A Million Reasons Why

by Jessica Strawser

  “Mom!” Riley yelled.

  “Aunt Sela made us a present!” Lucy finished.

  “Present!” Owen echoed, not to be left out.

  Whoops. Possibly she’d oversold this. She wouldn’t have used the word present; the wall art was more for Caroline. She rolled her bag over the doorstep and hesitated, awkward and alone in the entryway—which was plainer, though crisper and cleaner, than her own. The house smelled of freshly baked cookies, of Play-Doh, of children and the good fortune of having them. Pleasantly warmer than the sunlit chill outside. She should shut the door behind her. It was just that no one had exactly invited her in.

  “Sela.” Caroline appeared at the far end of the foyer, dish towel in hand, kids clinging to her legs, peering out.

  Sela ventured another smile. The oddest part of this guise was that they couldn’t behave as if they hadn’t met before. The more we get into this, the more I can see why you’re not bringing Brody for the first go, Caroline had written, inspiring a flicker of worry that she might rescind the invitation. But Caroline struck Sela as a person who made up her mind and didn’t change it, unless someone gave her cause. Which meant all Sela had to do was not drive her to regret this.

  “So good to see you,” she managed.

  “Please come in, I’m sorry—they’re just excited.” Caroline extracted herself from the six hands and hurried to shut the door, then turned to catch Sela in a hug so brief it ended before she registered it. “You made good time,” she said, taking her bag. A good hostess, Sela could tell. She’d probably wiped the baseboards, put single-use hand towels in the powder room, stocked condiments she didn’t even like in case Sela did.

  “It was a pretty drive. I’m glad I decided to take a half day; I’d have missed some gorgeous horse farms in the dark.”

  “I took a half day too. Walt just got home from work—he’s upstairs changing. I’ll show you to your room?” Sela nodded, and Caroline turned back to the kids. “Did you Greedy Gretchens introduce yourselves?” All three yelled their names—a big, loud Lu-ow-ley-an, and Sela laughed, glad she already knew what they were. “You guys want to give Aunt Sela a tour?”

  The kids scrambled up the stairs ahead of them, pointing out which rooms were theirs, where the bathroom was, and the closed door of the master suite. When they got to Lucy’s room, they stopped. “Lucy’s bunking with Riley so you can have her bed,” Caroline explained, wheeling in her bag. “It’s only a twin, but more comfortable than the pullout in the basement.”

  “That’s so nice of you, Lucy,” Sela said. “Are you sure? I don’t mind pullout couches.”

  “Totally,” Lucy said, barely masking her glee at the sisterly slumber party in store. Sela tried to picture Caroline as a girl—not the one who’d been oblivious to Sela’s existence, but one who’d been a part of it. Would they have dressed alike, giggled over the same things, rolled out their sleeping bags with flashlights and sneaky plans for staying up late? Or might they have been the competitive, adversarial type—the kind of relationship she’d been glad not to have?

  “I love your room,” Sela told Lucy. The decor was clearly self-selected and a startling contrast from home. Brody was drawn like a magnet to trucks, monsters, anything muddy. Meanwhile, Lucy’s bed appeared to be wearing an actual skirt. Of shimmering tulle.

  “Mom, can we see the present now?” Riley whispered, and Caroline laughed.

  “Let’s give our guest a minute to freshen up, and she can find us in the kitchen. Daddy too.”

  Take your time, Caroline mouthed to Sela as groans of protest followed her out of the room, leaving Sela to grin goofily at an oversized giraffe draped with strands of plastic pearls. Silly to have worried so much about how the kids would receive her. Their ready acceptance of her as one of the random grown-ups who sporadically rerouted their parents’ attention made this whole visit seem much more normal.

  My half nieces and nephew are delightful, she marveled. I really am an aunt.

  She would keep hold of her gratitude and not think about all this happy chaos she’d missed out on growing up in a house far less full.

  Or, more to the point, how much Brody would miss.

