Cassandra brushed a dust bunny from her hair. So far, her search had been fruitless, yielding little more than photo albums, old clothes, old furniture, and roughly enough dust and grime to give Felix Unger types fatal heart attacks.

“Oh, I give up!” she cried out, flopping onto the floor and sending yet another oversize dust cloud into the air. “I’m going to have dust in my nostrils for weeks!”

Cassandra stretched a leg out, trying to see how dirty her jeans were and how many times she’d have to run them through the washing machine to get them into washable condition again. Her foot connected with something hard. She let out a brief yelp of surprise, then rummage around to see what she’d struck. She uncovered a lovely, but (not surprisingly) dust-covered jewelry box. She blew the layer of grime and dust from the top as well as she could, then slowly opened it.


Photographs and papers. Was this what she sought? Carefully, she lifted a photo from the box and peered at it. An attractive young man with black hair and blue eyes, sitting under a tree, was shown in the snapshot. As she peered more closely, her eyes widened. Was there a resemblance? Yes! She could see that his eyes and mouth were shaped very much like her own, and his hair had the same odd texture and tint. And wasn't his nose shaped very similarly to hers?

“My father?” she whispered. “But what’s his name?” Examination of the back of the photo brought forth no information. Her hands scrabbled through the box’s contents. Photos. More photos.

“Wait, is this it?” Cassandra muttered, unfolding a paper. “Yes!” she cried. Then, she peered more closely. “No!”

She dropped the paper back into the box, stunned. “’Identity of parents will not be disclosed until adopter’s twenty-first birthday or until birth parents and adoptive parents agree to make identity known.’ What?” she shrieked. “All my searching was for nothing?” She beat at a nearby box, infuriated. “Damn it!”


“Cassie?” her mother called from below. “Where are you?”

“Crap,” Cassandra muttered. “Busted.”

“Are you in the attic?”

Cassandra sighed and called out, “Yes, Mother.”

“You know, you’re not supposed to be up there. You’ll have problems breathing for days now. Come down and have some tea while I make lunch.”

She doesn’t sound angry. Just worried about me, Cassandra noted, somewhat relieved.

She climbed carefully down from the attic, still clutching the jewelry box. Her mother brushed the dust from Cassandra’s clothes. “You’re all dusty,” she remarked, gently scolding. “Go change your clothes. I’m going to make lunch and a pitches of peppermint tea.” Then, she noticed the jewelry box. “What’s that you’ve got, honey?”

“I found it in the attic,” Cassandra said slowly. She bowed her head, ashamed to have been sneaking around. She handed the box to her mother and then left to change her jeans-- shaking the dust off of her shirt would be good enough, for now-- and brush her hair.


When she walked into the kitchen, her mother smiled and asked, “Does spaghetti sound okay? Or maybe macaroni and cheese?”

“I don’t really care,” Cassandra replied, staring at the jewelry box. Why is she avoiding the subject? she wondered. Finally, she blurted out, “Mother, who is he? The man in the pictures… he’s my dad, my birth dad, right?”

Mrs. Verona flushed, a guilty expression crossing her face. “Yes,” she finally admitted. “Your father… my husband… he didn’t want you to see those pictures and papers.”

“Mother, what are the names of my parents, my blood parents?”

Her mother shrugged. “I don’t know, honey,” she replied.


“Are there any pictures of my mother?”

“Just this one,” her mother replied. She fished a tattered photo from the bottom of the box. A young woman with blue eyes and brown hair held back with a headband. She looked attractive, even without any makeup. She looked young and, somehow, helpless, even though she had a slight smile on her face.

“She’s pretty,” Cassandra said slowly. “I wish I could have known her.”


Charise slumped against S, emotionally exhausted.

“How bad was it?” he asked gently. “Want me to run a bath for you?”

“Maybe in a little while,” she replied. “S… my mom is dying of cancer. Dying. At first, I was like ‘You deserve it, for what you put me through’ and ‘Damn it, I don’t want to go to the will reading thing she’s doing.’ But now… I don’t know. I guess I feel bad about it. Guilty, somehow.”

“Charise, you did nothing wrong. You were a good daughter, even when she wasn’t a good mother. Your blaming yourself would be like if I blamed myself for my dad’s death,” S said slowly, stroking her hair. “Dad and I didn’t get along well. I even wished he’d die, so he’d stop bullying me and Mom and my siblings. But I never once, for one second, felt like I was responsible for his death. I guess it’s kind of cold to say, but people die all the time. I have no more control of that than you do. It is sad that your mother’s ill. But all we can do now is hope for a peaceful passing, you know?” He sighed. “I’m sure that’s not very comforting.”


Charise smiled a little and hugged S. “I know you mean well, and that’s what matters,” she replied.

S watched Charise walk to the bathroom and shut the door. He heard her begin to run a bath.

Charise is taking this harder than I expected, he thought.