the week, Ernesto’s divorce had become
final, and he finally introduced Valentina and his son to his entire family.
Antonio had started the search for another staff publicist and an assistant to
help Lucinda. Brick had talked his friend out of pressing charges on Antonio,
and surprisingly, he still wanted Antonio to represent him because of his
strong reputation in the industry.

Cassidy flung her satchel over her shoulder and
grabbed her phone from the desk, smiling to herself when she thought about
Antonio’s strong admonition that he didn’t want her anywhere near Brick alone.
After she’d finished teasing him about trust, she straddled him in bed and
proved to him he didn’t have reason to worry about Brick or any other man.

She’d worked another half day today, her day
off, but tonight she and Antonio were going out. He’d insisted on re-creating
the date she’d planned for them last week and had taken care of all the
details.

On her way to the elevator, she heard Janice’s
voice. “Big plans this weekend?” The older woman fell into step beside her.

Ever since the fiasco at the club, Janice had
been a bit hesitant around Cassidy. They didn’t speak as much as they used to. She
figured Janice felt guilty about what had happened, but she was actually glad
Antonio had found her at the club that night. If everything hadn’t come to a
head, she wouldn’t have had a breakthrough.

“Antonio’s taking me to our favorite
restaurant.”

“That’s nice. So things are okay between the
two of you?”

Cassidy nodded. “Better than ever.”

“That’s good. I have to admit, I was worried
about you last week. I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t like the way he
dragged you out of the club. One of my exes had a tendency to be a little
aggressive, so you have to be careful. A man with a jealous streak like that
can be dangerous. Those are usually the ones who are up to no good themselves,
off doing their own dirt and projecting their bad behavior onto you.”

Cassidy came to an abrupt stop. “For the past
couple of years, I’ve listened to you give me all kinds of advice about men. It
suddenly dawned on me that you give bad advice.” Antonio had been right in his
assessment of her.

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m not
trying
to say anything.”
Cassidy put her hand on her hip and looked her friend squarely in the eye. “If
we’re going to continue being friends, let’s get one thing straight. I love my
husband, and he loves me. The reason he pulled me out of the VIP is because I
had no business being there. I’m not worried about him hurting me because I
know he wouldn’t. He takes care of me, and I take care of him. So I don’t want
to hear any more advice about marriage. It’s obvious that after failing three
times, you don’t know what you’re talking about. In case you haven’t noticed,
you were the common denominator in all your bad relationships. Think about it,
Janice. Maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s
you
.”

Cassidy swiveled around, leaving an openmouthed
Janice in the middle of the office as she strutted to the elevator.

Epilogue

One year later

The Hawthorne family reunion had kicked
off the day before, but Cassidy, Matthew, Roarke, Derrick, and their spouses
and children had been on St. Simons Island since earlier in the week.

Cassidy and Antonio sat on the beach,
exhausted after a morning of swimming and splashing around in the waves. After
a long rest, they walked to the house, past the eight-foot tables set up in the
grass for when everyone arrived for lunch. They stopped to talk to lounging
family members before going in to shower and change clothes.

When they went out to the back porch,
they sat on the swing. The raucous laughter of children running and playing
carried on the summer breeze. More family members had arrived, and the caterers
were setting chafing dishes of food on the side tables.

Matthew and Lorena played football with
the teenagers. Married a few weeks ago at a church in Atlanta, as of this week,
they were on their honeymoon. Matthew had taken a month off, and Lorena had
temporarily closed the offices of her grant-writing business.

They’d already received word that the
grants Lorena had applied for last year on behalf of the community center where
Matthew volunteered had been won, so they looked forward to a worry-free
vacation. In a few days, they were on their way to Costa Rica for an active two
weeks of kayaking and hiking in the rain forest.

Uncle Reese was stationed at the grill,
his favorite spot during every family get-together. Even though the meal was
catered, he’d insisted on doing his own cooking. At the same time, Roarke tried
to convince him to give up the secret recipe for his barbecue rub. 

“I don’t know why he bothers trying,”
Celeste, his wife, said. She sat in a rocking chair on the porch, holding their
sleeping son. “Uncle Reese is taking that recipe to his grave.”

Derrick chuckled. Cassidy’s half brother
stood with his shoulder against one of the porch columns, overlooking all the
activity. “He’s determined to get it, though.”

“You ain’t ready for it, nephew,” Uncle
Reese was saying, shaking his head with regret. “You can’t handle it. You ain’t
ready yet.”

Arianna, Celeste’s daughter, hurried
over with her cousin Violet’s hand in hers. The girls had been playing on a
blanket under a tree. Not yet two years old, the toddler struggled to keep up
with Arianna.

“What happened?” Derrick asked,
immediately on alert when he saw his daughter’s red, scrunched-up face. He
walked down the stairs to meet them.

“She fell, Uncle Derrick.”

“Daddy, boo-boo.”

“You got a boo-boo?”

“Yes.”

“Let me see.”

Derrick crouched in front of Violet and
examined the allegedly injured hand. “Oh, I see it.” He dusted off her palm and
then blew on it. All the while, Violet watched him with rapt attention. For the
final dose of medicine, he made a big deal out of kissing her palm. “Mwah.
How’s that? All better?”

Her eyes no longer shined with tears,
and her frowning face transformed into a big smile.

“Give Daddy a kiss.”

Violet kissed his cheek. “Mah,” she
said, not quite duplicating the sound. Happy once more, she took off with
Arianna to play with her cousins.

“I’m going to start praying now for the
boys who try to date her,” Celeste said.

“She’s not going to be allowed to date,
remember?” Antonio said. “He’s locking her away until she’s thirty.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”

“Wait until you have a daughter, Antonio.
Then you’ll understand,” Derrick said. “By the way, I wasn’t joking when I said
I’m putting her on lockdown.”

“A modern-day Rapunzel,” Cassidy sighed.
“Poor Violet.”

They all laughed.

Cassidy felt a sense of satisfaction as
she watched her siblings. In the past couple of years they’d become closer, and
their family had increased in size as each of them married.

The porch door swung open, and Eva,
Derrick’s wife, exited. Immediately, he was at her side. “How are you feeling?”
he asked.

She’d spent the morning in bed. At three
months pregnant, she was experiencing heavy bouts of morning sickness, much the
same as when she’d been pregnant with Violet. The dull, unhealthy pallor of her
dark brown skin indicated she was still unwell.

“Not much better, but I can’t stay in
bed all day.”

“The air will do you some good,
sweetie,” Celeste said.

Derrick pulled a folding chair from one
of the tables on the lawn and set it next to Celeste. Eva gratefully lowered
onto it.

A few minutes later, a truck drove up
from the local frame shop. “It’s here,” Cassidy announced, rising from the
swing. She and her brothers had taken pictures together a couple of days ago.
The same photographer would be back tomorrow to take photos of all the family
members attending the reunion, but they’d wanted photos of just the four of
them.