Free Mist upon the Marsh: The Story of Nessa and Cassie by Mae Ronan Page A

you were reading my birth certificate – I would be Cassandra Elaine MacAdam.”
    “That’s a very nice name.”
    “I suppose there are worse.” Here, she laughed loudly and briefly – but then looked to Nessa, and asked, “What about your birth certificate? Last I checked, they ask for more than one name, on those sorts of things.”
    “I don’t have a birth certificate,” said Nessa.
    “Were you born somewhere else?”
    “No.”
    Usually (at least, when relating to the same subject) the answer to that question was “yes.” So why did she not say it?
    Cassie shook her head. “You know,” she said, “I’ve been talking to you for hardly five minutes – and already you’ve managed to convince me, that you are the most mysterious person I have ever met.”
    “Mysterious?” said Nessa. “No. Not so very mysterious. If I were, say, to explain a few things to you – I would be no more mysterious than anyone else.”
    Cassie looked directly into Nessa’s face, and said quite seriously, “Would you explain them to me?”
    Nessa laughed – this time, rather nervously. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Best to leave it for another time, I think.”
    “Then you’ll come back?”
    Nessa was becoming so very flustered and confused, that she hardly knew how to answer these questions which were being put to her. She looked into the young woman’s face – no younger, and no older, it seemed, than her own – and was struck once again by her incredible beauty. Having perhaps forgot it a little, while they sat together in the semi-darkness, knowledge of it returned to her now; and she could think of nothing to say, so astonished was she by the sight of it. 
    Neither did it seem to her, as she mulled over their twisting and turning conversation, that such thoughtfulness and presence of mind were suited to this particular brand of beauty. She was the small-town prom queen, who loved the small-town prom king. She was Mama and Daddy’s little girl, angelic in every look and action, but perhaps a little more badly-behaved than either of those adoring parents did think her. She was the girl who worked in the diner, for a few years after high school, perhaps pondering the limited number of paths she might cut, in a small Southern town. She pondered whether she would stay, and marry the prom king, who would inevitably do her no better than three or four children, and a great future heap of condescension, drunkenness and infidelity. She thought of this, and then pondered whether she would leave, fleeing perhaps to Baton Rouge, or maybe even to New Orleans – and indeed, if she did choose to do this, there would never be anything more heard of her, in the small town she had left. A few of the women, in their little circles, perhaps, would recollect the prom queen; and would mourn over the grief which she had caused her poor mother and father, who had only ever tried so hard to “raise her right.” A few of the men would reminisce with the prom king, and remind him of the wife he might have had; but then fall back upon the wife he did have, who was not half as beautiful as the prom queen, but who was loyal and dutiful, and who knew how to fix a good supper; and so the men would clap the prom king on the shoulder, and assure him that all had worked out for the best.
    Nessa thought of all this, with next to no reason – and wondered, which of these would be the path of her tailgate-companion?
    Here is your small town. Here is your beauty, and here is your diner. So where is your prom king, Cassie MacAdam?
    “Shall we go home now, sister?”
    This last question seemed not to have a place in Nessa’s line of cogitation. She did not consider, either, that the voice was quite that of her own thoughts. Befuddled, she turned about, and saw Caramon striding out of a cluster of shadows, nestled there beneath the eaves of the diner. She realised that she still held his Turin in her hand.
    Due to the angle of the shadows