The Vial (part 2)

Be sure to read part 1 first

When Cassie was a young girl she thought her mother was perfect which is a common mistake most of us make until we are old enough to see reality. Her mother seemed perfectly happy and joyful, always walking around with a smile on her face. And to some extent her mother was, but obviously such couldn't always be the case.

Many years ago when Cassie was much younger and still allowed her hair to be brushed by her mother she noticed the rather odd necklace her mother was wearing. (Perhaps 'notice' is the wrong word here since her mother had worn this particular piece of jewelry for as long as Cassie could remember, but at the least she remembered to take notice.) So it was at the point when they were fighting through a particularly stubborn snag together when, for reasons unknown, she brought up the piece and began to question it in the unrelenting ways of a child.

The necklace was an interlaced gold chain and fixed to it was a small and faded golden vial. It looked like a sparkling, miniature urn complete with matching lid. This would be a weird charm for an undertaker let alone a divorcee. Despite the grilling, Cassie's mother gave no answers. She simply tucked the chain beneath her collar and continued to brush her daughter's golden locks. Cassie may have been young but youth can be intuitive and she declined to push the issue. Which lasted for only a few minutes before round two of the questioning barrage began but this time the topic was shot down even quicker than before and Cassie was cut off.

As far as I can figure through my own inquisitive ways, Cassandra's mother and father split up when she was still very young and her mother never remarried. Her father distanced himself from the family and the only contact she had with him was his signature on the support check which, thankfully, her mother received every month until the day she turned eighteen. Cassie swears that this has had no effect on her but I think she's a little too close to the subject. It's been said that a daughter needs a father in her life as much as a son needs his mother. So even though Cassie has grown up successfully and with a good head on her shoulders, it's obvious (to anyone that has known her for some time), that the lack of a father figure has affected her in a number of ways. Especially in relationships.

She grew up a little ahead of her time in more ways than one. At fifteen she had the body of a woman that resembled her mother's killer figure in a way almost startling. Her face has been pretty as long as I've had the pleasure of knowing her, with piercing blue-green eyes framed in sandy, golden curls. However, Cassie was no fool. She was well aware of what she had and quickly learned how to use it. By eighteen no financial support was necessary because she had already mastered the art of the tease and soon thereafter had everyone, from schoolyard boys to married men, wrapped around her slender fingers. Still, when it came to an actual relationship, she was always involved with distant, standoffish, unavailable guys. She never saw this as clearly as everyone else but it's often hard to notice where the trail is taking us when we're too busy looking at the scenery along the way. As her friend I felt obliged to try and warn her a couple of times when the relationships were beginning but I soon learned my lesson. No one listens very well to what they don't want to hear.

As far as I could tell, her tight figure wasn't her only genetic inheritance. Cassie and her mother were alike in many ways. They shared several of the same quirks, and had similar personalities. They even had a number of the same opinions and beliefs about the world around them, something which is rare in the parent-child union. They were often mistaken for sisters, much to her horror and her mother's delight, and their bond was similar in that they could share anything with each other with only a minimal level of discomfort. All of these facts only made this particular instance even more unusual. Poor Cassie, she could never get that tiny vial out of her mind for good, and anytime she began to steer a conversation in that direction her mother evaded it at all costs.

Unfortunately, another thing my lovely friend inherited was her mother's perseverance. I've seen her go out of her way to avoid talking to fellow employees who she felt offended or upset her; even so far as to change her entire work schedule around so that there was no chance that they would bump into each other. Never the type to give up easily, Cassie would become determined to uncover the secret of the mystery chain. It was somewhere around sixteen or so when the curiosity became too strong to ignore and she resolved to solve the puzzle of her young lifetime. The only problem was that her mother rarely took the chain off, if ever, so Cassie designed a small stratagem that would make a super-villain proud.