  Downstairs, Walt went in for a handshake instead of a hug, a two-handed grasp that was somehow both wary and firm, and Sela sensed he was the one she’d need to work to win over. Not that she blamed him; of course he’d be protective of his wife, his children, his home. Or maybe he and the multitasking Caroline—at this moment adjusting a Crock-Pot with one hand while plating cookies with the other—had choreographed more of a good cop, bad cop approach, whereby he’d represent their collective concerns and free Caroline to play the welcoming role.

  I don’t want anything from these people, she reminded herself. If things get awkward, I’ll just go. It still seemed novel to think this way; she’d harbored fears about the implications of meeting her half sibling since before she’d even known that Caroline was not merely a biological possibility but a real person.

  She heard a scraping noise behind her and turned to see all three kids dragging in the wrapped frame she’d left propped by the door. The glass frame. “Open?” Owen begged.

  “Careful!” Sela rushed to help them lift it onto the table, glancing at Caroline, who was exchanging an unreadable look with an unsmiling Walt. Maybe it was good cop, bad cop. “This is actually for all five of you—” But the kids were tearing away the paper, sharks in a feeding frenzy. She slid into a seat, out of the way, as their parents came closer for a look.

  “Ooh!” Riley squealed as Lucy and Owen pulled the corners free. “You made this?”

  Sela nodded, suddenly embarrassed. She’d lettered the kids’ names in an interlocking design, Lucy ending with the Y in Riley, Owen cutting through at a diagonal, borrowing the E. The letters themselves—in deep tones of purple, blue, and red—fell somewhere between whimsical and sophisticated, with tiny, intricate sketches tucked into their serifs and swirls. A soccer ball cradled in the R. Ballet shoes dangling from the L. A teddy bear sleeping in the O.

  Lucy traced the letters of her name with her fingers, delighted, then helped her little brother do the same with his. So this was where Brody would be in a year—even more inquisitive, bright-eyed, and, well, tall. She knew a year wasn’t a terribly long time, but the further into Brody’s future she looked, the harder it was to see him.

  Or maybe it was just harder to see herself. Tears pricked her eyes, and she blinked them away, glad the attention was on the artwork and not on her.

  “This is beautiful,” Caroline raved. “It must have taken days!”

  “I’ve never seen anything like this.” Walt seemed to be conceding something, though he didn’t meet her eyes but instead kissed his eldest atop her head. “Kids, what do we say?”

  “Thank you!” they chorused, and Lucy and Owen scurried off, the excitement having waned with no new game or toy. But Riley sat fixated.

  “Could you teach me?” she ventured. “To do letters like that?”

  “Absolutely.” When Sela got a mind to bring a gift, she’d known the way to any mother’s heart, but hadn’t counted on the kids being smitten. “You’ll have to show me your art supplies. If you don’t have what we need, I’ll get you some while I’m out tomorrow.”

  Her plan was to drive by the address she’d found in Ecca’s old correspondence, the house where she’d lived—or, rather, bided time—until her first opportunity to escape. Sela had looked through every old notebook and album she could find, hoping for mention of other places she might visit—a photo with a storefront, a ticket stub, anything—but the address was all she had.

  “Oh,” Caroline cut in, that predictable maternal backpedal. “You don’t have to—”

  “I’d love to. Honest.” Riley surprised Sela with a grateful hug and ran after her siblings.

  Caroline flashed a smile. “I thought we’d just do kind of an all-night munch fest for dinner. Appetizers, drinks, treats—not the healthiest, but hey, it’s Fri
day, right?”

  Sela panned the counter, a buffet of forbidden delights. A pumpernickel bowl filled with spinach dip. A plate of cheese and crackers. Veggies, thankfully. Whatever the Crock-Pot held—it smelled like meatballs, maybe, or chili?—and a tray of bruschetta ready for the oven. These were the standby dishes of her mother’s old artist dinners. Of book club potlucks. Of Friday night gatherings among family, neighbors, friends.

  Of people who aren’t sick. Who can indulge without a thought beyond Hey, it’s Friday.

  It had been so long since anyone had treated her like one of them.

  “Sounds perfect,” she said.

