Chapter Two

"Last one out is a rotten dinosaur egg!" Lane dove down and swam along the bottom of the pool toward the stairs. To their right, Tucker was swimming his heart out. Lane stayed underwater, turning a couple of slow somersaults before surfacing with a spray of water right beside the five-year-old as they hit the first step together, making him shriek.

"Noooo!" Tucker splashed and jumped his way up the stairs as Lane pretended to lose. "Yessss!" The little boy did a cocky victory dance. "You're the rotten egg!" he shouted gleefully. Lane made a show of sniffing at their own armpits.

"Gross." They grinned. "Alright, dry up." They tossed Tucker a towel. Lane dried off next to him. The day was disgustingly hot, but the air on their bare chest felt incredible. After years of wearing binders, they still couldn't believe the delicious relief top surgery had brought them. They couldn't help but grin as they looked down at the now well-healed scars and the neatness of their strong pectoral muscles. It almost seemed like a shame to throw a t-shirt on, but they had to get out of the heat and Annabelle always insisted on proper clothing etiquette in the house. They tugged a t-shirt over Tucker's head too, for good measure.

The blazing sun was so strong that both Tucker and Lane's board shorts were practically dry by the time they reached the side door. Lane had glanced through the main doors and clocked Brynn and Savannah in some kind of intense conversation in the living room and decided they might appreciate a few more minutes without their son hijacking the situation as only a five-year-old could. Instead, they ducked through into the dining room. Tucker ran straight to Annabelle next door in the kitchen.

"Burgers!" he shrieked with anticipation. Lane was more taken by the person eating the burger.

"Holy shit," they said. It was like a science fiction movie. Lane's boss had somehow morphed from a heavily pregnant, polished, rich woman into a grubby young girl.

"What?" She gave Lane a firm stare in return, despite the burger sauce running down her wrist. "Who are you?"

"I'm Lane. I'm the nanny. Are you like, Savannah's secret love child from back in the day or what?"

"What? Gross! I'm Cassidy." She frowned as Lane looked blank. "Her sister? And we hardly look alike," she said adamantly, as if insulted by the idea of looking like a woman who appeared yearly in People Magazine'sMost Beautiful list.

Lane examined her. You would pick them as sisters from a mile away, but there were differences. Cassidy was pale where Savannah was golden, her hair was lighter and longer and their mouths were different shapes. Their eyes though…

Lane suddenly realized the girl was giving them the same assessing stare, only with an edge of confusion. They waited. You could learn a lot about a person by the way they behaved about now, and Lane was curious.

"Are you a boy or a girl?" she blurted, as she took in Lane's increasingly firm - but only 5'6" - frame, their short dark swooping haircut, their strong jaw but soft, smooth skin, the board shorts and fitted t-shirt. Lane shrugged. There were definitely much better ways to go about it, but it was blunt and to the point.

"Neither," they said simply. "My pronouns are they/them."

The girl gave them a glare before rolling her eyes.

"You've got to be kidding me."

Lane stared at her flatly.

"Cool, well, you're an asshole, so I won't say it's nice to meet you. Are there any more burgers left or did you hoover them all?"

"Are you allowed to call your boss's sister an asshole?" the girl asked. Lane couldn't tell if she was actually curious or attempting to be threatening. In response, they wandered through the kitchen and popped their head through to the living room, where Savannah and Brynn were sitting side by side on the couch, looking faintly shell-shocked.

"Hey Savannah," Lane said, loud enough to be heard in the next room. "You know your sister is here and she's kind of a dick, right?"

Savannah looked up.

"Is she being rude to you? Because I literally just told her she can only stay here if she keeps a lid on the attitude," she called, clearly aiming for the dining room.

"Yeah, I think she's still working on that."

"Cassidy, cut the crap." Savannah's voice was crisp and fierce. Lane was pretty sure they'd die if Savannah ever used that tone on them.

Brynn raised her eyebrows at them, checking in. Lane shrugged. They'd dealt with a lot worse.

