Caroline could practically hear the bomb inside her mom ticking, and it suddenly seemed possible that maybe it had been there all along, waiting to explode on them all. Much like Sela herself. Caroline got to her feet, reeling in disbelief. There was no if about this. This was happening. In the foyer, she turned. They were both watching her go.
“You know what’s really weird?” Caroline couldn’t help it. “She lives in Brevard. I came so close to moving there. We could have passed each other on the street and not even known.”
Mom stiffened. “Yet another reason it’s a very good thing you didn’t go.”
A new layer of confusion wrapped around her thoughts. Caroline had been anything but glad when those plans fell through. Nothing had before or since laid her flat like the raw wound of that heartbreak, Keaton leaving her behind. She’d had to move home, where her parents spent weeks piling on sympathy, never once expressing relief that the split was for the best.
“Yet another reason?”
Very good thing?
“Leave it,” Dad barked, as if Caroline were the one in the wrong. She blinked at him in surprise. “Give us one day,” he repeated.
She turned without another word, childishly slamming the door on her way out. She had the curious feeling of floating above herself, watching her own exit while surveying the formative part of her life—all of their lives—from an angle she’d never had access to before.
It wasn’t Dad’s admission alone that carried her there, to this dizzy new height. She’d had since yesterday to allow for that possibility, however slim.
But she had not been the slightest prepared for what she saw in Mom, in that final moment. In the moment that pertained, most directly, to Caroline.
When she’d unmistakably looked as if her husband were not the only one who’d been caught in a lie.
4
Sela
Brody zigzagged the playground as fast as his squat legs could carry him, giggling and panting through a one-boy game of chase around the support poles, under the slides, and through the tunnels as if on some secret challenge to explore them all before a buzzer announced time’s up. From her perch on the closest bench, Sela might have envied his energy were the force of it not such an amazing feat.
For other toddlers, the physicality of their exuberance was a prerequisite, a default mode set to exhaust their parents, but for Brody it was his hard-fought reward in the endless game of catch-up he’d been playing since birth. Doug was so tall that by rights Brody should have dwarfed his infant counterparts, but instead he’d begun life barely big enough to join their ranks at all. Even now his height and weight were in line with the smallest one-year-olds, though his verbal and motor skills were almost on par with the two years he was about to mark. A child whose abilities so outpaced his size might have drawn attention among the parents of his peers, but in this park, dominated by older kids thanks to the rec center across the street, the other moms—and occasionally dads—rarely acknowledged Sela, as most were past the point of close supervision and thus engrossed in whatever was so interesting on their smartphones. At the moment, she and Brody—and Oscar, back on his leash and collapsed at her feet after a raucous game of Frisbee—had the place to themselves, the normal crowd at school.
“Sela!” Leigh came rushing down the sidewalk, breathy and late as always, pushing a mountain of gear in front of her. Annie strained against her stroller straps, having caught sight of the playground, kicking her little legs beneath the lap bar in excitement. In a pouch strapped to Leigh’s shoulders, her six-month-old looked right to left, in search of whatever her sister’s happy shrieking was about. Between them, an overflowing diaper bag swung like a pendulum from the stroller handles, a bottle and sippy cup rattling in the crossbar’s ill-fitting holders. Oscar raised his head and quickly ducked it again, wisely lying low from the toddler’s affinity for fur by the handful.
Seeing her best friend like this, laden and frazzled, always made Sela grateful Brody was so low maintenance in that respect, rarely demanding toys or snacks on the go with the impatience she’d seen from Annie. Then again, she and Brody spent an awful lot of time at home; when given free rein to explore, he took it.
“Have you been waiting long? I’m so sorry. As usual.” Leigh brought the stroller to an abrupt halt beside the bench and kicked the brake on, wrapping a protective arm around the baby as she bent to release the flailing Annie from the torturous confines of her straps.
“No worries. Although I did start without you.” Sela held up the half-eaten apple in her hand. “Bad me, I know.”
