Ummmm... Hi? I know I said I had this written like two months ago, but I changed about half of it soooooo
hope you enjoy it!
Cass POV
Shit, first my childhood best friend walks in on me changing and now I've given away how much I know about this family, oops...?
"Cass, can I talk to you in the kitchen for a moment?" Karla asks, gesturing me to the door.
I follow her through and start talking, "I'm so sorry, that just slipped out and I feel like I'm lying to them not telling them who I am yet."
"Cassie, you'll be fine, Trace, Uri, Vick and Will will be so happy and the others will eventually remember you. It's lovely to see you again, after all these years, you've certainly grown up into a beautiful girl." I blush at her words and look down at my hands and the tattoos lacing up and down my arms. "You look like a tattooist though, with your inked arms." She winks at me, smiling kindly.
"They were a therapy for me, when I missed my family while in San Fransisco, I found things that reminded me of them and just got them inked, you should see my back." I laugh weakly and sit down.
"I'm home, Mom! I brought the stragglers too, they were at the diner." A voice shouts, getting quieter as they get closer. I look up as a group walks into the kitchen, three men and four women walk in, the oldest man speaking.
"Trace! Finally coming to see your mother! It's been months!" Karla exclaims, hugging him and the others. "This is Cassandra, she'll be staying with us for a month for the government." I wave from the stool at the breakfast bar while Karla goes back to dinner.
"Cassandra, hey? We used to have a Cassie come stay with in summer as kids." Trace says as the others walk to the living room. "She suddenly stopped coming to see us after I turned fourteen though. She was so awesome, and pretty too, but don't tell Diamond, my wife." He grins at me and walks out of the room, leaving me stunned and confused.
"I was pretty?" I look to Karla in question.
"You still are," she replies, "Come out and talk to everyone, you can explain now, seeing as they're here."
I get up and follow her into the room, pausing at the door to look everyone over. All but two of them have some sort of partner and are lounging on the sofas and on the floor. From what I can tell, all of the boys are at least 6'2", but they're sitting down.
"Cass, come sit down,you can tell us what you wanted to tell us now." Saul says, smiling at me.
"Okay," I mumble, making my way to a pillow on the floor next to Uriel, "I should probably start from the beginning.
"My name is Cassandra Marina Bouchard-Grey. I was born on July 25th, 1986 in Denver, a few days after some of my parents' very good friends had their second child. The husband was listed as my guardian if anything were to happen to my parents.
"I grew up in New York, keeping to myself and just being a kid with two older brothers. I spent my summers here, with my parents' friends family. I spent every single summer here until my fourteenth."
"Wait, what do you mean here? Like Wrickenridge here or Colorado here?"
"Wrickenridge. I grew up as 'one of the boys', being the older sister to most of them, but my mom never let me cut my hair like a boys.
"Anyway, for my fourteenth birthday, my family decided to take a road trip to get to Wrickenridge instead of flying to Denver and driving in. It was meant to be fun, but then I was kidnapped. We don't know the details of exactly what happened to me, but I was placed under a hallucination. They made me believe that my family was there with me, and I saw them shot in front of me. When someone found me, I couldn't speak, I wouldn't look at anything, or eat. I got placed in the foster system for about a month, until I broke into my school and set all of the computers to be in different languages. I was angry at the principal saying that language arts had no place in society.
"The head of the San Fransisco government department I work for somehow found out and offered to adopt me and give me a job in the field department. I accepted, and then I moved in with the Chief and his wife. I finished high school by the time I turned fifteen and I went on the study languages at college in my spare time. I liked them so much I became an interpreter...and went on to get a PhD in modern languages, learning 27 languages fluently along with the two I already spoke. So fresh out of college with a doctorate at the age of 23, I started travelling for the government.
"I didn't stop. I found out that tattoos are weirdly therapeutic when I think about my family, so I got a few, and then more and more and more. I kept a sketchbook. Several. My personal mission was to become a master of hiding my emotions and I was good at it. Until the call to transfer to New York came through.
"I moved back to New York to find that my family wasn't dead, they'd been looking for me for ten years and then had to give up. You've probably seen them recently, Robert and Marian Bouchard? And Mitchell and Chris, their sons. My parents and brothers." I didn't notice the tears when they were falling, but I do now, the edge of my shirt soaked. "We pieced together a rough idea of what happened fourteen years ago, but we don't know for sure. Um... Then I got a case to one back out here on the trail of an international drug dealer hiding out here, and got to come back to the home of the family I spent my summers with." I look up at the family, to see the shocked faces of almost all of the boys. "So, yeah, I'm Cassie, Trace."
I tuck my hair behind my ear, exposing my blue-brown eyes.
"Wait...so you didn't think to come to find us? I'm not ungrateful, but why not?" Uriel says, looking confused but happy.
"I didn't know how, and I didn't speak for a year after my birthday, I only wrote things down and drew. I was scared that no one would want me. I only spoke the day I was adopted by my adoptive parents."
"We missed you Cassie," I hear Victor say, looking up from his hands which are in his lap.
I meet his pale grey eyes and smile softly, nodding my head in agreement. "I wanted to come back, but John said that he couldn't keep me safe, so it wasn't a good idea."