Back in the dining room, Cassidy's back was stiff as Lane helped themself to a burger. They could hear Tucker chatting away to Annabelle in the next room and Lane was about to go join him when the girl spoke up.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice flat. Lane looked at her. They weren't sure if she was sincere or just trying not to get kicked out. They were pretty sure it was the latter, but as they looked at Cassidy, they noticed other things: the slight rip in the neck of her dress, the weariness and wariness of her eyes, the thinness of her wrists.

"Whatever." Lane shrugged. They sat down opposite her, still curious to finally get to suss out a member of Savannah's long estranged family. "So what brings you here?" Lane asked. Cassidy hesitated, the remains of her burger halfway to her mouth. Lane gave her a longer look and hazarded a guess. "Trouble at home?"

"You could say that."

"Huh. That sucks, I'm sorry." Lane couldn't help but empathize with that one. "You'll be okay though, you know. Savannah will look out for you."

"You're on the bandwagon too, huh?" Cassidy took another bite and chewed.

"What?"

"Savannah the princess, Savannah the great, Savannah the saint."

"Whoa. Why the hate?"

"It's not hate." Cassidy licked her fingers as the burger disappeared. "I just see her for who she really is, unlike everyone that's always fawning around her. Including you, apparently."

"Wow, you've really got everything all figured out, don't you?" Lane took a swig of sweet tea. Cassidy might be pretty, but she was in no way fun to be around. They stood up. "Well, enjoy eating Savannah's food and having Savannah's safe roof over your head. You've got sauce in your hair, by the way."

Cassidy flushed in annoyance.

"Who is that?" Tucker appeared beside them, staring. Unlike Cassidy, he looked nothing like his mother, except in certain gestures or expressions, like when he smiled. His dark straight hair was long and shaggy, his limbs thin and gangly. People who didn't know always assumed that Brynn was his biological parent. Cassidy's face actually softened as she looked down at the curious child.

"That," Lane told him, "is your aunt. But she's in a real mood, so you can meet her when she's had a moment to reflect." They grabbed Tucker's hand and whisked him away.

Cassidy soaked in the big white bathtub in the ensuite of the guest room Annabelle had led her to. She ducked her head under the water, letting the road dirt and grime of her bad day soak away. It was only now, with a door closed between her and the world, that she finally let the tears fall.

"Get it together," she ordered herself as the sobbing finally subsided. "Stop blubbering like a stupid baby."

The scolding worked. She scrubbed her face with wet hands and sighed, contemplating the bathroom around her and the bedroom beyond. It was huge. It was beautiful. Cassidy genuinely didn't care. All that mattered was that she was safe, she was out of it all, and she was alone.

Despite her anger and resentment, seeing Savannah had shaken her to her core. For so long she'd nurtured the fantasy of coming face-to-face with her sister and watching her perfect face fall as she realized her mistakes. And yet when the famous sibling was finally in front of her - glowingly pregnant, radiant with luxury and her eyes full of tears at the sight of her little sister - Cassidy had lost the moral high ground by coming across like a petty brat.

It was mortifying. She wanted so badly to prove her righteous point, but Savannah had all but refused to fight her, denying her the explosion she had hoped for. Add in the emotions of her hideous day, and she'd practically cried and begged to stay with her. God. Between Savannah's snooty authority as she lectured her on her attitude and her wife's ridiculous over-protective support, Cassidy had felt reduced to a child all over again.

She'd taken her humiliation out on the nanny. Of course Savannah would have a cool, trendy nanny who wasn't a boy or a girl. It was so fitting for her rich and famous, edgy lifestyle and so predictable Cassidy wanted to scream. It was just unfortunate that Lane actually seemed like the one person who might genuinely bring themselves to care about what had happened to her, and Cassidy hadn't been able to snap out of her shitty feelings to respond in any way other than what Lane had correctly identified her as: an asshole.

Too much of an asshole to be trusted to speak with her own damn nephew, as it turned out. Cassidy saw herself through the eyes of someone entrusted to care for a young child and felt a wave of shame. Well, too bad. She wasn't here to build relationships. She would get what she came for and then she'd leave. Cassidy lay back in the bath and tried to figure out a plan.

