Don't Fail Me Now by Una LaMarche Page B

“She goes by Harper. Her stepdad’s name.”
    â€œLeah Harper,” Cass whispers, and I know her brain is working overtime all of a sudden, struggling to fit a new name and face to the specter we’ve been building in our heads since we were kids. “How did you figure it out?” she asks, her facial muscles as usual not betraying anything beneath the surface.
    â€œHer brother came in tonight,” I say, rerolling the bills from Yvonne’s loan to avoid eye contact. “He was looking for me.”
    As if on cue, Cass lands on the photo of Leah and Tim. “Oh yeah, I saw that guy,” she says. “I knew
something
freaked you out. What did he want?”
    â€œNothing,” I say before I can stop myself. “He was just curious.”
    She shoots me a skeptical side-eye. “Come on. Why would he be curious about you?”
    â€œUm, thanks?” I shove her.
    â€œYou know what I mean. He’s not even related to us. Why would he care?”
    â€œIt’s . . . complicated,” I hedge.
    â€œ
What?
” she asks, getting annoyed.
    Cass and I have an amateur telepathy thing going where I can usually communicate basic messages just using my eyes. When we were kids, it was stuff like,
Go upstairs
.
It’s okay
.
Don’t be scared
. But right now I’m just pleading with her,
Let it go. You don’t want to know
.
Trust me
.
    â€œTell me,” she says.
    â€œNot now, okay?”
    â€œShut up and just tell me, Michelle,” she says, her voice getting loud. “You’re freaking me out!”
    â€œFine.” I look her straight in the eyes and take a breath. “Buck is dying.”
    â€œOh,” she says, with the surprise of someone who was expecting a different, much worse, answer. I wonder if she thought something had happened to Leah. Better to lose a confirmed piece-of-shit father than a perfect imaginary sister, I guess. Cass thinks for a few seconds and then asks, “What’s he dying of?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYou didn’t even
ask
?”
    I didn’t care
, I want to say, but I don’t want to transfer my bitterness over Buck onto my sister. She was only two when he left, so she doesn’t even remember him. She basically grew up without a dad, like Denny. I think Buck is a little bit like a cartoon villain to Cass: a one-dimensional bad guy who let us down that time, long ago. But I remember. He was
there
; he was my father—until he wasn’t. And I will never, ever forgive him.
    â€œHow bad is it?” she asks. “Like . . . how soon is he . . .”
    I shrug. “It’s enough for me to know he’s on his way out,”I say. “I’m not really sweating the details.” Actually, of course I want to know. I’m kicking myself for being too mad to ask Tim for more information when I had the chance. But Buck clearly didn’t care about my life, so I’m trying hard not to let myself care about his death. So far, as evidenced by my recent Google searches, it’s not working out so well.
    â€œGod, do you know
anything
?” Cass groans.
    â€œI know he’s leaving us something,” I say defensively. “I know he’s in California.”
    â€œWhat’s he leaving us?
Where
in California?”
    â€œI . . . don’t know,” I admit, and Cass rolls her eyes so hard she could knock over a set of bowling pins. “But apparently Leah’s having a rough time with it all, and this guy, her brother or stepbrother or whatever, Tim, wants me to go talk to her.”
    â€œSeriously?” Cass asks. “
She’s
having a rough time?” My sister stares down at the carpet for a minute and then says, “Cry me a fucking river.”
    â€œCass—”
    â€œDon’t tell me not to curse,” she snaps. “You don’t get to play mom right now. Everything’s