“Good you. That’s so much healthier than what’s about to pass for my lunch.” Leigh caught her misstep instantly, but Sela waved off her cringe. Though poor nutritional choices were a forbidden luxury for Sela, she was past being sensitive about it.
“Hi, Annie girl.” Sela smiled down at the toddler. “Love your dress.” It was zebra striped from top to bottom, the kind of thing only a certain kind of adult could pull off—the kind that wasn’t Sela. Annie rewarded her with a lopsided curtsy before running to join Brody beneath the jungle gym.
“Did you get your steps in?” Leigh plopped next to her on the bench and peeled the waxed paper from a salami sandwich. It couldn’t have been more pedestrian—white bread, yellow cheese, no garnishes—but Sela’s mouth watered. She quickly sank her teeth back into the apple.
“Most of them. I walked the long way here, so the round trip should do it.” They used the same fitness tracker app, Sela focused on getting in her prescribed thirty minutes of daily activity and Leigh aiming to lose the baby weight. Neither had seen the desired results—Sela did usually meet her goals, but her disease didn’t seem to care, and her friend was wearing maternity pants even now—but they cheered each other on nonetheless.
“Dizzy at all?” Leigh had dealt with anemia in college, when they’d met as randomly assigned roommates, though hers was self-inflicted by overcorrecting to avoid the freshman fifteen. Neither necessary nor wise for someone burning mad calories on an athletic scholarship. Her extreme diet ended the day Sela dragged her, pale and trembling, to the student health center.
“Leigh,” she said gently, “no need to parent me. I think you have enough kids to worry about.”
The words held only affection, but Leigh dropped the sandwich into her lap and burst into tears.
“Oh, no. You know I didn’t mean—”
“I’m pregnant,” she said through her sobs.
Sela blinked, her gaze falling to the little face peering up at her from Leigh’s carrier, oblivious to her mother’s distress. Though her name, Piper, was as whimsical and sweet as her demeanor, she’d come along so soon after her sister that she was more often referred to as merely “the baby.” As in, I barely sleep, between Annie and the baby.
Only now, there was going to be another one.
“Wow. Um…” The thing to do was congratulate her. But she wasn’t sure how to go about it while her friend was weeping over the news.
While a part of herself that she despised was struggling not to join her.
“I didn’t even think it was possible yet.” Leigh’s words spilled out in a rush that sounded too much like a protest. “I’m nursing around the clock. I could count on one hand the number of times Van and I’ve had sex since Piper was born—hell, practically since Annie was born. Yet every test I pee on says it’s true.” She dissolved again into tears, and Sela’s eyes went to Annie. The fearless ball of moxie was on her fifth attempt at climbing up the spiral slide, a feat she had yet to manage more than halfway. Brody had worn himself out and plopped down in the mulch, which he was busy scooping into piles, paying Annie about as much attention as she was paying him. Sela knew this parallel-play stage was developmentally normal, but Annie was an attentive big sister to Piper. In months, the baby would be out there trailing after her—and another would be on the way. The most natural cycle there was.
But not for Sela. Her doctors not only cautioned agai
nst another pregnancy, they forbade it. A danger to both her and the fetus, which would likely not make it to term and, regardless of that outcome, endanger her own life in the process. The fact that she was already blowing through late stage three owed a great deal, she’d been told, to that shift in hormones and bodily function, a nine-month-long high-risk complication that could not be avoided unless it was, well, avoided.
For Sela, there would be only Brody.
“I was not going to tell you this”—Leigh sniffed—“until I was prepared to pretend to be happy about it.”
“You don’t have to pretend with me.”
“I sound like a callous bitch.” She covered Piper’s ears with her hands, too late. “Not only am I resistant to what I know will be a blessing, but I’m selfish enough to cry about it in front of you of all people.”
