Chapter 85 Chapter 0085
•CASSANDRA•
I was busy sorting a few documents in my office when my cell phone rang. I ignored it at first, but when it rang again, I rolled my eyes and picked it up.
My chest tightened when I saw Mason's name on the screen.
'How long are we going to keep hiding, Cass?' Lyra groaned at the back of my mind. 'He will find out eventually and it might not end nicely.'
I ignored her and answered.
"Dr. Frost speaking, how may I help you?"
"Hey, I hope I am not disturbing you."
"I'm working," I answered. "Do you need something?"
"I am out with my daughter, Alena, and I want to get her something. But I don't know what. I've been raising a son for eleven years and that's all I know."
I swallowed, trying to control my heart. Lyra was right. It was getting harder to maintain the distance between Dr. Frost and Cassandra when all we ever talked about were our children.
"A drawing book," I said after a moment. "Children her age enjoy drawing. It gives them something to do with all the things they can't yet say out loud."
"A drawing book," he repeated, as if writing it down mentally. "That's a good idea." A pause. "Actually, why don't you come and help me pick it out? I am at the mall on Crescent Street. It won't take long."
"I can't," I replied. "I'm working."
"You said you're usually on your breaks at twelve," he replied. "It's half past twelve."
I looked at the clock on my wall and rolled my eyes.
"I have documents to file."
"Dr. Frost," he sighed. "It is a drawing book. Twenty minutes."
"I really don't think—"
"Please."
I closed my eyes and sighed. "Fine. Twenty minutes."
I hung up the call and took a moment before I got up and went to change in the bathroom.
I kept a spare set of clothes in my locker for long shifts that ran into emergencies. I pulled on a different top, tied my hair differently from how I wore it at work and home.
Alena knew my scent. She had known it since she was born. So I knew I was taking a risk. But I went anyway.
I found them near the entrance of the stationery section on the second floor.
Mason was standing with his hands in his pockets looking at a display of colored pencil sets. Alena was beside him, pointing at something.
I took a deep breath and walked toward them, praying that Alena wouldn't recognize me.
"Dr. Frost," Mason said when he saw me, straightening up with a smile. "You came."
"Twenty minutes," I reminded him.
Alena turned around.
Her eyes landed on me and her brows knitted. She didn't know me as Dr. Frost but mommy, so I hoped she didn't catch on.
"Alena, this is Dr. Frost," Mason said. "She is a friend of Daddy's.”
Alena looked at me for another moment. "Hi," she said.
"Hi," I replied, keeping my voice slightly different from how I spoke to her.
I directed my attention toward the shelves almost immediately, reaching for a drawing book on the middle shelf and turning it over to check the paper quality.
I moved along the shelf and picked out what I needed quickly and deliberately, keeping my hands occupied and my eyes mostly forward.
Every time I felt Alena's gaze on me, I shifted my attention to another shelf or addressed a comment to Mason instead.
But she kept watching.
I crouched down to retrieve a watercolor set from the lower shelf and when I straightened, Alena was standing closer than she had been before. She was looking at my hair with a focused and slightly puzzled expression.
"We will get everything paid for," Mason said, taking the items from me. "Alena, do you want to go and choose some pencils from that stand over there?"
She looked at the pencil stand, then back at me, then at the pencil stand again.
The pencils won. She walked toward them with Gerald under her arm.
Mason turned to me while she was occupied. "She likes you," he said, smiling.
"She doesn't know me," I replied.
"Children don't need a long time to decide if they like you," he answered. "She's been watching you since you arrived." He paused. "I don't think I ever asked your name. Your first name."
I opened my mouth to speak, but Alena saved the day.
"I found them!" Alena called from the pencil stand, holding up a set with considerable triumph.
Mason turned toward her immediately and I released the breath I had been holding.
We paid for everything and walked back through the mall toward the entrance.
Alena walked between us for part of the way and then ran ahead to look at something in a window display, and I used the distance to slow down my pulse.
"Thank you for coming," Mason said when Alena went inside his car. "I hope we can bring our girls together one day."
I nodded with a smile before we parted ways. I went into my car and exhaled before I roared the engine to life and drove home.
Alena was quiet through dinner, which was unusual enough that both Dante and I noticed.
I assumed she was tired after a long day with Mason.
I found out I was wrong when I sat on the edge of her bed that night and pulled her blanket up.
She looked at me strangely before she gathered the courage to say what was on her mind.
"Mama," she said.
"Yes, baby?"
She studied my face carefully. "Why were you wearing a wig today?"
My hand stilled on her blanket.
"And you didn't talk like yourself," she continued. "Why did you pretend you didn't know me? Did I do something wrong, Mama?"
I looked at her small face in the dim light of her bedroom lamp, and felt my heart breaking.
She had known. She had known the entire time we were standing in that stationery shop and she had said nothing and given nothing away and waited until we were alone in her room at bedtime.
She was four years old.
"Why were you pretending?"
I sat with that question for a moment, looking at my daughter's patient and completely serious face, and understood that there were certain people in the world that no amount of perfume or different hair or adjusted tone of voice was ever going to fool.
My daughter was one of them.
"That," I muttered. "Is a very long story. But you did nothing wrong, baby. You're the most perfect daughter in the world."
"Is Daddy a bad man then? If he is, I won't see him again. You're my mommy and I don't want anyone to hurt you."
I wrapped my arms around her and tried to hold back the tears at the corners of my eyes. But they stung.
I scolded myself for going to the mall.