Rose always thought about the “big picture.”
My hired car had deposited me at the house, and Raul was home early from the set, fresh red roses placed in a vase on the kitchen island, the burners set to warm, an inviting simmering scent rich in the air. Sunny was out, so the TVs were not in their usual active and blaring mode. Usually I hated when she watched anything too loudly, but this time I had hoped to catch more of the news. Raul stopped me from reaching for the remote and attempted to feed me warm pasta sauce straight from the pan. I love Raul, I really do, but he was doing the opposite of what I wanted: I was starved for information, not for Italian food. When I pulled my face away from the wooden spoon, he gave me a wounded look. “You need to eat at a proper mealtime,” he urged, his voice warm caramel, “to readjust to our time zone.” I acquiesced by nibbling at a small bowl of pasta.
Almost immediately after dinner we were in the bedroom, his arms were around my waist, warm mouth nuzzling my neck, nose-tip tracing a trail of heat from earlobe to cleavage. He smelled like thyme and aftershave, his almost-signature scent. I responded in kind, and we fell into bed together, warm and sticky with travel residue and want.
I’d been asleep for only a few hours.
The anchor said, “The body of Cassidy Holmes, former member of the pop group Gloss, was discovered in her Hollywood Hills home early yesterday morning by a housekeeper. Though initially treated as a suspicious death, medical examiners have since released a statement that the marks on the body are consistent with a suicide.” The video playing behind her voice was footage from a helicopter camera. The grainy video showed official-looking people closing the trunk doors to a van parked outside Cassidy’s house, and walking around to the passenger doors.
“It is unknown whether Ms. Holmes had a history of mental illness, though she was once hospitalized for exhaustion after her abrupt departure from Gloss in 2002.” An image of the four of us at the height of our popularity filled the screen—Cassidy, on the far right, looked as if she could be cut away from the photo with a pair of scissors. No doubt the news crew picked that particular promotional photo to highlight her isolation.
“While the other three members of Gloss were not reachable for comment, they have tweeted and posted on their official Facebook page that they are saddened by this unexpected loss. Quote: ‘Rest in peace, Cassidy. We will always love and miss you.’ Her family asks for privacy during this difficult time.”
This segment was only a few minutes long and didn’t mention anything she had done in the fifteen years since. I’d heard, though not seen with my own eyes, that Cassidy was involved with a charity project of some kind, but of course the news wanted to discuss only what was flashy. The news piece ended with a short clip of Cassidy from the “Prime” music video, of her floating in water like an ethereal angel. I cut my eyes away—a now-ingrained reaction to that video—and muted the television while pulling up Twitter on my phone. The internet is always ahead of broadcast news.
#RIPSassyCassy I can’t believe you’re gone
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heaven has another angel #RIPSassyCassy i hope you got ur wings
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HMMM there was no NOTE guys i dont think it was really a suicide #RIPSassyCassy #conspiracy
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Good, I’m glad she’s dead. She deserved to die after she broke up the best girl group EVER. #AssyCassy
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#GlossGirls former member ‘Sassy Cassy,’ 35, hanged herself at home, says anonymous source ‘close to the family’
* * *
My thumb paused over this ribbon of information. No one had mentioned yet how Cass had died. I followed the link to a gossip site.
A source CLOSE to the Holmes family tells JMC that Holmes’s body was discovered in her Hollywood Hills kitchen, and that she had hanged herself. The WEIRD thing to note: Holmes’s main residence was in Pasadena. Though she owned this particular house (purchased in 2002 at the height of Gloss’s popularity), sources tell us that she RARELY stepped foot into the home in the past 10 years. The 10-bedroom, 5-and-a-half bath stucco mansion was on the market in 2008 during the economic downturn, but NO buyers snapped it up for over 8 months before the listing was withdrawn. A maid service visits every other week for maintenance.
We at JMC believe that Holmes PLANNED her suicide on a date that coincided with the housekeeper visit so that she would be discovered as quickly as possible.
Holmes was 35 years old.
Sunny appeared at the threshold of the kitchen door. She resembled me more than her father, thank goodness. She was wearing a hideous pink tank with a pizza print on the front, shorts, and her feet were bare. I laid the phone down.
“You’re up,” I said, hiding my surprise that she was home at all. So far this summer, she had been staying out all hours with little regard for rules I put out. At least she wasn’t looking at me disdainfully like she usually did.
Sunny glided over the tile and folded herself on another chair, grabbing the box of cereal. She barely glanced at me as she picked out the marshmallows. I fingered the wheat pieces and slid them in front of me, making a triangle of them on the table. I remembered when Sunny would sit on my lap and I could feel her delicate bones through the fabric of her soft pajamas. I remembered her strawberry-scented baby shampoo, that little head of platinum cabbage and its fruity-sweet scent. At fourteen, she now smelled like teenage sweat and bad perfume.
The television light flickered blue and white against her skin, and she looked ahead at the screen, absorbing whatever rays the news wanted to share.
I had my reservations about my child growing up in this crazy world. I knew, as a former Gloss girl, that Sunny would never have a normal childhood like I had. Flashing cameras and faceless voices never chased me when I was her age. I’d always known that she would face different obstacles growing up, but I imagined that the tabloids would cut us a break at first—for the newborn’s sake. It was the moment I was leaving the hospital after giving birth, swaddled in a big blanket in the back of an SUV, with yet another blanket wrapped around my hours-old baby, that I realized how wrong I was. If nothing else, her parentage made her even more of a target. Strobes blasted at the tinted windows over and over, and I pulled the fabric’s edge over her eyes in case they could somehow get damaged from the flashes. I’d wondered if she was going to be affected by this spectacle later in life, if she would end up dealing with the same shit I had but at an earlier age.
She was already starting to ask me if she was too young to become a model.
“Sad,” she said now, breaking the silence. The news had moved on to a shooting that had happened earlier in Indiana, but I knew she was talking about Cassidy.
“Yes,” I said, feeling the meaning of the word echo somewhere inside me.
“You hadn’t talked to her in a while, right?”
“No,” I said, unsure of how to discuss it further.
Sunny picked up her phone and slid the screen on. I thought that was the end of our discussion, but she had opened Instagram, tapping through. “She seemed like such a normal person. I mean, look.” She faced the phone display toward me. Older Cassidy, drinking wine. Older Cassidy, hugging the neck of an elderly dog. She thumbed down, showing a grid of unretouched, unprofessional snaps. I reached for the phone and looked through them as Sunny hovered and said, “You weren’t following her, right?”
“I didn’t even know she had an Instagram.” I wondered why I hadn’t thought to look her up before.
“I don’t follow her either, but no one does. It’s set to private. Well, it was. The account is getting more followers right now even though she’s, you know.”
Cassidy’s photos showed nothing important or discernible about her life. No location tags, no hashtags, no verification check. A vase of roses on a desk, a handheld plaque noting her third anniversary working for a water charity. She updated maybe once every few months, with her last image posted half a year ago.
“This isn’t even her name—how did you find her?”
“I dunno. Somebody tagged me.” I’d gotten to the bottom of the grid and my daughter took her phone back. “Anyway.” She patted my hand and, noticing that I was lost in thought, left the kitchen. Sometimes, my sweet teenage daughter’s cool exterior could thaw. I heard her door close upstairs, and I was by myself again, looking at the flickering lights of the television. I swept the wheat bits from the table into my palm and dropped them back into the box.