“Yes. The baby is kicking and twirling as we speak. It wasn’t even a real fall. My ankle gave out, and I hit my hands. My palms are more messed up than anything else.”
We walked in silence as the light snowflakes turned into a heavy flurry. By the time we got to the house, we were all covered. Mom must have been watching for us from the window, because she opened the door as we approached.
“Cailín Deas!” Mom called out.
“She’s okay,” I replied.
Marco bundled her inside, setting her down on the couch, and Mom was there in an instant, pushing my bodyguard aside to get to my sister.
“Where are you hurt?”
Cass held up her hands, which were red from the cold and scraped from the sidewalk. “Seriously, everyone has to stop overreacting. I just need a Band-Aid, some ice, and a brace. It’ll be fine.”
Mom turned to me with her face full of fury. “Where were you?”
I swallowed as her scold turned me from the grown-ass man I was into the head-in-the-clouds kid I’d once been.
“Marco was there,” I reassured her.
“Where wereyou?” she repeated.
I took off my beanie and ran a hand over my hair. “At Elana’s.”
Mom snorted. “Of course you were.”
“Mom!” Cassidy’s voice, full of an anger we normally didn’t hear from her, halted my retort. “You can’t blame Brady for my clumsiness. What do you think has been happening while you’ve been gone? Do you honestly think I haven’t fallen, or bungled my toes, or slammed fingers into cabinets? I’m not a child. I can take care of myself.”
“You’ve done a great job of it. You’re pregnant, alone, and hurt. This is why I should never have gone to Ireland. It’s why I’m not going back. Your father can go and handle things for both of us.”
We all stared at Mom like she had four heads, even Dad. There was no way he could teach her Gaelic study classes. Not ever.
“If you don’t go back to Ireland, I’ll move out,” Cass tossed back at her.
“Don’t be ridiculous. With what money?”
“I have a job, Mom. It’s not like I don’t have an income. Between the grant the city gave the clinic and my normal salary, I’m making more than enough money to get my own place.”
The threat of her leaving the fold had our mom swallowing hard. It was a threat my mother couldn’t have her follow through on. What would my mom do if Cassidy left the nest? She lived to protect her. The fact that they’d taken the assignment in Ireland had been a huge leap of faith that none of us had been sure she’d do until the very last moment. In truth, the tension between her and Dad over the topic had probably been the only thing that had gotten her to set foot on the plane.
“We can talk about all of this later. For now, Cormac, get the ice. I’ll get the bandages.” Mom headed toward the hallway and the single bathroom the four of us had shared during my childhood. She stopped to take in Marco and said quietly, “Thank you for being there for her.”
It stabbed at every wound inside me from a childhood where I’d always been the one to screw up the one job I had: make sure Cassidy was safe. I’d screwed it up so many times it had become a familiar refrain. I’d screwed it up even more by moving away to Juilliard and never coming home again, because it meant I wasn’t there at all.
I grabbed one of the ice packs from the stack of them in the freezer, handed it to Dad, and then left. I made my way up to the apartment, placed the record Elana had given me onto the kitchenette’s counter, and then went into the tiny bedroom, sinking on the bed with my head in my hands.
How easily Mom could reduce me to my twelve-year-old self. As if she’d just come home and realized Cassidy was nowhere to be found. Realized I’d been so lost in my guitar that I hadn’t responded to Cass’s request to walk the dog, and she’d left the house without me. In that moment, I felt very far from the twenty-nine-year-old man with three platinum albums, over a dozen awards, and several hundred million dollars in the bank that I truly was.
This was the one place in my life I could never seem to get things right.
It had to change.
I had to be better than this.
I was determined to do just that.
Tristan
WHEN YOU’RE GONE
