Chapter Twenty-One

Savannah and Emmeline came home the next afternoon. Over the next week, Cassidy gradually came to realize what Savannah's offer to let her stay in an apartment had been all about. The house was in chaos. The size of the mansion was no match for tiny Emmeline's lung power, and on the nights Cassidy was already sleepless, she could hear her incessant cries.

Savannah spent two days and nights weeping, which she kept trying to explain was normal, but everyone around her felt on tenterhooks, unable to soothe either one of them. Midway through the week, everyone seemed to get into some kind of rhythm. Brynn did as much of the nights as she could, waking Savannah only to feed Emmeline, then taking breaks in the day to catch up on sleep. Lane took Tucker for longer hours to give his parents time to focus on the baby.

Cassidy watched her sister. She could see the moments she looked in love and in bliss with her tiny daughter, and the times when she looked like she wanted to scream and run into the hills. Those were the moments she reached out and took her niece, prodding her sister to go and take a shower or sit outside under a tree where no one would disturb her.

And yet because Savannah was Savannah, two weeks after Emmeline's arrival, she hosted a party. On a Saturday afternoon, Brynn's mother and sister arrived from California, cooing with excitement to meet the new arrival. Coral and Noah followed shortly after, with what seemed like a literal trailer-load of tiny presents. Savannah's other band members - Jed and Travis - her manager, Chester, a handful of other musician friends, and a whole assortment of various Nashville luminaries, all descended upon their house for an afternoon garden party to welcome the newest member of the family.

Savannah - pulling off some kind of miracle of support garments and makeup - looked fresh and pretty and sparkling with happiness in a white summer dress, holding a beautifully swaddled baby in her arms and accepting everyone's congratulations with a glowing smile. Cassidy watched her closely, trying to see evidence of the sister she'd seen the day before - dark circles under her tired eyes, weeping to Cassidy that she looked like a deflated balloon - but she was gone.

"Is she okay, do you think?"

Cassidy looked up to see her sister's friend Rosalie standing beside her, also surveying Savannah with an assessing gaze. She'd met Rosalie in the kitchen earlier, where they'd both been grabbing drinks. She'd noticed her at once since the other woman had stopped still, staring at her, wide-eyed, like she'd seen a ghost. Then she'd visibly shaken herself, smiled and was introduced before yet another wave of visitors had flooded in. She followed Rosalie's gaze now to where Savannah was seated in the shade under the willow tree, smiling up at Brynn's promoter Maggie, Emmeline resting against her shoulder.

"I don't know," she said quietly. "She cries a lot."

"Hmm," was Rosalie's only response. They watched her together in silence for a while. "Early days," she said after a beat.

"How do you know Savannah?" Cassidy asked her. It wasn't just small talk. Rosalie was the only other person so far who'd seemed to see right through Savannah's shield of perfection. She examined her. Rosalie was extremely pretty she realized, though it took a second glance to notice. She seemed about her sister's age, but there was nothing of the shiny glamor about her that Cassidy associated with being in the industry.

"We're old friends," Rosalie told her. "She can't sneak shit past me," she added with a smile. Then her head jerked up. "Lane!"

Cassidy watched as Lane looked up from across the lawn. She swallowed as they came closer. They were wearing a crisp white t-shirt, the short sleeves slightly rolled up like a young James Dean, and their smile as they saw Rosalie was a little shy. Cassidy wasn't sure if she'd ever seen a more perfect looking human in all her life. A sharp feeling of wistfulness almost took her breath away.

"Hey," Lane said as they arrived and Rosalie pulled them into a hug.

"I've just been meeting Cassidy," she said and immediately, before both their eyes, Lane went bright red. Cassidy had no idea what to make of that.

"Yeah," Lane said, their eyes skittering over the two of them before they looked away. Rosalie smiled broadly.

"Are we on for next weekend?" she asked. Lane nodded, their face squinting slightly as if there was something incredibly interesting about the buffet table on the back patio. "Lane volunteers at the center," she told Cassidy, as if that should mean something.

"The center?"

"The Rachel Carlson Center," Rosalie added. "The one Savannah funds?" Cassidy nodded as if she knew, but Rosalie saw through her. "It's for queer and gender diverse youth," she told her. "I'm the director. We look after kids who're homeless or at risk of homelessness, or who are vulnerable in other ways because of who they are."

