New fic: Four Corners, Part I
Four Corners
Fandom: Devil Wears Prada
Pairing: Andy/Miranda
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don’t own the twins, Miranda, Andy, or anything remotely related to the Devil or Prada. Alas.
Notes: This was a great adventure, and my first attempt at present tense. Thanks to my beta Xander, and to all the other writers who have inspired me with their wonderful stories.
Part I.
At age six, Caroline and Cassidy share a room, as they have since birth. Their beds are narrow and positioned close together, because they don’t like to be far apart. Oftentimes one will sneak into the other’s bed when their parents go to sleep, but they make sure to separate in the morning so their mommy doesn’t get mad. Mommy likes them to have their own “space,” because Dr. Rosen says they should.
They don’t get to dress the same way anymore either, even though they both liked it. It was fun to match, and sometimes their teachers would get them confused in school. That was great. Once they even switched names for the day, just to see what would happen. The only person who noticed was Cassidy’s other best friend Janie. She kept the secret though. Janie is nice, even if she gets jealous of Caroline sometimes.
But Cassidy would never pick Janie over Caroline. She would never pick anyone over Caroline, maybe not even Mommy, and definitely not Daddy.
She and her sister are very similar, but Cassidy knows she is the brave one. She always has been. Caroline probably knows this as well, but they have never talked about it. Cassidy is the protector, and she cuddles herself around Caroline’s head after she has a bad dream, or when she’s sick, or when they hear bad noises coming from Mommy and Daddy’s room.
They often hear sounds through the walls. Sometimes it’s talking, or music, since their mommy likes to sing when she’s alone. Other times, it’s completely quiet.
Tonight is not like that.
Tonight there are the angry sounds, voices shouting back and forth. Even though Cassidy can’t tell what they are saying, she knows that something terrible is happening. She hopes she doesn’t hear another smash the way she did last week. That time one of her parents threw something big and loud against the wall, and it made both Cassidy and Caroline scream a little. Caroline’s knees dug into Cassidy’s stomach really hard, but she just held her sister more tightly and swore to take care of her. That’s what she always did.
The angry sounds only began when Cassidy and Caroline started kindergarten, or at least that’s what Cassidy remembers. It might have happened before that too, but she’s not sure. She thinks her parents don’t realize that the walls aren’t that thick, especially because she and Caroline try to be very quiet when their parents are in their bedroom. For a while it was nice when Cassidy could hear their voices talking together. Now she wishes they would both shut up so Caroline wouldn’t be so scared.
Tonight, the noises get louder and louder. “I’ve got you,” Cassidy whispers. She tries hard to understand the words her mother is saying. Mommy never yells at them, but she yells at their father, and he yells back.
The sound of a door thrown open startles both of them. Cassidy thinks that the doorknob must have made a hole in the wall. “You can go to hell, Miranda!” their father shouts. He’s not even trying to be quiet. “I’m finished with this fucking house. I’m finished with this fucking marriage.”
“I’ll change the locks if you walk out of here,” Mommy yells back. Cassidy cringes. It sounds like she’s crying.
“Do whatever the hell you want-you always do anyway. I’ll take the girls this weekend.”
“I won’t allow it!” their mom says.
“Fuck you, Miriam. Call my lawyer!” their father snarls. His voice is farther away now. There is the pounding of footsteps, and another door slams. Something falls downstairs and breaks, because Cassidy hears the glass shatter.
She is crying, and so is Caroline. Their father is leaving them. All of them.
Cassidy knows that “fuck” is a really bad word, because she hears it at school a lot. She is mad that her dad said that word to their mom. She’s also mad that he didn’t say goodnight before they went to their room to sleep, and now he didn’t even say goodbye.
Cassidy has wondered for a while how often they argue about her. She thinks about it all the time, but she doesn’t tell their mom. Mom is very busy, and Cassidy doesn’t want to upset her.
The hallway is quiet again, until their door opens a few inches. The blue of the constellation nightlight makes the room bright enough for Cassidy to tell that their mother is crying. “Girls?”
“Yes?” Cassidy says. She won’t pretend that she doesn’t have Caroline in the bed with her. Not this time.
Their mom comes over and sighs. The sound is funny, like a sob. She pushes them both over a little and gets on the bed with them, and holds them tight. Cassidy cries some more, but she likes being held. She feels safer with her mother there, touching her. Even if nothing will really be all right, she loves her mom, and she likes being loved by her. She doesn’t get to be held that much by anyone except Caroline. She’s too big, or that’s what her parents say. But she misses it. She yearns for it.
Tonight, she has it, because their mom stays with them on the tiny bed the whole night.
---
It is more than two years later, and a few things have changed since their dad left.
Cassidy thinks her mom still doesn’t know that she can hear through the wall. Her mom is smart, so she can’t be sure, but that’s what she believes. Caroline’s room is now across the hall, where Dad’s office used to be. Stephen has an office too, but it’s on the third floor where there used to be a guest room.
