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Cassie jokes that when it comes to her three nieces it looks like Lexi was a printer that started running out of ink. The coloring starts off dark and just keeps getting progressively lighter with each child.
This always makes the girls laugh, especially when Lexi makes little whirring printer noises while pretending to 'print them out' (aka; throw them onto the couch).
Laura Cassandra Howard-O’Neill is a brunette with chocolate eyes, just like her mother, and a little bow mouth to match. Though her temperament is much more like her father's. The quiet, caretaker of her sisters. The type of older sister that Cassie was never able to be.
Lizzie Rue has curly auburn hair and hazel eyes, and freckles like Fezco. She’s bright and fiercely funny. Clever in a way that is so alarmingly like her mother, Auntie Cassie feels outsmarted by the time Lizzie is five years old.
Then Lily Marie comes out with blonde hair, the tiniest hint of strawberry in her locks, piercing blue eyes, and some freckles to boot. And while she does look a lot like Fez, there’s something about her that looks undeniably like Cassie herself.
Suze breaks out baby pictures and compares them in gleeful awe.
Even more frightening to Cassie is the way her youngest niece acts like her.
Lily Marie is the performer. It’s discovered early on, in the toting of her older sisters to ballet classes, that she’s a natural. She becomes a student by the age of four, demanding she be in the classes with her sisters and the little girl delights in it.
While each of the Howard-O’Neill girls is exceptionally beautiful, it’s Lily Marie that meets the conventional standards, much the way Cassie once did. It’s Lily Marie that causes strangers to stop in the supermarket to comment ‘what a pretty little girl you are’.
Lily is the most emotional out of her sisters, too. If something goes wrong, the world ends, in a cataclysmic fashion.
And much like her auntie once was, Lily is a daddy’s girl. She wants to be wherever Fezco is. She wants him to see what she’s doing. She desperately wants his approval.
These are observations that positively terrify Cassie.
After years and years and years of pain and heartbreak, most of which were brought on by her own actions, the very last thing Cassie wants is to see one of her nieces repeat her mistakes. The idea that one of her sister’s precious children is on the same trajectory that she once was makes her want to throw up.
She brings it up to Lexi, late one night when Fez is out with Ashtray, and she has helped her sister to wrangle all the little girls in bed.
“Do you worry that Lily will be like me?” Cassie had whispered after they were halfway through a movie and deep into a bottle of wine.
Lexi had cocked her head. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“You know what I mean.” Cassie huffed back.
“No, I don’t. Explain it to me.”
“I just… I went through so much godawful bullshit in high school, and it nearly killed me. Both metaphorically, me as a person, and physically… I just… I worry so much for Lily if she’s like me.” Cassie’s voice had trailed off to a whisper.
Lexi had placed her glass of wine on the coffee table and wrapped her up in a hug. “You are one of the kindest, most generous people, and you have a successful career, and you now have a loving partner.”
“I know.” Cassie nodded and tears had prickled at the edges of her eyes.
“Now as for all your struggles when we were younger… what do you think caused them?”
Cassie should have known Lexi would bring up something that would result in her talking about healing her inner child. Both Lexi and Fez brought this subject up a lot and Cassie’s therapist enjoyed that fact entirely too much.
“Because… when dad left it fucked me up.” Cassie acknowledged as she had many times before.
“Right… and do you think Lily is ever going to have to deal with that?”
“No.” Cassie had said it so quickly and with such surety, it had made her sister smile to see how fondly she revered Fez. “No, she won’t ever have to deal with that.”
“That’s right. Fezco isn’t going anywhere. Not willingly, at least. I think even if Death itself tried to take him, there would be a fight, and Fez doesn’t lose fights.”
“Ooh, Lexi, that’s a good line. Write that down! You’ve got to put something like that in your next book.”
Lexi had giggled, found a notebook, and scrawled out the line at Cassie’s insistence.
After that conversation, Cassie starts paying closer attention.
Lily is clearly a gifted dancer, and while Fezco is always there to take her to practices, he stays and watches, giving encouragement, but he also pushes her to have fun, get messy, and be goofy. Cassie realizes that she’d never been given that commodity of childlike play. She was always treated a bit like a doll.
(“Aw, hell nah. Back off on that professional shit. She’s barely four.” Cassie overhears Fezco saying to a strict ballet teacher when she goes along with him to pick up the girls from class.)
Lily is beautiful, and while her father always tells her this, Fezco reminds her that she is also smart. Lily is told she is clever. She is told she is kind. She is told that her beauty is a byproduct of who she is not how she looks.
(“What the fuck is that supposed to mean I better watch out, that one’s trouble?” Fez growls at some middle-aged dad at a barbeque, who promptly runs off with his tail between his legs.)
When Lily’s emotions are out of control, her father is always there as a steady anchor to help her navigate whatever storm she is going through. She’s not berated or diminished. She’s told to take deep breaths and talk about how she’s feeling.
(“I mean, shit, honey girl, I feel like that too, sometimes. Glitter is hard to craft with.”)
And instead of relishing in some sort of ‘special connection’ with his youngest, Fezco encourages Lily’s relationship with Lexi – to the point that she’s not really a ‘daddy’s girl’ or a ‘mommy’s girl’. And just as importantly Fez makes it known how Lexi is the light of his life.
It strikes Cassie that her father had never once done that for her. Her own reliance on her father had been not-so-subtly encouraged, in a way that made her a go-between for her parents. Cassie has seen the term called ‘triangulation’.
(“Girls, me and your momma are gon’ be gone all evenin’. You be good for Auntie Cassie.”
“Are you going to be very romance?” Lily asks with a giggle
“’Course I am! What kinda question is that! Mama deserves all the romance. She the most special lady in the whole damn world.”)
And these aren’t things that are unique to Lily. Fezco does these things for all his daughters.
He is there. He is a girl dad, and he relishes in it.
One day Cassie looks herself in the mirror, on-brand with Lexi and Fezco’s healing your inner child schtick, and says “You deserved to have a dad like that. I’m sorry that you didn’t.”
She’s surprised that her own words make her cry.
She decides it’s okay that Lily is a lot like her.
Auntie Cassie has been through the wringer, but she’s come out on the other side, a much stronger, much kinder, and better person.
Cassie is at peace knowing that Lily, or any of her other nieces, won’t have to go through what she went through to reach her contented and peaceful place in life.
She finds herself staring at her soon-to-be husband and is grateful that she’s found a man that will be there for their children someday, too.
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