The Good Daughter (2 page)

Mom shifted in her high-back chair and focused on Cass. “How
are
you?”

Mom wasn’t making polite conversation. She was genuinely concerned about Cass, and now that Tommy was gone, this was a chance for Cass to open up…if she could. No one was sure that she could, or would. It’d been almost three and a half months since she’d miscarried and this miscarriage had been the worst…not just for her, but the whole family. It was her fourth miscarriage, and it’d happened later than the others, this time at twenty-four weeks, just when Cass had let her guard down. Just when she’d started to get excited about the baby.

The entire family had grieved with Cass. All of them had been so happy about the baby, and then their hearts were broken. But this time Tommy didn’t want their meals or phone calls or visits. This time Tommy announced that he and Cass wanted to be alone, and he asked that the family give them space and privacy to deal with the loss their way, in their time.

Kit’s baby sister, Sarah, who lived with her husband and children in Tampa Bay, had been on the phone immediately with Kit and then Meg, hurt, even outraged that Tommy would push them away, but Mom and Dad backed Tommy, insisting that his sisters respect Tommy and Cass’s need for space. As Mom reminded them repeatedly, having children, or not having children, was a part of marriage and no one’s business but Tommy and Cass’s.

Of course the Brennan sisters couldn’t ignore Cass, not when they knew she was hurting so much. Without consulting one another, each of them quietly sent Cass private e-mails and text messages, letting her know she was loved. Tommy could refuse meals and visitors, but he couldn’t expect his sisters not to reach out to Cass. They loved Cass, and they told her so, repeatedly. Cass didn’t answer all, or even most, messages, but later in December, just before Christmas, she sent her sisters-in-law a group message thanking them for their amazing support and constant love. She hadn’t had sisters, only two younger brothers, and she told them that she felt incredibly lucky to be one of the Brennan girls.

“I’m good,” Cass said softly now, two spots of color in her cheeks. “Well, better than I was in October.” She paused, studying the blue, white, and gold pattern on her dessert plate with the half-eaten slice of birthday cake. “October was bad. And November.” Her full mouth quirked and one of her deep dimples appeared. “To be honest, December wasn’t much better either.”

Kit knew Cass had been in a very dark place and yet there had been nothing any of them could do for her then. There was really nothing they could do now. Kit hated feeling helpless. “We’ve been worried about you.”

“I know. And I was kind of worried about me, too,” Cass admitted with a strangled laugh, pushing back the same wayward curl that had slipped out of her ponytail. She had long loose curls and big blue eyes like an innocent shepherdess from a Mother Goose nursery rhyme. In reality she was a labor and delivery
nurse at a hospital in Walnut Creek specializing in high-risk deliveries, and far from helpless.

“Are you doing better?” Mom asked, a deep furrow between her eyebrows. Mom had been a nurse, too, before she earned her master’s degree and became a hospital administrator.

Cass toyed with the lace edging her white linen napkin. “I don’t know. This last time broke something inside me. Here I had this beautiful, perfect little boy…and my body rejected him. Killed him—”

“Cassidy!” Meg choked, horrified, glancing toward the hall to make sure none of her kids were listening. “Don’t say that. You’re not responsible. You can’t blame yourself.”

“But I do.” Cass looked up, the grief clouding her eyes. “How can I not? He was twenty-four weeks old. Thirty-six percent of babies can survive premature birth at twenty-four weeks. Instead, my body—” She didn’t finish, pressing a hand to her mouth to keep the words in, but her eyes were enormous with sorrow and pain.

Kit slid out of her chair to wrap her arms around Cass’s shoulders. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “So very, very sorry.”

Cass covered Kit’s hands with hers. “I want him back. I want to save him.”

“It’s not fair, is it?” Kit murmured.

“It’s not,” Meg echoed. “Nor does it seem fair that people who shouldn’t have kids pop them out, and those who should have them struggle.”

“I think about that all the time,” Cass said.

“Did you have a name for him?” Mom asked.

Cass nodded. “Thomas. After Dad. Thomas Joseph Brennan.”

“Your own baby Tommy,” Mom said, understanding.

For a moment no one said anything, and then Gabi ran into the dining room, asking if
she could please have another slice of cake since her piece had been small. Meg cut her a sliver. Kit asked if she could have another sliver, too. It was good cake. Meg was an excellent baker.