  * * *

  “So why did you take the test, anyway?” Walt didn’t waste his first opportunity to cut to the chase. The adults were settled on couches around the gas fireplace, the kids at last silent up in Riley’s room, where Owen had insisted he not be left out. Sela was doing her best not to look at the mantel, where in a smattering of framed family photo collages, she’d identified the repeat appearances of a man who could only be her father—though even out of context, he’d look much more like Caroline’s. Fitting, really. There he was, proudly walking her down the aisle, their facial features clear variations on a theme. There, teaching Owen to fish from behind matching mirrored sunglasses. There, arm around a laughing woman who must be Caroline’s mom.

  Sela had stolen a moment, while her sister readied the kids for bed, to peruse these frozen-in-time memories that didn’t belong to her, to stare into his face just long enough to deny resemblance beyond a few superficial details. Superficial—that’s all they were, and she would not dwell on these, not ask to see more. Not let this visit become about him, which would ruin it. She’d promised Caroline, after all, that she wouldn’t. Promised herself, too. Promised Ecca.

  Never mind that those promises hadn’t prepared her for what it might be like to actually see his absentee face brightly present for his rightful family, in glossy Kodak color. She had to be careful. She didn’t like the way Walt had been watching her all night—not when he came downstairs and caught her looking, and not earlier, when she’d been eating and drinking as little as possible without being impolite. She could pass it off as nerves if anyone asked, but no way could she sustain that for an entire weekend under this kind of scrutiny.

  “Caroline has been filling me in,” he was saying now, “but that’s one thing I’m not clear on. You suspected, I assume, that you might have half siblings?”

  “Well,” she began. “Obviously I’d never known my father.…”

  “So you hoped to find your father?”

  “Not exactly. My mother made it known she’d rather I not.”

  “But then she—” He checked himself. “Passed on. And you didn’t have to worry about upsetting her?”

  She shook her head. Wrong—she would never escape the worry of letting Ecca down, even now. Especially now, with her father peering out from the mantel. “Even though I knew there were…” How to put this? “Possibilities … I don’t know that my reasons were that different from anyone else’s. I wasn’t expecting much, honestly. You send it off and think, What are the odds? And then when something actually comes back you have to think the whole thing through all over again. It’s different when it’s hypothetical, you know?” There. She’d managed a fair, even good, approximation of what the careful, thoughtful Sela who’d sent all those emails to Caroline would say. If she kept talking, she’d spoil it. Deflect, deflect, deflect. “How about you?”

  “Yeah, how about us, Walt?” Caroline laughed loosely. She’d had several glasses of wine, lending a languid quality to her movements as well as her words, and leaned steeply toward Sela, smiling conspiratorially. “Let’s just say our family got more than we bargained for under the Christmas tree.” She laughed again and, when no one joined in, slapped her own cheek. “Oh God, Sela, I can’t believe I said that. It’s this wine.” She clunked her glass onto the end table and stared at it as if it were poisoned. “I didn’t mean—”

  “No, I get it. Of course you didn’t expect the results to be so … complicated.”

  She’d keep her equally complicated questions to herself. Did your father ever object to the test? Don’t you think a man who’d had an affair would have a nagging doubt in the face of a test like that? Is he a falsely confident sort, brazen, arrogant? Do you think some small part of him wanted to know, to clear his conscience for good, even if he was unprepared to own up to a less convenient truth?

  “It’s not that I’m not glad to know you. I mean, we’re here.…” Caroline looked to Walt, as if he might chime in with help, which even Sela could guess he would not. He was watching too closely, even now. “It’s just that—I know I alluded … There’s been some drama.”

  “That’s family for you, right?” Sela tried not to dislike her sister in this moment. At least Caroline was being real. To have this conversation without acknowledging the trouble Sela had caused would be weirder, wouldn’t it?

  Nicer, though.

  “Not my family,” Caroline said, surprising her. Sela saw, then, in her eyes, that this had been difficult in ways she’d not let on. That Caroline might be stirring something, someone, by having more than we bargained for here in her home. Had Caroline thought of clearing the mantel, decided against it? If she’d taken the collages containing her father away, there wouldn’t have been much left on display. Which spoke to how much of her life’s picture Sela was altering right now.

  “Your side, though,” Walt prodded. “What’s their take on all this? On you being here?”

