Remember Me This Way

VII

Remember Me This Way

2014

Chapter VII

 

“Let’s go.” Tate whispered into Cassie’s ear. His voice yanked shivers from deep inside her that made her feel slightly squeamish. Why in the hell was she feeling this way?

Nodding she followed Tate out of her room, glancing back at it only once before they made their way downstairs to an empty living room.

Tate couldn’t see Cassie’s parents anywhere and just as he decided he would leave an empty – hollow – voice called at him from the kitchen.

“You were that boy…the one that stopped past her funeral…weren’t you?” Karen asked, standing from her chair at the family table and looking at him pleadingly. Tate nodded stiffly, unsure of what to do.

“Were you one of her friends?” Karen asked and Tate sent a look to Cassie to ask what she wanted him to say. Cassie smiled at him and Tate managed a small smile to, but directed it at Cassie’s mother who had a hopeful expression stretched across her usually sad face.

Tate could tell Karen was a beautiful woman before the tragic death of Cassie. Her emerald eyes matched Cassie’s perfectly while her lighter hair was pulled back into a loose bun. She was tall and stunning and Tate could see where Cassie had gotten her enticing lips and wicked curves from. Not that Tate was having perverted thoughts about Cassie’s mother; he was just admitting their shared beauty.

Although Tate noticed that Cassie’s mum had seemingly dull eyes, with dark, purple rings around them. Slight frown lines and wrinkles had formed around her eyes, making her look older than she was; but Tate still saw the beauty in her.

A faint glimmer of hope lingered in her dim eyes and Tate couldn’t do much to deny them; her eyes reminded him so much of Cassie that he had to yield to her.

“Yeah…Yeah I was…” Tate said finally as he made his way into the kitchen and sat down across from Karen who also took her seat again.

Karen’s eyes filled with tears as she looked down at her hands that were placed on the table.

“Help her Tate…Please…” Cassie muttered from her place next to her weeping mother. Tate sent Cassie a look and she pleadingly scoffed, “Look at her Tate. Just please…say something to her…”

“Cassie once told me,” Tate began, looking at Karen with a small smile as she looked up at him, “that she wanted to be a bird.” Karen frowned in confusion, spurring Tate to continue.

“She wanted the freedom of being unrestricted. She said ‘if something has wings it will always be free’ and I never understood that…until I was standing at her funeral. Cassie thought that she needed wings to be free…but she didn’t. Her imagination and her fire would never allow her to truly die. Her spirit will never die. I believe that. I don’t think of Cassie as dead…I think of her as free.” Tate said, making Karen smile happily through her tears.

“Don’t cry…she is not dead…her spirit did not die.” Tate softly whispered to the weeping mother who began sobbing at the words Tate was speaking.

“Tell her I love her and that she was the greatest mother on earth.” Cassie asked through her own tears and Tate subtly nodded.

“You know Cassie used to tell me all the time how much she loved her family. She always used to tell me how she had the best mother in the world. She loved you so much…” Tate said, while Karen wiped her tears and smiled, chuckling softly.