The school came into view, behind a chain-link fence. Trailers cluttered the grounds, housing extra classrooms—Caroline had explained that the student body outgrew the building, and a larger facility was under construction elsewhere. For this last shot at her mother’s old stomping ground, Sela was just in time.
She caught sight of a figure sitting on the wide concrete steps. The figure didn’t stand, but waited respectfully to see whether Sela would continue her approach or pretend she hadn’t seen and turn back. Sela was surprised at how glad she was to see her. At how nice it was to say she’d rather do something alone and to have someone realize she might change her mind.
She sat down next to Caroline and looked out at the same row of old houses that had no doubt greeted their mothers after school each day. No ghosts joined them on the steps to share their stories. No Walt with his questions, no kids with their bubbly distractions. Only two sisters.
“Did you know,” Caroline asked, “that before they used the clinical term depression, they used to diagnose people with nostalgia?”
Sela grinned, improbably. She had heard that once, but she’d forgotten.
She hadn’t understood it then, probably, the way she did now.
17
Caroline
Caroline leaned into Walt’s embrace, sighing audibly with relief. On the other side of their bedroom door, the house was quiet—an early Saturday night. Tomorrow morning, Sela would head home, already and at last. They’d made it through.
“What does that sigh mean?” Walt rubbed her back, not letting go. He gave the best hugs. Better still, she rarely had to ask when she needed one.
“Have I still not mastered Mom’s sigh language?” He laughed. Walt and Maureen once tried to make a party game of imitating Hannah’s dramatic sigh technique. Dubbed “A Sigh Is Worth a Thousand Words,” it involved concocting elaborate translations of each nuanced sound. “Correct” answers included such missives as So help me God, Caroline, if I have to explain this to you one more time, I might begin to question the way I raised you—which is ridiculous, because we all know I raised you perfectly!
“I think you can be glad that lesson didn’t stick,” he assured her.
She grinned, pulling back to look at him. “That sigh,” she said, “means I can let go of worrying that having Sela here was not a good idea.”
“You two had a good day?”
She nodded, crossing to her dresser to remove her jewelry. After last night, the jury had still been out, and Caroline had started this morning feeling paltry that she hadn’t been able to offer Sela more than a lousy tip about Rebecca’s old school. It was obvious visiting her mother’s old haunts meant more to Sela than Caroline had realized. But she didn’t dare ask Dad if he could suggest spots to add to the tour. It was too late to mention the visit now that it was underway. The best she could do was go after Sela—and be glad she had.
“She said you took her to the Gas Light? Blast from the past.” The dive bar was a fixture in an old neighborhood they’d frequented when they started seeing each other. They never called those evenings dates, but rather, “bonding over beer.”
Caroline grinned. “For some reason it stuck in my head as a good place for bonding.”
He ducked into the closet, emerging with the jersey-knit pants he slept in when they had company. “And it was?”
She hesitated. How to explain? It was fair for Walt to be expecting a play-by-play. But it wasn’t the things Sela did or said that struck Caroline. It was, as with her emails, the way she did or said them: candid yet thoughtful, even with her tongue so loosened by a couple of watery beers that Caroline wondered if Sela was a teetotaler too polite to say so.
“I feel like everyone looks at this as me coming in and rewriting your family’s history,” Sela had mused. “But it’s not like I was down in North Carolina knowing all along, plotting when I was going to come stir the pot. My history had big gaps, too.”
Caroline didn’t mind the uncensored take—appreciated it, actually, after her own slipup the night before.
“I know,” she’d said simply.
Sela looked straight at her then. “Ever think maybe some blanks are better left unfilled?”
“Lately?” Caroline leaned in. “All the time.” She waited a beat. “No offense.”
They’d erupted in laughter.
The thing was, confessions had a way of bringing on the best kind of heart-to-heart. All of a sudden they were talking about everything. Caroline got almost as tipsy as Sela and recounted the randomness of her trip to Brevard, how she might’ve walked right by Sela or even Rebecca back then.
“I knew campus jobs were competitive, but still,” Sela sympathized. “Mother was always saying how cheap the administration was. I can’t believe they brought you all the way down there and didn’t make the offer.”
“Quite the blow to my young ego,” Caroline admitted. “But the bigger blow was my boyfriend dumping me and going alone.”
“Ouch.”
Caroline hovered there, debating the wisdom of getting into what she’d recently learned about the role Mom had played. Sela’s opinion of her parents must be wary at best to start, and it wasn’t wrong. But to her relief, Sela jumped in with her own one-that-got-away story: from how she and Doug met to the day it hit her that things had turned sideways.
“I just looked at him and realized we didn’t see the world the same way anymore,” she said. “It was this sad, odd feeling that I’d missed my chance to say good-bye to him, even though he was still right there.”
They’d had a surprisingly easy time carrying on that way: Anytime the conversation might have taken an awkward turn, it took an authentic one instead.
An hour in, they eyed a tray of paper-lined baskets going past. Burgers, fries, onion rings. The smell of grease could be this enticing only after day drinking.
