The Tear Collector Read Online Free

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    “I’m sorry, Cassandra, she’s already asleep,” she says in a motherly tone. “I don’t think she’s feeling well. Might be the flu. You can’t be too careful.”
    “Can you tell her I called?”
    “Sure. Cassandra, as long as I have you, I need to ask you something,” she says. I’m trying to focus on Robyn’s mother’s words as my grandmother bangs on the door, loudly.
    “John and I have our twentieth anniversary coming up on April ninth,” she starts. “We’d like you to babysit Becca for us that night, if you don’t have other plans.”
    “I’m always happy to be there for Becca,” I say, knowing Cody’s long gone by then.
    “Thanks. I’d have Robyn do it,” she says, then pauses. “But she and Craig are the ones taking us to dinner. Isn’t that sweet of them? They are just the sweetest kids and cutest couple.”
    I pause. The knock at the door echoes the loud pounding in my head. I’m just beginning to understand how difficult this breakup is for Robyn. In this house, my breakups get greeted with celebration. In Robyn’s house, it will be devastation. I wonder how long Robyn can keep it a secret. That’s another area where I could be of great support.
    “Are you there?” Mrs. Berry asks.
    “Sure, sorry, just checking my schedule,” I lie. “Of course I can do it.”
    “Thanks. You’re such a help to us and a good friend to my girls,” she says. “I’ll tell Robyn you called. It might make her feel better. I know Becca always feels better after you visit.”
    “Thanks,” I reply, then say my good-byes. I know there’s nothing that will make Robyn feel any better anytime in the future. When we spoke yesterday, that was all she talked about: the Beatles song “Yesterday.” She said how the line in the song “there’s a shadow hanging over me” described her life. When she tells her parents, those shadows are sure to grow darker.
    I’m surprised to find Maggie still standing by the door when I finally emerge from my room. We both still have our uniforms on: mine is from the hospital; hers is from Avalon Convalescence Care, this nursing home where she’s head nurse. In the summer, I volunteer there too. I don’t like being there, but I don’t have a choice. No wonder I relate so well to the patients.
    “Cassandra, you can’t act this way,” Maggie says. “Especially at the reunion.”
    “I don’t want to go,” I say. In four weeks is our family reunion. I hate it, but I do like seeing my cousins Lillith and Mara, as well as almost all of the male cousins, except Alexei. Yet this year, I dread it worse than ever. That coming weekend, not “yesterday,” is the shadow hanging over me. Anytime I speak of missing it, Maggie tells me there is no choice. Thosewho refuse to attend or break family rules, like my cousin Siobhan, become exiles forever.
    “Your cousin Alexei will be there,” Maggie says, sounding enthusiastic.
    “I know,” I mumble, keeping hidden all I know about him. But I also know my duty to my family and what I’m expected to do. Maggie, even more than Veronica, raves about him.
    “Alexei just turned seventeen recently too,” she says. “You could learn a lot from him.”
    I think of all the evidence that contradicts her, but I don’t bother to say anything. “What do you mean?”
    “He understands family and duty,” she says. “He’s not selfish, like you’re becoming.”
    “Selfish?” I wonder if my eyes are popping out of my head. I am many things, but selfish isn’t one of them. “I do whatever I’m asked. I’ve sacrificed a normal life for this family.”
    Maggie stares me down, “You have a duty to family. Some of the things you do—”
    “I do those things for us, not for me.”
    “No, you are selfish,” she intones. “Our existence owes itself to sacrifice.”
    “Then when are any of you going to sacrifice for me?” I ask, but don’t give her time to respond. “You all ask so much and I get nothing in return.