These days she and her sister share a bed only once in a while, mostly after Caroline has a bad dream. Cassidy has nightmares too, but she never asks to Caroline to come in. Instead she gets up and writes in a journal that she keeps locked and jammed under a floor board her mother would kill her for pulling up. No one, including Caroline, knows where she keeps either the journal or the key. Although she and Caroline know most everything about each other, Cassidy likes to have one thing that is only for her. Cass suspects that Caroline has a journal too, but she hasn’t talked about it. Yet. Someday soon they will explain it to each other, but right now they are practicing having things of their own.
Caroline didn’t mind moving out of their bedroom. After their dad left, they occasionally heard their mom crying through the wall. It was worse than everything that happened before, even the most terrible of fights. But Cassidy wanted to stay, and she’s glad she did. She likes knowing what’s happening with Mom, no matter how bad it is. It’s important to know.
It didn’t take too long after Dad took off for their mom to stop crying. Things went back to normal, or as normal as could be with everything totally different. When their mom talked on the phone in her room, it was good to listen to her voice as she went to sleep.
And then Stephen started coming over. He’s been around for most of the year. Cassidy hears the two of them talking at night, but softly, and not for very long.
That’s doesn’t bother her. Stephen is nice to them, and brings their mom flowers all the time. Anything that makes their mom smile is fine with Cassidy, even if Stephen doesn’t pay much attention to her and Caroline.
Tonight Cassidy opens her closet and glares at the flower girl dress that she will wear to their wedding in two weeks. She thinks it’s silly that she’s going to be a flower girl, because she and Caroline are too old to be flower girls. But their mom wants them to be in the wedding, and that’s the only job they can have, since they are too young to be bridesmaids. So, they will walk down the aisle and drop rose petals in a giant church, and their mom will get married again.
Dad was angry when he found out, but he got remarried last year, so he can’t say anything too bad. Their stepmother Karen says it’s better this way, because everyone deserves to be happy, even their mom. But the weird thing is that Cassidy knows their dad wishes he was still married to Mom. He told Cassidy one night, after he had a lot of wine and got sleepy. Cassidy still remembers how strange it was to hear her dad talk about always loving their mom, and hating the fact that he couldn’t have her the way he wanted to.
Cassidy will not tell Caroline this. Caroline wouldn’t want to know.
As a stepmom, Karen is okay. She seems kind of dumb, with all that astrology talk and her obsession with gluten-free foods, but she’s cool. She teaches Cassidy and Caroline yoga poses when they get together, and she tries to help them with their homework when their dad isn’t around.
Cassidy thinks Karen wants to have a baby of her own, and that’s probably a good idea. Cass wouldn’t mind having another sister or brother, even if it was just half. Mom won’t have another kid. She’s too busy with work, and Stephen doesn’t seem all that fatherly.
She can hear Stephen and their mom talking now, in quiet voices. It’s nice. It makes her feel good to have a fourth person here, even if he’s not perfect, or amazing, or anything special. Maybe he’ll get to know her and Caroline better, and they’ll be a family.
---
Caroline can’t remember when her mom stopped singing.
She thinks it might have been before she got married to Stephen, but it’s been a long time since she’s heard her pretty voice. It wasn’t like she sang all the time, but when Cassidy and Caroline were small, their mother sang them to sleep. Every night, really. She sang old-fashioned songs that Cassidy never heard on the radio, or anywhere else but on the stereo of their house. Mom said some were songs her own mom used to sing when she was little, and others she learned in college. Those were her favorites.
Cassidy never hears any of those songs anymore. And she never hears noises coming from her mom’s room. The one she shares with Stephen, who didn’t turn into a dad the way Cassidy hoped he would. She doesn’t hear them talking, or yelling, or anything at all.
The really awful thing is that even from the beginning, Cassidy knew it wouldn’t work. Stephen never loved them the way you’re supposed to when you get to be a family. He loved their mom, and he still does, because who doesn’t? Cassidy is old enough to know that their mother is special, set apart from other people. She is unique, and important. Everyone listens to her. Because of this, Cassidy and Caroline can pretty much do as they please. They get everything they ask for. They can neglect their homework whenever they want, and Mom’s assistants do their school projects when they aren’t in the mood. Which is all the time, lately.
Aside from that, Stephen can be mean, in a way that neither Cassidy nor Caroline expected. Years ago they saw their dad get mad, before the divorce. He said a lot of things that weren’t nice. But Stephen is downright cruel some of the time. Cassidy has gotten to the point where she would rather be away from home, with her dad or grandma, because her mom and Stephen are miserable to be around when they’re together. When they’re apart, Mom is just as unhappy.
Cassidy and Caroline like to take out their own unhappiness on other people. Mainly, Mom’s assistants. The assistants have to do as their mom says, and Caroline was the one who first realized that this means that they also have to do as she and her sister say. It’s fun to make someone do what you want, even when you know it’s wrong. Even when you know it’s the worst thing ever.
Only a few days ago, Cassidy and Caroline got their Mom’s newest assistant in big trouble. They did it on purpose, and Cassidy is certain that they will do it again at their first opportunity. It’s kind of sad, really, because the girl who got in trouble seems nice. She’s pretty, with big eyes, and long dark hair that looks really soft. She was kind to them for a minute. But that was the biggest problem. The assistant’s kindness made Cassidy want to hurt her even more.