"Oh." Cassidy felt weird, like Rosalie would just magically know somehow of her missteps around all the queer people she was suddenly surrounded by. "And what does Lane do?" she asked, almost as a diversion, though she was curious. Lane responded to being talked about as though it wasn't happening, looking more interested in how the grass was growing than the conversation. Rosalie looked from one to the other.

"Lane," she said fondly, "is my star protégé. They teach an art class, though it's really just a guise for an outreach session. And they mentor young people who need a Lane in their life."

"Huh," she said. Cassidy didn't especially want that image in her head, of Lane being sweet and doing sweet things. She tried to tell herself she didn't personally need a Lane in her life, but it felt unconvincing.

"Anyway," said Lane, who seemed wildly uncomfortable. Cassidy figured it was because of the proximity to her, not Rosalie; she'd seen the spark of happiness in their eyes as they'd looked up and seen the woman. She was just about to excuse herself to let them catch up, unimpeded by her unwelcome presence, when Lane said "I gotta-" and without even finishing the excuse, darted off after Brynn.

Rosalie didn't seem offended. She watched Lane disappear with a small smile. Then she turned to Cassidy.

"Lane," she said evenly, "is a wonderful person." Cassidy held back a sigh. It was just her luck to be stuck at the party with a Lane enthusiast. "But they can be a little gun-shy. It'd be worth it, though, if you want it to be."

Cassidy stared at her. She knew. Suddenly Lane's awkwardness made sense to her, as her own face flushed hot. God, that buffet table really was fascinating.

As she stood there, though, she slowly realized there was finally one person she could actually talk to.

"I don't think that's the problem," she said softly, looking down at the grass. "I think maybe it's me." Suddenly, she was struggling to blink back tears.

"Oh honey," Rosalie's voice was warm. "We're all the problem. All of us. None of us are without issue."

"Then what do we do about it?" she asked, feeling desperate. She felt inexplicably like maybe Rosalie had all the answers and Cassidy needed them now. She needed them yesterday. She needed them before she'd lashed out at her sister, before she'd driven Lane away.

"We deal with it," Rosalie shrugged. "We keep getting up each day trying to be better. Accept the fact we won't always succeed. Accept that the people we love won't either. Sometimes it's good enough, sometimes it's not. You're always allowed to walk away."

Cassidy thought about that. It didn't feel like enough.

"Do you want to talk to someone?" Rosalie asked her gently. Cassidy's first instinct was to say no. She wasn't the needing help type. But she was starting to understand that not all her instincts were working in her favor. Slowly, she nodded and Rosalie took her number. "I'll be in touch. It won't be me, but I'll make sure it's someone good."

"Thank you," she said awkwardly. Rosalie looked at her for a beat, her green eyes steady.

"You're worth it too, honey," she said. "Don't let yourself forget it."

Over the next couple of weeks, Savannah grew worse. She was short-tempered and tearful. Emmeline was struggling to feed well and Savannah took that on as a personal failing. Some days all Cassidy saw her do was feed the baby then hook herself up to a miserable looking pumping machine, then feed the baby again. She cried every time Emmeline needed a bottle of formula instead, so either Brynn or Cassidy would take the baby away to feed her.

Brynn walked around in a daze, her face creased with exhaustion and anxiety, as she took as much of the baby load as possible while still trying to take care of her increasingly fragile wife. When Cassidy checked in with her, she gave a tired smile.

"It's okay," she said. "I think this is just what having a newborn is like. Everyone is sleep-deprived, everyone's a bit miserable. We'll be okay."

Cassidy wasn't so sure. Sometimes Savannah thrust the crying baby into her arms with surprising force, like she couldn't cope being around her for a single second longer. From what she'd seen of her sister before, she'd been a calm, connected, attentive mother to her son. But right now she didn't even seem to want to be around Tucker, tolerating his cuddles and demands for attention with grim forbearance.

Lane saw it, too. Cassidy was pretty sure they were working double their normal hours, helping get Tucker bathed and to bed at night when Brynn was helping with the baby, arriving in early so that when the little boy inevitably bounced out of bed at the crack of dawn they were there to sidetrack him before he woke his parents. The two of them drifted past each other in the house frequently, Lane with handfuls of kid snacks or a small child riding on their back, Cassidy ferrying bottles or holding a sleeping baby.

