Chapter 50: Dreams

I miss you too.

Are things bad down there?

Jasmine? 

Oh good. I’ll be better when I know you’re home.

Nick responded to each of her messages as they arrived, but she only sent one meaningful, or relevant, response. Curiously, all of them showed as delivered, but not read. There was probably something off with the read receipts, he rationalized. 

Without intending to, he fell asleep on his couch while he debated whether to call her. 

A baby cried in the distance. In front of him, Jasmine tried to cook on the stove, but there was smoke rising from the pan she was in front of. 

“You don’t have to cook, silly. I can do it.” 

“I just wanted to see if I could make dumplings for you, like your mom used to.” 

He walked up and saw that while they were dumpling shaped, they were as black as coal.

“I appreciate it, but I’ll take it from here.” 

He looked over to her, and she was gone. He flipped around to find her, and instead was met by a dense forest that extended as far as he could see.

The baby’s cries were louder now, but he couldn’t pinpoint a direction. 

“Help!” Jasmine screamed, but like the baby, he didn’t know where her voice came from. 

“Where did you go? Come back! I can help!”

“The question is where did you go?” 

Jasmine was before him again, except it wasn’t her. It was some twisted version, her eyes far too large and her frown exaggerated beyond human limits. 

Black tears fell down her cheeks, filled her eyes until he could see none of their beautiful brown. The cry surrounded him, filled his ears with their terrible cacophony as more cries overlaid each other. 

“You’ll never see me again,” the voice, a blend of Jasmine’s and Autumn’s and Trisha’s, said.

Her mouth opened impossibly large, where only an inky darkness resided. Before he could say anything, the darkness swallowed him whole. 

Nick shot up in a cold sweat. It was dark outside; he’d been out for a few hours. Frantically, he checked his phone and found no new message from Jasmine.

He called her, desperate to hear her voice. 

It went straight to voicemail. 

There was no real reason to panic. Yet he still felt that pit of dread. Something was wrong; he could feel it in his bones. 

With sleep the last thing on his mind, he started to make arrangements to head to Georgia on a minute’s notice. 

“Do you ever wonder what life would have been if Mom and Dad weren’t our parents?” Andrea asked, played with some of the old knick-knacks on Jasmine’s desk. 

After the baby shower ended, Jasmine retreated to her room. To her surprise, her sister followed her in and sat down at the desk while Jasmine laid in bed. She pulled out her phone, and they proceeded to scroll in silence for an hour or so. 

Jasmine had nearly forgotten she was there when the question came up. 

“I already know.” She set her phone down. “It would have been hard in a different way. We would have learned to earn our keep. We would have been grateful for everything we had. And, assuming these different parents were loving, we would have been able to start our own lives with a solid foundation, not pigeon-holed into whatever they wanted for us.” 

Andrea mulled over what she said. “That’s really optimistic.” 

She shrugged. “Maybe, but it was a daydream that got me to New York.”

Andrea didn’t respond. 

“Thanks for covering me down there,” she added. “I really appreciate you keeping them off me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said suddenly. “For the awful stuff I said. I just…” she trailed off, looked off to towards the door. 

“What?” 

Andrea turned back, her face wet, expression contorted into pain. “Why did you leave me? It was supposed to be the two of us.”

“Andrea—”

 “I kept tabs on you, just to make sure you weren’t dead or on the streets. But when I finally saw you in person, and you looked so put together and happy, like you’d escaped, I lost it. You could have come back and taken me with you, given me that chance.” 

She sat up. “I’m sorry. I never knew you wanted to leave. I thought if you did, you’d just do it.” 

“How could I?” She raised her voice. “They had cameras installed on my window. They hired security that constantly patrols the property line now. They made sure I could never do what you did. And anytime I threatened to leave, they told me how I was breaking their hearts all over again.” She stood up and paced the room, her expression now that of fury. “Mom always made sure to know that I wasn’t good enough, that I was just the placeholder until you came back. Do you know what that did to me?” 

Jasmine rose to her feet and approached her sister carefully. “I can’t imagine.” 

Andrea turned on her feel to confront Jasmine. “I thought you were suffering too. It was the only thing I could hold onto, that somehow your life was worse than mine. I mean, come on, you working as a waitress? A cheating boyfriend? I thought you were barely scraping by. But that lie came shattering down at Cannes. And I realized you found all the opportunity in the world, while I was left under Mom’s thumb. And maybe, if you’d taken me with you, I could have been as happy as you.” 

 Jasmine pulled her into a tight hug, and her sister sobbed into her shirt. “I’m sorry,” she started as her tears joined her sisters. “I thought about it. But I thought without me things would get better for you, not worse. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

They held each other like they had as children until their sobs quieted. 

“Come back with me,” she said. 

Andrea looked up at her, her eyes wide. “Really?” 

She smiled and nodded. “Really. You’d have to help with the chores when Asher gets needy and consumes my time, which will be almost constantly for a while, but we can make it work.” 

“That’s my nephew’s name?” 

“Mm-hmm.” 

Andrea squeezed her tight. “Yes. Yes, yes, and yes. Oh god, I need to start figuring out what to pack and what to leave. What did you take?”

“About three days’ worth of clothes and some jewelry I pawned to survive the first couple months.” 

She wrinkled her nose. “Do I have to pawn my jewelry? I like most of it.”

She threw her head back and laughed. “No, you’ll be starting off in a much better place than I did.”

“Thank God. I can’t believe it. I’m going to New York!” she squealed. 

They spent the hours before bed planning the first couple weeks of her settling in, potential college applications so Andrea could earn her degree, and what Jasmine wanted to show her of the city. 

When Andrea left, Jasmine felt an old weight lift from her shoulders.