After Gabi left, Mom circled her teacup with her hands. “You won’t ever forget your Tommy,” she said quietly. “I know I’ve told you this before, but I’ve never forgotten the babies I lost. There were three between Meg and the twins. I never knew if they were boys or girls. Back then they didn’t tell you those things. I wondered, though.”

“What did Dad do when you lost them?” Cass asked, brow furrowing.

“Told me he was sorry. That he loved me.” Marilyn paused, looking back, remembering the years of being a young wife and mother. “That I would conceive again. And then he’d go to work. Escape to his beloved firehouse. To his boys.” Her voice held the barest hint of bitterness. “He was lucky. He had somewhere else to go. I was here alone with a toddler.”

The clock in the living room suddenly chimed nine. It caught them by surprise. No one knew when it’d gotten so late, and it was Sunday night, a school night. Meg said she’d need to get the kids home soon. They lived in Santa Rosa. And once Meg and Jack left, everyone else would go, too. Tommy and Cass to Walnut Creek. Kit to her small house in Oakland.

“I’d try again,” Cass said in a rush when the clock stopped chiming. “I’ve met with a new specialist, a doctor who thinks he can help me, but Tommy has said no. Says he can’t go through that again.”

Kit opened her mouth to speak but then thought better of it. She wasn’t married. Had never been married. Wasn’t her place.

Instead, Mom said carefully, “Maybe he just needs more time—”

“It’s our eleventh wedding anniversary this year. I want a baby.” Cass’s voice dropped, deepening with emotion. “I don’t want to wait. I can’t wait. I’m ready to be a mom now.”

“Have you two considered using a surrogate?” Kit asked, feeling Cass’s desperation and aware that her brother didn’t want to adopt. He’d wanted a son to follow in his footsteps, just the way he’d followed in his father’s. The Brennan men had been San Francisco firefighters for six generations, all the way back before the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906, and Tommy Jr. was proud of this legacy. Maybe too proud.

“Tommy says the Church is against it.”

“The Church doesn’t support IVF either,” Meg pointed out.

This was greeted by uncomfortable silence, which stretched until Meg added, “Maybe it’s time you and Tommy revisited the idea of adopting—”

“He won’t,” Cass said shortly. “It’s our baby or nothing.”

Meg gestured impatiently. “But when you adopt, that baby becomes your baby.”

“I know, but Tommy won’t even discuss it. He wants—” Cass broke off as the front door opened and the men’s voices could be heard in the hall. She pressed her lips together, frustration and resentment in her tense expression. “Let’s just let this go. Okay?”

They did.

But in the car, driving home, Kit played the evening over in her head. The cheerful dinner conversation where everyone made an effort to be light, kind, funny, and even Meg and Jack seemed to put their differences aside for the night. The fluffy coconut cake on the heirloom. The dimmed lights. The golden glow of the birthday candles. Her dad’s big baritone singing “Happy Birthday.” The bittersweet chorus of “make a wish”…

Hands flexing against the steering wheel, Kit thought of the wishes that had come to her. Wishes she’d make if it were her birthday…

For Mom to live
.

For Cass to have her baby
.

For Jack and Meg’s marriage to survive this rocky transition
.

And for Kit herself? What did she want personally? What was her heart’s desire? That was easy. She was selfish. Wasn’t wishing for world peace or clean water for Third World nations. No, she wanted love. Marriage. Babies. She wanted to have her own family. She’d be forty in a couple of weeks. It was time. The clock was ticking.

And yet, if she had only one wish…and if that one wish could come true…what would she do?

She’d save Mom, of course.

The oncologist was astonished that Marilyn Brennan had lasted this long, but couldn’t imagine her making it through the spring. It was January 8 now. That meant Mom had what? February? March? Maybe Easter? Easter came late this year, mid-April. Would Mom be with them then?

The thought made Kit’s insides churn. She wished she hadn’t had that second sliver of birthday cake. Wished she was already home in bed instead of still driving at ten o’clock at night.

Kit’s phone rang. It was Meg, her oldest sister. “Home safe?” Kit asked, answering.

“Just got back a few minutes ago. Sorry we left you with all the dishes.”

“Not a big deal. Dad helped. Gave us a chance to talk.”