  “Let’s not give Sela the third degree,” Caroline said, saving her. “It’s bad enough I put my foot in my mouth—no need to corner her into doing the same.” She turned to Sela, missing the stricken look on her husband’s face. He clearly thought this conversation necessary, was only trying to mediate. “Want me to go along to find your mom’s old address tomorrow?”

  “I think it’s probably something I should do alone. But thank you.”

  Caroline nodded. “I can point you to the high school too, if you’d like?”

  “You know where she went to school?” It dawned on her what that must mean. “She went to high school with your dad?”

  She’d pledged not to pry for these details Ecca had preferred she not know. But she did not possess the superhuman willpower to decline if one was offered. Caroline, though, looked caught—as if she hadn’t realized she was spilling anything new. “No…” Her tone held a friendly warning: She’d go ahead and answer but discuss it no further than necessary. “With my mom. From grade school through being underclassmen. Hannah is her name.”

  Sela peered at her in confusion. “Your mom? She and my mother were…”

  “Friends.” Caroline averted her eyes.

  Of all the possible scenarios Sela had run through, this was not one. Yet she instantly understood it must be true.

  Ecca’s old, weak explanations were bulking up, building muscle.

  Even as Sela’s wasted away to expose the bone.

  * * *

  Funny thing about a house—from the outside, anyway. With no one there to tell its story, a house is all it is.

  Sela had arrived at Ecca’s childhood address expecting—what? A memory that was not hers to remember—that would require, she realized now, someone capable of sharing it. Her grandparents had been gone from this place since she herself was an infant, and from the signs of youth in the neighboring homes—strollers on porches, soccer nets in yards—the surrounding properties had turned over, too.

  She’d have to imagine her mother here, before the porch had begun to sag from the aging two-story frame, back when the wood was freshly painted—this same yellow, perhaps, but brighter. There: As a child, poking her head from the lace-curtained window, panning the sky for Santa’s sleigh. As a budding artist, sprawled with pastels on the woven rug of the porch. As a lovesick girl on the sidewalk, accepting a shy kiss from a first-ever date.

  But those pro
bably weren’t right. Ecca’s years here had not been happy—though as Sela sat in her car at the curb, she couldn’t bring herself to conjure an uglier truth. The neighborhood was the sort of midcentury mixed bag that was halfway committed to regaining its former glory, but this house was among those still awaiting a renovator’s eye. Perhaps Ecca would’ve been glad to see it looking shabby, figured the house’s history served it right. Then again, maybe she’d have liked to see it move on from her parents and shine brighter.

  That’s what Ecca had done. She’d rarely said much about what made her parents such unpleasant people, about what had gone on here. Only that her brother, a full decade older, had graduated high school, hitched a ride to California, and never looked back—and that she was not hurt by this but inspired by it. She’d taught Sela how far your engine could run on nothing but self-fueled fire.

  Sela got the feeling Caroline assumed that Ecca’s story was sad, that their father had left her hanging on some hook. But Sela had never known her mother to be ensnared by anybody or anything. Once, by her own admission, she’d come close, but she’d fought her way through and boxed up her close call with all the other things she’d rather forget. A lesson in that, too.

  Stepping out of the car, Sela tried to breathe in anything that might be left of Ecca’s tenacity, even as she realized that if those parts of her mother lived on anywhere, they were not at this address.

  They were within Sela. Within Brody, too—strongest perhaps of all.

  “You can walk from the house to the school, if the rain holds off,” Caroline had suggested, pointing out the adjacent blocks on her navigation app. “I bet Rebecca used to walk, and probably avoided this main road, unless she had errands to run.”

  Sela checked her parallel-park job—close enough—and started down the uneven sidewalk, grateful for the suggestion. The day was overcast but, so far, dry. She took in the gentle brush brush of leaves being raked nearby, the hollow bounce of a basketball, the whoosh of traffic from the parallel thoroughfare. Had her mother once tripped over this same crooked paver? Stopped to tie her shoe in the shade of this thick oak tree? Perhaps on this walk, she’d been happier—not at home and not at school, her own boss for the few moments in between.