Only at night, when Cassidy is alone in her room, after she’s stored her journal away in its special place, does she think that she shouldn’t do these things. But she deserves to have fun when she can, because her mom doesn’t sing, and she never gets a kiss goodnight.
---
Stephen has been gone for a while. Cassidy didn’t even realize he’d left till their mom came home from Paris and said that the two of them were getting a divorce. As usual, Caroline cried. Cassidy just crossed her arms, and repeated to herself that it didn’t hurt, because she’d known it was coming.
It still sucks. Stephen wasn’t much of a dad, but he made the fourth corner in the perfect square that Cassidy thinks is a family. Without him, they are a triangle again. A lopsided one, at that.
Their mom’s mood is always the same now: sad, but pretending everything is okay. Cassidy hates that. She would rather know what her mom is really thinking instead of having to guess all the time.
But the most bizarre thing is that yesterday, Cassidy swears that she heard her mom hum under her breath. Cass recognized the snippet of song-it was one her mom knew from college, by some lady with long blonde hair who played piano. Or maybe guitar; Cassidy couldn’t keep track. But it was a song that Cassidy always liked and remembered.
That’s why Cassidy believes something weird is going on. There are other reasons that fuel her questions, but she can’t quite figure out what they mean yet. It has to do with the funny expressions that her mom gets when she receives a text message at night, or in the morning. And Cassidy is sure that her mom blushed when she picked up a package out of the pile of mail yesterday. Cassidy was dying to know what was in it, but she never found out, because her mom took the box and carried it upstairs into her bedroom.
Tonight, Cassidy hears her mother’s voice coming through the wall of her bedroom for the first time in forever. Her mom is talking to someone on the phone. Cassidy has no idea who it is. But there’s something in the way she’s speaking, all slow and calm, that makes Cassidy’s stomach do flips. She isn’t angry, so Cassidy doesn’t think it’s about the magazine. Usually Mom’s conversations about work are really fast. She calls someone, tells them to do something, and hangs up. But now, she’s just chatting. Cassidy watches the clock, starting at 9:57pm. By the time she falls asleep, sometime between 10:28 and 10:29, her mother is still speaking in that slow, calm voice that sends Cassidy into peaceful dreams.
---
It’s past ten, and Caroline is sitting with Cassidy in her room, staring at the wall. Caroline doesn’t believe her, but Cassidy is certain she is right.
Andy Sachs, mom’s old assistant who quit last year, came over for dinner tonight. Cassidy is convinced that this is the person that their mom has been talking to on the phone with for the last three months. In fact, she’s absolutely certain. Their mother was very nervous tonight at dinner, not talking much, but watching the way she and Caroline acted with Andy. Cass thinks Andy was nervous too, because she talked a lot and laughed really loud. Andy might be like that all the time, but Cassidy doubts it. If Andy was that annoying, their mom wouldn’t be friends with her.
And that’s what their mom says Andy is. A friend. Cassidy knows it’s more than that.
The thing that sucks is that she can’t talk about this with anyone except Caroline. Dr. Rosen can’t know that her mom is gay, or bi, or whatever, because it’s definitely a secret. She doesn’t trust anyone else as much as Caroline, or her mom, or Dr. Rosen, so she’s stuck. She has to find a way to convince Caroline that she’s not crazy. Her mom has never invited anyone from the office home for dinner, ever. Not even Nigel, who she and Cassidy have met a bunch of times and like a ton. He’s gay; maybe he knows about Mom and Andy.
Cassidy stares at the wall some more, and waits.
“You’re psycho,” Caroline hisses. “No way. I’m going to bed.”
“Five more minutes,” Cassidy begs. “I swear.”
They are waiting to hear their mother’s voice. Andy left half an hour ago. Cassidy knows something will happen tonight. She believes it with all her heart.
She is rewarded a few minutes later, when she hears the tinny sound of her mother’s cellphone ring. There are thirty seconds of silence, and Cassidy wonders if she is crazy like her sister says.
Until she hears her mother laugh, and laugh again.
Caroline gasps. Her hand flies to her heart.
Cassidy rolls her eyes. “It’s not like she never laughs. Come on.”
“Are you sure she’s talking to Andy?”
“No,” Cass admits, “but I think she is. I thought so as soon as she told us about having her over for dinner.” For weeks Cassidy has been waiting for a hint as to the identity of her mom’s nightly caller, and the dinner date was the answer.
“What do we do?” Caroline asks, in a whisper.
“I don’t know,” Cassidy replies. “See what happens, I guess.”
They sit a few minutes longer, listening to the gentle cadence of their mom’s voice.
“Can I stay with you tonight?” Caroline finally asks.
“Yeah,” Cassidy says. It makes her feel good.
She and Caroline get ready for bed like they always do, and by the time they are finished, they believe their mother will be quiet in her room. But to Cassidy’s surprise, they still hear her through the wall, very faintly. They get into bed and snuggle together, Caroline’s head tucked beneath her chin.
---
Part II.