Dinner that night was a tense affair. Savannah remembered waking that morning and looking forward to a blissful day with her family as they finished settling back into their routines before the whole circus creaked to life again the following week. She'd yawned and stretched and kissed her wife, then Tucker had barrelled into their room to jump in the bed with them. She'd leaned against the pillows, gazing at the two people she loved the most and felt the slow roll in her abdomen as the baby awoke too. In that moment, it had seemed like her blessings were truly too many to count.

She'd never have dreamed that by evening, they'd all be sitting rigidly around the outdoor table as the sunset faded, making awkward small talk with a little black storm cloud seated amongst them.

"Chicken?" Brynn offered the plate toward Cassidy, who shook her head silently. She'd filled her plate with nothing but potato salad and was eating at such a rate that Savannah eyed her thin frame with new alarm. She was dying for Cassidy to unburden herself and explain why she'd turned up on their doorstep. Until then, Savannah's active imagination was working overtime, each scenario worse than the last. She also badly wanted Cassidy to spell out why the hell she was so damn angry at her.

Savannah had done her best, hadn't she? She'd left home - at her parent's behest - when she was seventeen years old. Cassidy had been just three, the child born to their mother's marriage to Savannah's stepfather Randy. One of her biggest heartbreaks was leaving her youngest sibling behind at an age that she knew she would not be remembered.

The next time she'd seen her was the first and only time she'd seen her family since they'd expelled her. They'd had intermittent contact in the intervening years, but it had been clear that her family still viewed her by the terms her mother had hurled at her as a teenager - sinner, pervert, against God - and so Savannah had tried to guard her broken heart and fragile sense of self by staying away. But a few years later when her success arrived - suddenly elevating her status and her financial position light years from what she'd grown up with - she knew she could never sleep under some fancy roof knowing her own family barely had food on the table.

She'd spent one week with her mother, shopping for a home for her, Savannah's stepfather and young Cassidy. Her two brothers were in their twenties by then and out of home, so Savannah made sure they were set up too, but Cassidy had been just twelve. She'd blushed and stuttered in Savannah's presence and Savannah had done what she could to try to put her little sister at ease. But when the week ended - the house and new car signed over and the monthly stipend set up with her accountant - her mother informed her that now that her duty was being fulfilled to her family and Savannah was married to a man, they had decided to forgive her for her sins if she would just repent them.

Savannah had politely informed them she was still, in fact, bisexual, and that she had no wish to be forgiven for that. Then she'd walked away feeling as bruised as her stepfather's idea of discipline had always left her as a child. There was no discussion of any need for forgiveness on that end.

She'd had a phone call with her mother twice a year, every year for the last twelve years, briefly checking if all was well, paying for miscellaneous requirements without question and that was the extent of the relationship. They did not ask to meet her son. They did not offer support during her incredibly public and traumatic divorce. They certainly did not offer congratulations when she remarried this summer. But Savannah checked in just the same.

It had been during one of these conversations almost seven years ago that she'd tried to push the college option for Cassidy. Her mother had told her that Cassidy was simply not interested. Savannah had offered to come and talk with her in person, steeling herself for the prospect of seeing her family again, despite everything in her own life beginning to fall apart. Her mother had rejected the offer in no uncertain terms.

Which brought them to today, when a mysteriously pissed off adult Cassidy had materialized at her front gate with no warning and still no explanation.

"Can we talk?" she asked Cassidy as the meal ended and the table was cleared.

"Here it is," muttered her little sister. "The catch for letting me stay."

"Well, yeah." Savannah shrugged mildly. "We're sharing a home and I'd like a conversation with you so I can understand what's going on."

"And I'd rather not." Cassidy gave an exaggerated mimic of her shrug. She stood up abruptly and pushed back her chair, disappearing into the house. Savannah leapt - rather, she tried to leap, but it was more of a slow heave - out of her chair to follow her. Brynn laid her hand on her arm.

"Just let her be," she suggested. "Let her sleep off her day and try again in the morning."

Savannah sank back into her seat. Brynn was right. She looked at her wife and smiled a tired smile, grateful for her steady presence. She looked across the table at her son, merrily spooning the remains of ice cream into his mouth, clearly untroubled by the appearance of a new grouchy relative, then at Lane, who was looking thoughtful.

"Well," she said. "This is going to be an adventure."