Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 47287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 236(@200wpm)___ 189(@250wpm)___ 158(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 236(@200wpm)___ 189(@250wpm)___ 158(@300wpm)
"Hey," River said, setting the cat carriers down.
It was barely audible in the echoey room with Christmas music already blaring. Nora didn’t respond. But Cassidy turned, his whole face brightening when he saw River.
"Good morning," Cassidy boomed. Then he winced.
Upon closer observation, there were dark hollows around Cassidy’s eyes and his skin looked sallow. But his smile seemed genuine and his brown eyes sparkled.
"I um."
Casual, River. Be casual, not weird. Casual, not weird.
"Can I show you something?"
Cassidy stepped down from the ladder in a single lunge.
"Yeah, show me something."
"Oh, well, it’s not a big deal. Just."
They pulled their phone out and swiped to the picture they’d taken late last night.
Cassidy peered at the photo of the small tabby cat twisted into a pretzel mid-groom, tongue out and yellow eyes half closed, and smiled.
"That’s her, huh? She looks like she’s doing okay."
"She is. I thought maybe, since you found her, saved her life, that you might want to name her?"
"I’d be honored," Cassidy said.
He took River’s phone and zoomed in closer on the cat in the picture, seeming to study her.
"Inspector Gadget."
"What?"
Cassidy nodded in confirmation.
"How come?"
River wanted to understand what Cassidy saw in the cat to choose that name.
"Oh, uh: cat, villain petting a cat, James Bond, Get Smart, Inspector Gadget. Did you ever see it? It’s from the eighties."
River shook their head and IMDBed it.
"My dad used to get it from the library for me, Nora, and Silas. He loved James Bond movies and I think he was trying to get us excited to watch them by showing it to us."
"To his great disappointment, it never worked," Nora said while spacing candles equally across one side of the table.
"Is Silas your other sibling?"
Nora and Cassidy exchanged glances. Cassidy nodded, brow furrowed. Nora moved a candle one centimeter to the left and looked critically at the display.
"You don’t have to …" River said quickly.
"No, it’s … We don’t really have contact with Silas if we can help it."
"I can always help it," Nora said.
Cassidy squirmed. "Yeah, I’m not as good at it."
River was curious by nature. For a long time, they’d tried to stifle that curiosity beneath a studied neutrality. Many people, they’d learned early, treated interest as weakness they could exploit. If people knew the things you were interested in, they drew conclusions that were beyond your control. If they knew the things you valued, they could devalue them, and you by extension.
It had always been important to keep these things private, especially around their father. And it hadn’t been until Rye had given them a place that was their own—a safe, private place that no one had the ability to invade—that River’d had the space and privacy to determine what their interests were. Curiosity, they realized, was only a weakness to those who were threatened by its inevitable results: education, expansion, connection.
Slowly, over the last two years, River had allowed their curiosity to reintroduce itself.
"What’s his deal?" they asked.
"He’s …" Cassidy stroked his beard.
It looked soft. River wondered what it would feel like against their lips if they leaned in and kissed Cassidy on the cheek. If it would rasp against their skin if Cassidy kissed them.
"He’s a cop," Nora said. "And he’s every kind of fucked up that being a cop entails."
"Oh, yikes. ACAB," River said.
"Yeah. And little peacemaker Cass tries to rehabilitate him every chance he gets, to no avail."
"I’m not trying to rehabilitate him, just share all the reasons why I and other people want to abolish the system of policing. But he’s our brother and it’s not so easy for me to believe that he’s beyond hope. I think people can change if you give them the chance. Don’t you?"
The hope in his eyes made River wish so desperately that they agreed. Nora clearly had no such compunction. She rolled her eyes and went back to readying the table.
"I think," River said carefully, "that change is possible. But it’s the end result of a lot of work and time, and I’ve found most people aren’t interested in doing that kind of work unless they’re about to lose something they truly feel they can’t live without."
Cassidy looked like he wanted to query that, but the announcement over the loudspeaker telling them the doors would open in thirty minutes sent Cassidy, Nora, and River scrambling to prepare for the crowd like everyone else.
CHAPTER 8
Cassidy
Cassidy didn’t have time to think about Silas for even a moment after the doors opened, and for this he was grateful.
He’d spent the previous evening helping Nora assemble more vertebrae candle holders, despite the fact that by the time he’d gotten home from Craftmas his head had felt like a piñata at the end of a birthday party.
"You look like boiled shit," Nora had said when he came into the studio she’d set up in his guest room. "You should go to bed. I got this."