Inevitable and Only(4)

Cassandra heard the jingle of the bells against the door and looked up, put on her perfectly round, gold-rimmed glasses, and said, “Well, well, Grendel, look what you’ve gone and drug in from the cold.” (It was seventy-three degrees outside.) Cassandra is my father’s assistant. She’s a grad student in medieval history at Goucher College, and she dresses like she’s forgotten what century she actually lives in. Either that, or she does all her shopping at the Renaissance Festival.

Today she had her waist-length cherry-red hair braided and wound around her head in coronets, and she was wearing a crimson skirt with knee-high black combat boots and a billowy white blouse. Oh, how I lusted after those boots.

“Grendel, see if Ross is upstairs, and tell him that his daughter is here.”

Cassandra never speaks to humans. She directs all her comments to whichever cat is nearest. If none of the cats are around, she simply doesn’t answer you. This makes her a less-than-ideal bookshop assistant, as I’ve pointed out to Dad many times. He always sighs and tells me that he understands how hard it is to find work in grad school, and he appreciates her valuable literary expertise. Dad is a very nice guy.

I wondered what Cassandra would think of me if she knew what I’d done. The thought made me shudder, and I swallowed hard, ducked my head, and scurried upstairs to find Dad myself.

He was in his office on the second floor. The room had once been a bedroom with an adjoining bath. Now he kept books piled up in the claw-foot bathtub, and filing cabinets lined the walls, topped with even more books. His desk was cluttered with random things like quill pens, bottles of ink, some dead plants. Two more bookstore cats, Hieronymus and Bosch, were curled up in a basket near the door. They looked up when I entered, but I had to say “Dad!” twice before he lifted his eyes from his paperwork and noticed that I was standing in the doorway.

“Cadie!” he said. “To what do I owe this pleasure, meine Tochter?”

I crossed the small room and kissed him on the top of his curly mop of hair, tugging his ponytail. “Still sorting through the Goethe?”

“The complete works, my dear,” he said, in his best Sleazy Car Salesman Voice. “Thirteen leather-bound, kissably intact volumes.”

“Ew, Dad. No one wants to kiss dead cows.”

“From 1902, did I mention?”

“Let’s see,” I mused, squinting into the distance and pretending to search my memory. “I believe you may have said something about it. At dinner two weeks ago? The day you bid on the set? Every five minutes since then?”

Dad stopped shuffling his papers and grinned at me. “So, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“They announced the winter play in Meeting today!”

Dad looked at the books piled on his desk. “Faust?”

“No, and stop thinking about cow skin.” I cleared my throat. “Ahem. Dramatic pause.”

“Dramatic pause,” Dad agreed. “So? What is it?”

I did a little flourish with one hand. “Much Ado About Nothing!”

“Well, how about that!” Weatherman Voice, because he was too excited to be anything but genuine.

I grinned back. “I know, right? It’s like it was meant to be, after we just saw it last week!”

Dad laughed. “Well, Watson, as a former professor-in-training, I’d have to say that no, it’s probably not a coincidence—I’d bet your teachers planned it this way, so they can tie in a field trip to the Shakespeare Theatre. At any rate, that means you’re already one step ahead of the game. As your mother would say.” He stood and pushed his chair back, scattering Hieronymus and Bosch. “When are the auditions?”

“Next Monday.”

“Less than a week! ‘Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,’” Dad cried. Shakespearean Tragic Voice, one of my favorites, because it usually signaled the onset of a one-man mimed sword fight, ending in grisly death.

Today, though, Dad sat back down and said, “I have a bit more work to do. Are you meeting Mom and Josh at Peabody?” Mom was concerned that Josh’s teacher wasn’t pushing him hard enough, so she’d started observing his lessons.

“I guess so.” I checked my watch. “His lesson is probably just about over.”

“‘Parting is such sweet sorrow,’” Dad droned in Bored Student Voice.

“Oh come on, Dad, you can do better than that.” I picked up my backpack from where I’d dropped it by the door. “See you in a bit?”

He nodded. “I should be home in an hour or so.”

“I’ll start dinner.”

“Thanks, well-trained offspring.”

I headed downstairs, waved to Cassandra (who didn’t wave back, shocker), and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Peabody Conservatory, where Josh took lessons in the Preparatory division, was just a couple blocks from the bookstore. I passed the Washington Monument, surrounded by cobblestones—it’s a smaller replica of the famous one in DC—and climbed the marble steps to the conservatory entrance.

As I sat down on a bench, I caught my reflection in the glass door. I wished I looked like Dad, but Josh was the one who had inherited the curly strawberry-blond hair, the freckles, the blue eyes. My skin was a warm bronze, even in winter, like Mom’s. I had her round nose, her thick eyebrows, and my hair was the same shade of espresso as hers. Although I’d done my best to change that: strands of pink, powder blue, and violet whipped across my face in the breeze.