Cassie dreaded the thought. She couldn’t imagine anything worse than sitting around a fake tree with Johnette’s low-fat candy cane cookies. Or maybe Johnette wouldn’t be there. Cassie was putting off the rest of her Christmas shopping till she found out what the deal with her father and stepmother was. She’d already bought gifts for the Divas: for Trudy, an LP of The Supremes Live at the Copacabana, earrings shaped like guitars for Harumi, and a book of poetry for Esther. She’d gotten her dad a sweater—cashmere, no less—but she didn’t want to waste money on Johnette’s present if she was about to move out. Cassie stopped wondering when her dad called her into his office. “Listen, Cass, I need to talk to you about Christmas.” He was all business, no time for small talk. “I hate to do this to you, but I’m not going to be around.” “You’re not?” “Johnette and I, well, we’ve been having some problems that we need to work out, so I’ve promised her we’d go somewhere, just the two of us.”
