Four Of A Kind

Chapter 75: [2.48] The Quadruplet Guessing Game is Now in Session

Cassidy didn’t have a response to that.

Harlow leaned her head against Cassidy’s shoulder.

“I miss Papa.”

The words left Cassidy’s mouth before she could stop them.

Harlow’s arm slid around her waist.

“Me too.”

“Every day.” Vivienne’s voice cracked on the second word. “I think about him every single day.”

“He would have known what to say,” Sabrina murmured. “He always knew.”

Cassidy felt something break inside her. Some wall she’d been building for two years, brick by brick, higher and higher to keep everything out.

“I was in detention when he died.”

The confession hung in the evening air.

“I was serving detention for calling Mr. Harrison a pretentious windbag, and Papa was dying in a hospital bed, and I wasn’t there.”

“Cass…” Harlow’s arm tightened.

“Vivi was at a photoshoot. She didn’t know. That’s different. But I was just… I was in stupid detention for a stupid comment about a stupid teacher, and I should have been there.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“I should have been BETTER.” The words tore out of her throat. “If I hadn’t been such a screwup all the time, if I’d just kept my mouth shut for once in my life, I would have been there. He wouldn’t have died alone.”

“He didn’t die alone.” Harlow’s voice was thick. “I was there. I was holding his hand.”

Cassidy went still.

“You never told me that.”

“You never asked.”

“I… Harlow, I’m…”

“He wasn’t alone, Cass. And he wasn’t scared. He smiled right at the end.” Harlow’s tears were falling freely now, soaking into Cassidy’s tank top. “He made me promise to keep shining. That was his last request. Keep shining.”

“Mon petit soleil,” Sabrina said quietly. “He called you his little sun.”

“And Cassie was his little firecracker. And Vivi was his perfect pearl. And Brina was his quiet star.” Harlow sniffled. “He loved us all. Every messy, complicated part of us.”

Vivienne made a sound that might have been a sob. Cassidy turned to look at her sister, the one who never cracked, the one who controlled every variable in her universe.

Tears streamed down Vivienne’s porcelain cheeks.

“He told me I didn’t have to be perfect.” Vivienne’s voice shook. “The last time we talked. The morning before… before. He said, ’Vivi, ma perle parfaite, you are enough. You have always been enough.’ And I didn’t believe him. I still don’t believe him.”

“Vivi…”

“I try so hard. Every day. To be good enough for the company. For Mother. For the brand. And it’s never enough. It’s never going to be enough.”

Cassidy reached for her sister’s hand. Vivienne’s fingers were cold, trembling.

“You’re enough for us,” Cassidy said. “You’re annoying and bossy and you color-code literally everything, but you’re enough”

Vivienne’s mask shattered completely. She doubled over, her free hand covering her face as sobs wracked her frame.

Cassidy pulled her close.

Harlow wrapped her arms around both of them.

Sabrina appeared silently, settling behind them, her hands coming to rest on Vivienne’s shoulders.

The four Valentine sisters held each other in their father’s garden as the last light faded from the sky.

Nobody spoke. There wasn’t anything to say.

The bamboo whispered.

The koi surfaced and dove.

The stone lanterns cast long shadows across the raked gravel.

Eventually, the tears stopped. Vivienne’s breathing evened out. Harlow’s grip loosened. Sabrina’s hands dropped to her sides.

Cassidy felt emptied. Hollowed out. But also, somehow, lighter.

“I’m sorry I stormed out of dinner,” she said. “That was dumb.”

“It was pretty dumb,” Harlow agreed.

“Harlow!”

“What? It WAS. You got mad about a boba girl’s name.”

Cassidy’s face flushed. “I wasn’t mad about the name.”

“Yes you were.”

“I was mad because… because…”

“Because you like Isaiah and you don’t want to admit it?” Sabrina supplied helpfully.

“I DON’T like Isaiah!”

Three pairs of identical purple eyes stared at her.

“Okay, I maybe slightly don’t hate him as much as I pretend to. MAYBE. A little bit. Sometimes.”

Harlow giggled. The sound was wet from crying, but it was still unmistakably Harlow.