Caroline snatched the menu from behind the ketchup. “Grilled cheese,” she proclaimed. “We need grilled cheese. With fries.”
“Coming right up,” the bartender said, happening past. She hadn’t meant to actually order, but they just laughed, kept talking. It wasn’t like making conversation with a stranger. More like uncovering a connection that had been waiting for them all along.
When the food came, Sela took a slow bite and closed her eyes.
“I couldn’t tell you the last time I had this,” she said. “I feel like a kid.” A beat of recognition passed between them. That was what they’d missed of each other. Childhood and all the years since. Until now.
Later, when they emerged from the bar into surprisingly bright sunlight, they both sneezed, on cue, three times in quick succession. Sela burst out laughing, but Caroline couldn’t. She knew what Sela did not: That Dad had this same reflex. That it was a running joke for Mom to call them “the achoo duo” when in fact they’d been a trio.
How to put all that into words Walt would understand?
“I guess I’m just glad she’s here,” she said, trading her sweater for a raglan tee.
He took a moment to observe her, so carefully she almost blushed. “I didn’t know you wanted this so much,” he said finally. “To like her, I mean. To want to know her.”
What she’d wanted so much was merely to grab at this chance Mom had taken from her. To hold it by the fist and decide what to do with it, one way or another, on her own. She hadn’t allowed herself to think further than that.
But there was something so earnest about Sela, in spite of everything. Like no one else Caroline had known. Mo hooked Caroline even in childhood with her large, loud approach to life—a classic “opposites attract” for a girl growing up in a house where arguments were whispered. Keaton swept her up into a dream-driven world for two, if only for a little while. With Walt, Caroline became a proud partner, fair and equal in sensible joint decisions. And with her parents—well, she was no longer sure she’d ever known her place at all.
Sela, though, wasn’t just an extra player to deal in. She was
all heart. The way she stopped to think before speaking. The way she talked of her son without resorting to the petty complaints common among moms. The way she withheld judgment, with grace—from speaking charitably of her ex to holding her tongue about their father. Caroline couldn’t help wondering now how she might be different herself, had she grown up alongside someone like Sela.
How she might be different still, to know her now.
“I didn’t either,” she admitted.
“But you feel sure. That you want there to be more visits?”
Every potential relationship has a point where you take a deep breath and decide: Okay. Let’s do this—give it some gas and see how far we can go.
Or where you don’t: Was worth a try, but let’s stop wasting our time here.
She still remembered that point with Walt.
She’d felt so much less certain then—more so than anyone but Walt would ever know.
“You know what I feel? Relieved.” A strange word for it, but Sela in the flesh somehow made the emotions Caroline had been reeling in from afar seem valid. And that alone was something. “I guess I didn’t want to admit how scared I was that this would all blow up in my face.”
Walt leaned against his dresser, facing her. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it still could. We can’t hide that we’ve met her.”
She frowned. “Can’t we wait and be overcautious after she leaves?” Not that he didn’t have a point. “You’ve been like this for her entire visit. Last night, now … Can I just enjoy her for one day? After how miserable this entire ordeal has been? It’s not like I’m going to forget that it’s complicated.”
He looked stung. “Sorry. I don’t know if I really am this wary, or just felt like somebody should be. Your folks are staying out of it, and you’re going for it. No one’s covering Midfield.”
She considered this, chagrined. She hadn’t asked, after all, what he thought of Sela coming, and hadn’t confided her own second thoughts. She’d merely told him, in a fit of misdirected defiance, it was a done deal. Somewhere along the line, this chaos had flipped a switch from her usual modus operandi—of wanting first to share every revelation with Walt—to sifting out the things marriage obligated her to share. Walt had been patient with Caroline during these weeks of floundering, but if his frustration had to leak out somewhere, Sela was the easy target. Caroline couldn’t fairly expect him to abandon all reserve so readily.
Their partnership had always been the solid thing when everything else went wobbly. She had to stop letting her head be spun by these past betrayals. What mattered was in front of her—even Keaton had known that: Walt, the kids, her parents’ health. And now Sela.
“I haven’t been very good at talking about all this,” she said. “I’m sorry—it’s been a lot. I wasn’t sure about Sela before. But now? I do think this is the right thing.”
He sank onto the bed next to her. “Well, it isn’t the easy way out.” His are you sure? voice.
“I know, MIDFIELD.” He jostled her shoulder affectionately, and they exchanged a smile—the kind of wordless apology they were best at. She could tell that even if he didn’t quite share her relief, he’d buy in.
At least for now.
“She does remind me a little of Fred,” he admitted. “There’s this look he’s taken on since he retired. You know how some older people give the impression they must have really been something to see in their day? Like, I don’t know, a stage presence you can’t mute?”
“I never did know you thought of Dad as a retired movie star. No.”
He laughed. “I’m not explaining it right. But she has the same, I don’t know, aura. Kind of a strange vibe to get from a younger person. Maybe it’s her posture or something.”
Caroline had an inkling of what he meant. There had been little things, all day, that had brought not just Dad to mind but Riley or Owen. It was a lot to take in. She’d have to do this in baby steps.
