Graceless - Page 60

As she stood there, though, she slowly realized there was finally one person she could actually talk to.

“I don’t think that’s the problem,” she said softly, looking down at the grass. “I think maybe it’s me.” Suddenly, she was struggling to blink back tears.

“Oh honey,” Rosalie’s voice was warm. “We’re all the problem. All of us. None of us are without issue.”

“Then what do we do about it?” she asked, feeling desperate. She felt inexplicably like maybe Rosalie had all the answers and Cassidy needed them now. She needed them yesterday. She needed them before she’d lashed out at her sister, before she’d driven Lane away.

“We deal with it,” Rosalie shrugged. “We keep getting up each day trying to be better. Accept the fact we won’t always succeed. Accept that the people we love won’t either. Sometimes it’s good enough, sometimes it’s not. You’re always allowed to walk away.”

Cassidy thought about that. It didn’t feel like enough.

“Do you want to talk to someone?” Rosalie asked her gently. Cassidy’s first instinct was to say no. She wasn’t the needing help type. But she was starting to understand that not all her instincts were working in her favor. Slowly, she nodded and Rosalie took her number. “I’ll be in touch. It won’t be me, but I’ll make sure it’s someone good.”

“Thank you,” she said awkwardly. Rosalie looked at her for a beat, her green eyes steady.

“You’re worth it too, honey,” she said. “Don’t let yourself forget it.”

Over the next couple of weeks, Savannah grew worse. She was short-tempered and tearful. Emmeline was struggling to feed well and Savannah took that on as a personal failing. Some days all Cassidy saw her do was feed the baby then hook herself up to a miserable looking pumping machine, then feed the baby again. She cried every time Emmeline needed a bottle of formula instead, so either Brynn or Cassidy would take the baby away to feed her.

Brynn walked around in a daze, her face creased with exhaustion and anxiety, as she took as much of the baby load as possible while still trying to take care of her increasingly fragile wife. When Cassidy checked in with her, she gave a tired smile.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I think this is just what having a newborn is like. Everyone is sleep-deprived, everyone’s a bit miserable. We’ll be okay.”

Cassidy wasn’t so sure. Sometimes Savannah thrust the crying baby into her arms with surprising force, like she couldn’t cope being around her for a single second longer. From what she’d seen of her sister before, she’d been a calm, connected, attentive mother to her son. But right now she didn’t even seem to want to be around Tucker, tolerating his cuddles and demands for attention with grim forbearance.

Lane saw it, too. Cassidy was pretty sure they were working double their normal hours, helping get Tucker bathed and to bed at night when Brynn was helping with the baby, arriving in early so that when the little boy inevitably bounced out of bed at the crack of dawn they were there to sidetrack him before he woke his parents. The two of them drifted past each other in the house frequently, Lane with handfuls of kid snacks or a small child riding on their back, Cassidy ferrying bottles or holding a sleeping baby.

A couple of times, without a word, they swapped, Lane gently plucking the baby from her arms and patting Emmeline back to sleep, Cassidy collapsing on the couch to watch some cartoons with Tucker.

Whenever she could, whenever Brynn had Emmeline and her sister wasn’t hooked up to a creepy boob torture machine, Cassidy found reasons to get Savannah outside.

“Come for a walk with me,” she’d press her. “Jasper misses you.”

Savannah protested some days, claiming exhaustion, but other times she seemed a little freer as soon as the fresh air and sunlight hit her skin.

“Are you doing okay?” Cassidy tried to ask her, and her sister just gave her a ghastly rendition of her usually picture-perfect charming smile and told her she was just fine.

“Babies suck,” she said calmly. “I’d forgotten that about them.”

Cassidy was alarmed. But also, the whole thing did seem to kind of suck, so she couldn’t exactly argue with her sister’s grim assessment.

One afternoon, when Brynn was upstairs taking a nap after a particularly disrupted night, Emmeline wouldn’t stop crying. Savannah had breastfed her and was pacing around the kitchen, Emmeline on her shoulder getting gently bounced and patted. The more the baby cried, the tenser Savannah’s face became and the more forced her movements.

“Let me take her,” offered Cassidy.

“No!” Savannah snapped. “I’m her fucking mother. I can do this.”

Cassidy stepped back, a pit of worry opening up inside her. She went back to making a cup of herbal tea for her sister, the baby screaming on and on in the background.

“I think she’s hungry,” she tried again finally. Savannah lost it.

“Shut up, Cassidy, for god’s sake, shut up!” she shouted over Emmeline’s cries. “This is so typical of you, always thinking you know better than everyone! God, you’re always poking and snapping and being irritable and going on about everything all the time. You’re a fucking nightmare; did you know that?”

Cassidy flinched, her eyes filling with hot tears.

“Savannah, come on!” she cried, trying to figure out how to get her to see reason.

“Hey!” came the voice from behind her. Cassidy couldn’t believe the déjà vu as Lane suddenly appeared, right when she was arguing with her sister. Only to her shock, she realized it was Savannah they were glaring at. “Cassidy doesn’t deserve any of that. She’s here trying to help you, day and night, because she loves you. And you love her too when you’re not dying on the inside.”