I Gave It All Back to My Sister, Even My Husband novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Everything Back
Cassandra hears Gavin tell her to let her sister keep one room, and she signs over her trust, her marriage and her name, but Gavin refuses to file.
Gavin said it in the hospital corridor, in front of his mother, two nurses and a man holding ice to his head.
"Willa has stepped aside for you since the day you were born," he said. "Let her keep one room."
He didn't raise his voice.
That was worse.
Three hours earlier I had put a hammer through the wall of my old art studio.
Gavin had paid a crew to gut it while I was out.
They had turned it into a nursery for my twin sister's baby.
The noise sent Willa into a panic attack.
Now she lay in bay four on a heart monitor, seven months pregnant, and I was the one with plaster dust in my hair.
Her husband, Gavin's older brother, was abroad and hadn't picked up.
Willa was born with a weak heart.
I was born ten minutes later, and I had been folding to her ever since.
Her eyes filled, and I handed over my bedroom.
Her eyes filled, and I handed over my birthdays.
At nineteen I stopped handing things over.
After that I took what nobody offered me.
I took it all the way to Gavin's door, three years ago, with a letter that wasn't mine.
His mother, Miriam, stood beside him with her arms folded.
"Apologize to your sister, Cassandra."
I looked at the two of them, and I laughed.
I put my hand over my face and laughed until a nurse stepped closer.
Gavin stared at me. "Something funny?"
"Yes," I said. "You all think I'm the one who's been taking."
None of them answered.
They thought I was cruel, or hysterical, and either one was fine with me.
In my bag was an envelope from an oncologist.
Two days earlier he had told me the tumor was inoperable and I had less than three months.
I hadn't told anyone.
Who would I have told?
Beside it was a folder from my lawyer, drawn up that same afternoon.
I hadn't known whether I would ever use it.
In that corridor, I knew.
So I stopped fighting.
I walked past Miriam into bay four.
Willa lay propped on the pillows with her hand on her belly.
Her face was blotchy and pretty, the way it always was when she cried.
"Cass," she whispered. "I'm sorry about the room. I never asked him to."
Simon was in Singapore and still hadn't called her back.
"I know you didn't," I said.
Miriam took Willa's free hand. "Nobody blames you, darling."
Gavin didn't look at me at all.
He looked at the monitor, and I let him.
I laid the folder on Willa's blanket and opened it.
"These are my divorce papers. I signed them this morning."
Miriam drew a sharp breath behind me.
"This is Grandma's trust fund. It's yours now. The transfer is signed and witnessed."
Willa stared at the page. "Cass, no."
"And this is the name Mrs. Aldercott," I said. "I never had any right to it. I'm giving it back."
Gavin had followed me in.
He stood at the foot of the bed with his jaw tight.
"What is this?" he said. "Another scene?"
"No," I said. "It's the end of one."
I reached into my bag and took out the last thing, an old cream envelope gone soft at the edges.
Three years of my thumb had worn one corner thin.
I had only ever read the first line.
"This is the letter Gavin wrote," I said. "I took it from your bag on your wedding day, and I used it to make him marry me."
Miriam made a sound.
Gavin did not move.
"It's yours, Willa. It always was."
She took it, and she didn't look inside.
She slid it straight into her bag and zipped it shut.
"I'll take care of it," she said softly. "Thank you, Cass. You're so brave."
Her fingers were steady.
I noticed, and I didn't think about it.
The nurse had left a pen on the clipboard.
I held it out to Gavin.
"Sign where I flagged it. You get your life back."
He didn't take the pen right away.
He was looking at my left wrist.
A streak of green paint ran across it, the same as every day, from the studio I no longer had.
Something crossed his face, and then it was gone.
"Fine," he said.
He took the pen and signed in one hard stroke, without reading a line.
I turned and walked out of bay four.
Nobody called after me.
I got as far as the automatic doors.
"Cassandra."
I stopped.
He had caught up without a sound.
He held the signed papers in one hand.
He folded them once, slowly, and put them inside his jacket.
"I'm not filing these," Gavin said.
"That's your choice."
"You don't get to leave the way you took me," he said. "By paper, in a day, with a pen."
I looked at his face, and I knew he meant it.
"I'm already gone," I said, and I walked out into the rain.
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