Graceless (Grace Notes #2)

Savannah reluctantly stood, hurt and fear fighting within her. Her baby sister no longer looked twelve and fragile, but old and immensely weary.

“This conversation isn’t over,” Savannah said quietly. “I’m going to be here for you, when you’re ready to talk.”

“Cut the crap,” Cassidy said irritably. “Go back to your real family.”

Savannah paused with her hand on the door.

“Oh,” she said. “You are my real family. There’s no way we could hurt each other so damn well if you weren’t.”

“Baby,” Brynn held her tightly as she cried in her arms that night. “You didn’t know.”

“I should have!” Savannah hiccupped. “Randy is a bully and he hates strong women. Cassidy’s strong. She’s right, I should have known that once she wasn’t a sweet obedient baby anymore he’d try to punch her back into behaving like one.”

“You were a teenager when you were forming judgements about why you were being hurt and who was and wasn’t safe,” Brynn reminded her.

“And I was twenty-five when I saw her again,” she said flatly. “And I’d already started working with teenagers escaping unsafe homes. The irony,” she said bitterly.

“Sweetheart.” Brynn stroked her hair back from her face. “Tell me what you’ve told me before. Tell me what your mom said to you that week that you saw them again.”

Savannah started crying afresh. She hated this. She’d never been good at crying when anyone could see her. Even in front of Brynn, she was pretty good at holding back her tears. Except when she was pregnant. Except when her little sister was hurt.

“Mom said-” she whispered, “Mom said that now that I was straight, I was allowed to be around my sister. As long as I went to church and repented for my sins, I could be part of the family again.”

“And when you told her you weren’t straight and you weren’t sorry?”

“She told me they didn’t want my influence around their daughter. That as long as I wasn’t seeking forgiveness, I should stay far away from them.”

“And you blame yourself for not keeping closer track of a child you’d been banned from seeing?”

“If I’d just tried harder when I’d seen her, seen the signs-”

“What signs? Savannah, you said she just seemed shy. Lots of kids are shy. You think, what, you could have taken her for lunch and she’d suddenly trust you enough to tell you her dad was abusive? You know that’s not how kids work.”

“I should have been there earlier-”

“Between when they’d kicked you out as a kid and when you got off the street? Or between when you were struggling to make it and when you actually made it? Because it seems to me that just as soon as you were able, you did what you could for them. Despite how they’d treated you.”

“Not Cassidy though. She was just an innocent kid.”

“Yeah.” Brynn gently stroked her face. “You both were.”

She pulled Savannah into her arms and held her close as she cried herself to sleep.

Chapter Seven

Everything was going wrong. Confronting Savannah was supposed to make her feel vindicated, finally proven to be in the right. Instead, Cassidy just felt overwhelming shame when she woke up the next morning, her eyes puffy from crying.

Seeing Savannah crumple before her hadn’t made her feel good. Instead, she just felt terribly sad, though her anger still didn’t dissipate. The shame came in waves: Lane’s cutting words, showing Savannah what was left of her bruising, her own tears, admitting that she’d been hurt. Disclosing that her own father hit her had never gotten Cassidy anywhere good. Mostly, it just made her feel humiliated and weak.

The only thread holding her together was Savannah swearing that she’d keep her safe. Despite everything, hearing the words she’d been longing to hear from her older sister since she was a child made Cassidy want to believe her. Savannah had escaped Randy too, after all; she didn’t make the promise lightly.

For a while, after she awoke that morning, she figured she would spend the day lying low. Perhaps even lying in bed. She wasn’t hungry and she couldn’t stomach the sight of anyone who’d witnessed any of last night’s humiliations. But somehow, determination propelled her out of bed, into her clothes and out the door in time to meet Brynn at the front of the house, just as Burt rolled up.

“Morning, kid,” Brynn said in her usual warm tone, as if it were no surprise that Cassidy would hit the studio with her again that day.

It wasn’t until she was back perched next to a silent Greta in the sound room that Cassidy felt like she could finally let go of the rigid tension in her shoulders and just be.

The morning went by just like the previous one. Another desperately moving song, another incredible vocal performance, another mind-bending repetition in search of whatever unknown quantity spelled perfection to Greta’s critical ear. This time Cassidy didn’t fight it. She just let the music roll over her and through her like a caress that made her shame slowly wash away.