“He’s okay?”

“Seemed like it. But it’s hard to tell with Dad. He doesn’t ever complain.”

Meg sighed. “He doesn’t like to burden us.”

“I know. But I almost wish he would. It’d make me feel better. Make me feel as if I was helping him somehow.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t help him. Now you can help me.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m upset. I’ve been upset ever since leaving the house.”

“Mom?”

“No. Cass. Tommy. The whole baby thing.”

“It’s a mess, isn’t it?” Kit said.

“I’m worried about them. I can understand why Tommy doesn’t want to do the IVF anymore, but his stand on adoption is ridiculous.”

Kit changed lanes to let a faster car pass her. “I agree.”

“He’ll lose Cass if he’s not careful.”

“I know.”

“Now’s the time for them to explore all their options if they want to become parents. But I don’t think Tommy wants to be a parent at this point. I think he’s decided that he’s okay without kids.”

Dad had said something similar to Kit while they washed dishes. Apparently Tommy had told Dad tonight that he was ready to move forward and just get on with life, as he’d come to terms with Cass’s infertility and he was good without kids. “He’s worn out,” Kit said. “He needs a break from the focus on making babies.”

“Which is great, but Cass is a labor and delivery nurse. She wants a baby of her own. Needs to be a mom.”

Kit understood. She loved kids. It’s one of the reasons why she’d become a teacher. She’d been in the classroom seventeen years now, the last sixteen at Memorial High, a Catholic school in east Oakland, not far from San Leandro. She’d recently been promoted to head of the English department, which would look great on a résumé, but wasn’t much of an honor if you knew there were only three English teachers at Memorial. “What do you think about them using a surrogate?”

“I don’t have a problem with it,” Meg said. “Do you?”

“No.”

“I don’t think anyone in the family does. I wish they’d look
into it. It’s expensive, but Cass and Tommy already have the frozen embryos.”

Remembering her conversation with Dad, Kit rubbed at her brow, easing the tension headache. “I just can’t see Tommy ever agreeing to it. I don’t know if it’s a control thing, or a society thing, but Tommy’s against taking any more extreme measures to make a baby.”

“Adopting isn’t extreme. I’d adopt, if I couldn’t have kids.”

“I would, too. Let’s just hope Cass can convince Tommy to reconsider all their options.”

M
onday was Kit’s least favorite day of the week. It was hard to rally Monday morning after a weekend away from school. She knew her students felt the same way, and so she made a point of making each Monday morning’s lessons interesting, trying to hook her students’ attention quickly, painlessly. Or as painlessly as possible considering that most of her students were sleep deprived and school started early.

Fortunately, as the head of her very small department, Kit was able to pick the classes she wanted to teach and she chose to teach everything—from basic freshman English to the very advanced AP British lit. It meant she had six different preps, but she liked it that way, as the varied curriculum held her interest and allowed her to teach far more novels, poetry, and plays every year than she’d be able to teach otherwise.

Kit loved books. Reading was her thing. But being a teacher wasn’t just about sharing great books with young, bright minds. It was also about managing, controlling, organizing, disciplining, advising, as well as assuming extra duties to keep the school’s overhead down. At Memorial, the faculty all had duties outside their classroom. Yard duty, cafeteria duty, extracurricular jobs,
adviser jobs, coaching positions. Teachers wore many hats. Kit was spending her lunch hour in her classroom wearing her Drama Club adviser hat now.

Kit had founded the Drama Club her first year at Memorial High, and for the past fifteen years it’d been one of the school’s most prestigious clubs, putting on wonderful, if not extravagant and exhausting, productions every spring.

But this year she was beginning to think there wouldn’t be a production. The club was small, with less than a dozen students. Her die-hard thespians, the most talented kids she’d probably ever worked with, had graduated in June, and she—and the club—missed those nine kids. The seven students who’d remained in the club had managed to recruit only one new freshman, and the eight club members couldn’t agree on anything.

“You’re running out of time,” Kit said from her desk, raising her voice to be heard over the rustle of paper bags and crumpling plastic and conversation taking place at the student desks. “You don’t meet again until next month, and then it’s auditions. So you really need to discuss what kind of production interests you and get some consensus. If you can’t agree, then I think it’s time you accepted that there won’t be a spring show.”