“Leigh, look at me.” She’d seen this anguish in her friend before. When the giddy road they’d been traveling in carrying Brody and Annie at the same time—weekly prenatal yoga dates and shared registry links and even the same childbirth class—abruptly forked. Sela’s routine urine tests coming back abnormal, leading to diagnosis. The pregnancy itself escalating the decline of her kidney function before anyone could stop it. Brody coming much too soon, the long hospital stay that followed. She’d been left to navigate sharp turns at the top of a steep, deadly cliff while Leigh’s road continued straight and smooth, and then even Doug had stopped walking beside her, while Leigh and Van were nesting into a new stage of love with their baby miracle.
Both she and Leigh had tried, earnestly, but neither had known how to bridge the widening chasm between them when the forces quaking their worlds apart were so visceral and raw. The crevasse had grown almost impassably wide before they finally found a way across.
Sela had no interest in going back to that lonely place. No one, least of all Sela, liked someone who couldn’t see past their own misfortune to be glad for a friend. And she was through with not liking herself. She’d never meant to resent Leigh before, and the difference now was that she was self-aware enough to push back against the reflex. Her eyes flicked to Brody. Small, yes, and weak, maybe, but every bit as fierce as Annie beneath the surface. He was what no one else could ever be: the child of her heart.
“It’s just…” Poor Leigh was still trying to explain. “When you said I have enough—”
“Poor word choice. I hadn’t guessed, I swear.”
“But it’s not fair.” Leigh’s voice wobbled. “I do have ‘enough.’ And you…” She shook her head. “I know how much you wanted another shot at this.” Sela put an arm around Leigh, overcome with an odd gratitude that even when things got awkward, Leigh didn’t try to brush them under the rug the way Doug had.
Thank goodness Sela hadn’t driven both of them to divorce her.
“I did,” Sela admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t be excited for you. And I am. Or will be, whenever you’re ready to feel excited for yourself.” Her own eyes had grown teary, but she smiled and could see her friend’s relief, though something else hid there, too. Fear.
“What if I don’t?” The words were barely audible, but Sela heard.
“You will,” she said with conviction. “What does Van think?”
“You know, I was so busy cussing him out I didn’t get around to asking.” She laughed joylessly. “I’m so tired. The idea of remaining awake at all hours for however many more years…”
“Sleep is probably what you need now. Why don’t I take the girls for the afternoon?”
Leigh’s eyes slid sideways. “I can’t ask that.”
“You didn’t ask. I’d enjoy them—honest.”
She picked up her sandwich from where it had fallen onto her jeans and took a big bite, as if to prove she was better already. “Thanks, but Annie will be so worn out after this, she’ll nap well. I’m just hormonal. And hungry.”
“My mother used to pack salami in my lunch,” Sela heard herself say.
“Really? Rebecca? The same Rebecca who coaxed us off campus with elaborate home-cooked spreads and regaled us with horror tales about processed food?”
“The earlier version. The broke single-parent version. Once her work took off she had the luxury of becoming more of a nag.”
“I never thought I’d miss being nagged.”
“You and me both. Although she’d be super proud of my diet now. I don’t know what she’d find left to concern herself with.” They both laughed. Sela had been about a year into her diagnosis—and a mother herself for only six months—when her mother died unexpectedly, having carried to the end a black leather-bound journal filled with meticulous notes—tracking every symptom, researching every drug, calling Sela first and last thing each day, and recording whatever seemed important. Saw a funny movie—that helped, but misses popcorn. Need to find her a low-sodium sub. Doug called it the Sela Bible, teasing that if his mother-in-law went so far as embossing the cover, he was out of there.
Of course, he’d stopped joking about that once they both realized how much he’d welcome the excuse.
None of them had had reason to look ahead to a life without Rebecca, who at fifty-seven had been far too young and vibrant to pass the way she did. Natural causes, they called it—but vague underlying conditions be damned, it didn’t feel natural that such a big heart had simply given out. For Doug, Rebecca’s singular devotion to Sela had been a safety net for him shirking his own. For Leigh, it was more personal. With her own family out of state, Sela’s mother had been a surrogate parent since college. That her death brought the friends back together was the only good that had come of it.