“Where do we go from here?” he asked. “Do we give your parents a chance to opt back in? I mean, you could look at your dad’s heart attack multiple ways. Maybe he’ll rethink his priorities. And do we reevaluate telling the kids? What does that look like?”
“I don’t know. But at least now I know it’s worth the stress to figure it out, in time. Everything that’s happened since that first bombshell email has seemed so negative, but—there could be a positive side, you know? She could be the positive side.”
Hadn’t Dad taught her that even the most complicated study could be narrowed to a simple conclusion? That if you ever wanted to do anything but spin your wheels, sooner or later you had to boil it down and draw one?
“I mean, she said something about us going there next time, and— Walt, I didn’t let myself think about it too much before, but we have a nephew, you know? A nephew.”
“That is…” He met her eyes and gave up a smile. “A great thing I thought it was impossible for us to have.”
* * *
Caroline slipped into the hall, never able to sleep without one last check of the kids, and caught sight of Lucy, her nightgown a pale flash in the glow of the hallway night-light, padding sleepily from the bathroom toward the ajar door of her own room. Only Lucy wasn’t sleeping there this weekend. Sela was.
“Lucy,” she stage-whispered, not wanting to wake anyone, not sure whether her daughter was truly awake herself. But Lucy didn’t hear. She disappeared through her doorway, and Caroline padded down the hall after her. Even if Sela hadn’t fallen asleep yet, surely she wanted peace. They’d had a long day.
“No need to apologize,” she heard Sela saying. “Do you miss your room? I’m sorry for having to borrow it.”
“I don’t miss it.” Caroline slowed, coming to a stop outside the door.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did. It’s one of the prettiest rooms I’ve ever seen.”
“I used to think so.” Lucy sounded comically forlorn for a kindergartner, but Caroline didn’t smile. What had changed in her happy-go-luckiest child? Should she be worried that this was more than a passing phase—that something had actually happened to turn her fearful?
“I see,” Sela said, not a hint of amusement in her voice. “Which part of it has started to bother you, exactly?”
“The alone part.”
“Ah. You’d rather share with Riley?”
“Yes, but she won’t let me. She says she doesn’t want me ‘glittering up her space.’”
At the mocking tone, Caroline bit back a chuckle, immediately punctuated by guilt. Had the girls seriously debated sharing a room? Without coming to her? Their house had enough bedrooms for each kid to have their own, thereby each kid had gotten their own: more of a mathematical equation than a thought process. It hadn’t occurred to her any of them might prefer to share.
“You know, when I was growing up, it was just me and my mother, and when I was really little, the two of us slept in the same room a lot.”
“You did?”
“She was an artist, and our apartment was so tiny, she had to use her bedroom for her studio. She’d put me to bed and stay up late painting, but then her room would smell like paint, and brush cleaner, and all that other stinky stuff artists use. That’s what she said, anyway—sometimes I think it was so crammed with all those easels, she didn’t fit. I had this little trundle that rolled under my bed, and I’d wake up in the morning and find her asleep on that, pulled out right next to me.”
“That sounds cozy.”
“I don’t know how cozy she found it, but I thought so. Even though she wasn’t there when I fell asleep, I knew she would come. I’d fall asleep waiting. Then she started to sell her paintings and teach art classes, enough of them for us to buy a house. It had a big separate studio, so her bedroom was just for sleeping then. She never used my trundle anymore, and even though I liked our new place—and I even used to feel annoyed that no space in our little apartment was totally mine—I felt lonely then. I was always asking to have a friend sleep ov
er. I didn’t have a sister, like you. But I wished I did.”
Caroline leaned her head against the wall. She and Walt had talked often about growing up as only children—not bad or good, necessarily, but how they were giving their kids such a different experience, literally surrounded by siblings.
How would she ever get used to the idea that she’d had one, all along? That she’d been one, all along?
“So what did you do?” Lucy sounded wide awake now. Caroline sneaked a look through the gap between the door hinges and saw her daughter sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed, facing her aunt, who was curled up in a pair of flannel pajamas, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“I told my mom. When you’re struggling with something, it can help to tell a grown-up.” This was the kind of thing a lot of people would do only for another parent’s benefit within earshot—Hey, I’m having a moment with your kid, but I’m not stepping on toes! For Sela to be doing it in private meant a lot.
“What did she say?”
“Well, she used to tell me that my imagination was my superpower. It was cool having a mom who thought like an artist—I never had her talent in terms of technique, but the creativity, I did have. She knew it. And she pointed out that power could be used for good or bad, right? Your imagination can run away from you and you can scare yourself silly.”
Lucy nodded enthusiastically. “I think it’s my superpower too!”
“Right! So when I couldn’t stop the lonely or scary things happening in my brain, alone in my room, she suggested I use the superpower to pretend someone was with me.”
“Who?”
“Whoever you’d most like to have with you, in that moment. Could be someone real, like your mom or Riley or Owen, but sometimes I think it’s more fun to imagine someone totally new. Like, you might pretend one of these stuffed animals can talk. Or you might imagine that a character from your favorite book or movie is your sidekick.”
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