A couple of times, without a word, they swapped, Lane gently plucking the baby from her arms and patting Emmeline back to sleep, Cassidy collapsing on the couch to watch some cartoons with Tucker.

Whenever she could, whenever Brynn had Emmeline and her sister wasn't hooked up to a creepy boob torture machine, Cassidy found reasons to get Savannah outside.

"Come for a walk with me," she'd press her. "Jasper misses you."

Savannah protested some days, claiming exhaustion, but other times she seemed a little freer as soon as the fresh air and sunlight hit her skin.

"Are you doing okay?" Cassidy tried to ask her, and her sister just gave her a ghastly rendition of her usually picture-perfect charming smile and told her she was just fine.

"Babies suck," she said calmly. "I'd forgotten that about them."

Cassidy was alarmed. But also, the whole thing did seem to kind of suck, so she couldn't exactly argue with her sister's grim assessment.

One afternoon, when Brynn was upstairs taking a nap after a particularly disrupted night, Emmeline wouldn't stop crying. Savannah had breastfed her and was pacing around the kitchen, Emmeline on her shoulder getting gently bounced and patted. The more the baby cried, the tenser Savannah's face became and the more forced her movements.

"Let me take her," offered Cassidy.

"No!" Savannah snapped. "I'm her fucking mother. I can do this."

Cassidy stepped back, a pit of worry opening up inside her. She went back to making a cup of herbal tea for her sister, the baby screaming on and on in the background.

"I think she's hungry," she tried again finally. Savannah lost it.

"Shut up, Cassidy, for god's sake, shut up!" she shouted over Emmeline's cries. "This is so typical of you, always thinking you know better than everyone! God, you're always poking and snapping and being irritable and going on about everything all the time. You're a fucking nightmare; did you know that?"

Cassidy flinched, her eyes filling with hot tears.

"Savannah, come on!" she cried, trying to figure out how to get her to see reason.

"Hey!" came the voice from behind her. Cassidy couldn't believe the déjà vu as Lane suddenly appeared, right when she was arguing with her sister. Only to her shock, she realized it was Savannah they were glaring at. "Cassidy doesn't deserve any of that. She's here trying to help you, day and night, because she loves you. And you love her too when you're not dying on the inside."

Savannah stared at Lane, her face intense with what looked like a fireball of emotions. It looked like she was on the verge of a total explosion.

"We need to get you some help," Lane told her, their voice suddenly calm. "Because you're not okay."

There was some kind of silent stand-off, Lane and Savannah staring at each other, neither of them budging an inch, Emmeline's screaming intensifying. Then Savannah grabbed her daughter off her shoulder and thrust her at Cassidy. She clutched her tiny niece tightly, watching as her sister all but crumbled to the floor, curling up with her back against the cabinets, her face pressed into her arms, weeping.

Cassidy and Lane looked at each other, both clearly struggling not to freak out. Then Lane nodded and they both moved at once. Cassidy found the formula and made a bottle. Lane sat on the floor next to Savannah and held her hand. As soon as the bottle found Emmeline's lips, she quieted.

"I'm gonna call Rosalie," Lane said to Savannah after a few minutes, squeezing her hand in their own, and without lifting her head, she nodded.

By the time Brynn came down, Rosalie and Savannah were tucked up on the couch together, their heads close, speaking in soft voices. Brynn's face crumpled with relief. She gave them another half hour to talk, then went over to join them. Savannah pressed her face into her wife's shoulder and cried and cried and cried.

Rosalie had been the right call to make. Within twenty-four hours Savannah was set up with a doctor - a psychiatrist that specialized in postpartum depression - as well as a counselor. A second nanny was brought on temporarily to help out at night. There was a lactation specialist and a pediatrician dropping by. Brynn's mom flew back, using her terrifying senior doctor voice to wrangle everyone into shape, like she could keep Savannah safe purely by creating a forcefield of organisation and fierce love around her. Within a week, things seemed - if not better - at least under control.

A week after that, Savannah came downstairs and wrapped her arms around Cassidy.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so, so sorry. And thank you. Thank you for looking after me and Emmeline. I don't know what I would have done without you."

"Cross me again and I'll cut you," Cassidy told her, hugging her tightly back, and for the first time in weeks, Savannah laughed.