That, and the fact that Sela didn’t have to worry about how she’d pay for treatment. At least, not for a long time. Even with health coverage, patients were advised to have a staggering hundred thousand dollars banked before they even thought about pursuing a transplant. Her mother’s life insurance payout took care of that.
Sela would have rather fundraised, groveled, panhandled, a hundred thousand times over.
“You know…” Leigh’s poker face was horrible. Especially when she was bracing herself to share an unpopular opinion. “If your mother had known she was on her way out, she might have revisited her stance on your father.”
Sela fought the urge to say Leigh sounded like Doug, though it would have gotten her to stop. He’d never been so uptight before all this. In fact, his old devil-may-care gleam was the first thing she’d ever noticed about him—the thing that had drawn her near. He’d been waiting on a bar stool for his blind date, who was running late. Sela had popped in for a carryout order, they’d gotten to chatting, and when the date finally arrived, he’d leaned to whisper in Sela’s ear, “I don’t want to have dinner with her. I want to have dinner with you.”
She’d smiled coyly. “Tomorrow?”
And he’d replied, “Not soon enough.”
His date was not amused.
Sela wasn’t the only one who’d grown so different she was unrecognizable now.
“No,” she told Leigh. “Ecca had opportunities aplenty to reverse course on dear ol’ Dad.”
When your mother raised you around a steady stream of artist friends and students and buyers, when she spoke of herself in the third person as if to reassure you both—There, let it never be said your mother can’t manage dinner on a dime—and when you had no father or sibling around referring to her as Mom, you ended up creating your own version of the name you most often heard her called. In their case, the only bit Sela could pronounce as a toddler stuck. When she started school, she saved Ecca for home and publicly opted for Mother, even though her friends sometimes asked, Why so formal? She never knew why Mom felt strange on her tongue. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Ecca, though they made a tight pair, was so obviously not meant to belong to anybody, least of all in a supporting role. She imagined Brody would have called his grandmother Ecca, too, had she lived to see him thrive.
“But if you hear back—when you he
ar back—from this sister, we all know it’s not just her on the other end of this. This could be big: a whole side to your family you didn’t know about. Maybe they’ll be glad to hear from you.”
“Given it’s already been a few days, we can probably rule that out.”
“Premature.”
“Plus, we’ve been over this. My father isn’t on the table. That way, I don’t betray Ecca’s wishes, he doesn’t have to feign some heartfelt explanation for the past three point five decades, and all I have to do is handle the small matter of winning over his other daughter enough to … well, you know. It keeps things the simplest possible version of clusterfunked.”
Leigh sighed. “I understand the boundaries you need to draw around this to feel okay about reaching out. But we all know there’s a lot more to this than a potential, maybe, compatible kidney donor. All I’m saying is to keep an open mind. Having more support in your life could be a positive thing, no matter what else happens, or doesn’t happen. I worry about you, Sela.”
What to say to that? That of course the possibility of there being “more to this” had not only entered her mind but consumed it? That Sela could think of little else but what Caroline must be thinking—whether she’d ever suspected, whether she even believed her? That hinging hope on this far-flung chance—the idea of a prospective sister relationship as slim and foreign as that of a donor match—was too thick a risk when she was hanging from so thin a thread? That she still longed for her mother with the fervor of a lost child?
Do the DNA test, her doctors had urged upon learning half of Sela’s parentage was unknown.
Contact her, her friends had urged upon learning the test had turned up a half sibling. Leigh herself had helped her look up Caroline online: A husband and three kids, her bio said. That meant half nieces, nephews. Maybe not too far off from Brody’s age.
Did people really think it was only the DNA on her mind? Sela let it stand—though a less biased party might have thusly seen her as cold, calculating, in spite of all the nudging required to carry her this far. Better than the unbearable vulnerability of admitting that the idea of a family was a far stronger pull even than a kidney her life might depend on.
A Million Reasons Why Page 4