“You have a crush on our assistant.”

“I do NOT have a crush. I have… complicated feelings about a person who happens to be in my general vicinity sometimes.”

“That’s a crush.”

“It is NOT a crush, Harlow!”

“It sounds like a crush to me,” Vivienne said. “Textbook symptoms, actually. Heightened emotional responses to perceived romantic threats. Increased awareness of the subject’s presence. Irrational anger at minor provocations.”

“Please stop diagnosing me.”

“You blush every time he looks at you.”

“I do NOT blush.”

“You’re blushing right now.”

Cassidy’s hands flew to her cheeks. They were warm. Traitors.

“I hate all of you.”

“You love us.”

“Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Harlow laughed again, and this time it was closer to her usual brightness. She squeezed Cassidy’s hand.

“Hey. I have an idea.”

“Your ideas are usually terrible.”

“This one’s good, I promise!” Harlow’s eyes had gone sparkly. That was usually a dangerous sign. “We should play the QGG.”

Cassidy blinked. “The what?”

“The Quadruplet Guessing Game! Remember? Where we all dress up as one of us and someone has to guess who’s who?”

“Harlow, we haven’t played that since we were twelve.”

“Exactly! It’s been too long! We used to play it all the time when we were kids, and then we just… stopped.”

“We stopped because we grew up.”

“We stopped because Papa died,” Sabrina said quietly. “And we stopped doing a lot of things.”

The garden went silent again.

Harlow’s grip on Cassidy’s hand tightened. “We should start again. Not all the things. But some things. The good things. The things that made us feel like us.”

“The QGG is ridiculous.”

“The QGG is FUN. Remember when we made the gardener guess and he got so confused he quit the next day?”

Despite herself, Cassidy smiled. “He didn’t quit. He took a mental health day.”

“Three mental health days.”

“And therapy.”

“Minor details.” Harlow bounced slightly, her energy returning. “Come on, Cass. It would be fun. We could use Isaiah as the guesser!”

Cassidy’s face went red again. “We are NOT using Isaiah.”

“Why not? He’d be perfect! He’s observant, he pays attention to us, he’d actually TRY to figure it out.”

“Because that’s…” Cassidy struggled for words. “Because he’ll… I mean, he’d have to… we’d all have to dress like ONE of us, which means…”

“Which means he’d have to really LOOK at us,” Sabrina murmured. There was something thoughtful in her voice. “Interesting.”

“No! Not interesting! STOP saying interesting like that!”

Vivienne had pulled out her tablet at some point. Of course she had. “From a logistical standpoint, the game requires coordination of wardrobes, makeup, and mannerisms. If we were to select one sister to impersonate…” She trailed off, her stylus hovering over the screen. “It would require intimate knowledge of that sister’s habits.”

“Or we could just have fun,” Harlow said. “Without analyzing it to death.”

“I analyze everything to death. It’s how I process.”

“We know, Vivi. We know.”

Cassidy looked at her sisters. Harlow with her sparkly eyes and impossible optimism. Vivienne with her tablet and her need to control every outcome. Sabrina with her quiet observations and cryptic comments.

They were ridiculous. All of them.

She loved them anyway.

“Fine,” she heard herself say. “One game. ONE. And if Isaiah gets traumatized, that’s on you, Harlow.”

Harlow squealed and threw her arms around Cassidy’s neck. “This is going to be AMAZING! We need to pick who we’re all dressing as! And coordinate outfits! And practice walking like each other!”

“Harlow, breathe.”

“I’ll breathe when I’m dead! We have PLANNING to do!”

Vivienne was already typing on her tablet. “I’ll create a scheduling document.”

“Of course you will.”

Sabrina smiled her small, mysterious smile. “This should be educational. For everyone involved.”

Cassidy looked out at the garden one last time. The koi pond was dark now, the fish invisible beneath the surface. The maple tree rustled in the night breeze. The stone lanterns remained unlit, waiting for someone to bring fire.

Papa’s garden. Their garden. A place to fall and a place to land.

Maybe, Cassidy thought, it was also a place to start getting back up.