A Million Reasons Why

by Jessica Strawser

  “But not as slim with a family member. Right?”

  Reluctance poured off of Sela, but she nodded through it, holding her head high even as tears glistened in her eyes. “I admit, that is why I let myself be talked into doing the DNA test. But I meant what I said the night I got here: Thinking of it in hypothetical terms was not the same as the real thing.” She rushed through the words, choking back tears. “So to answer your question, I haven’t been getting up the nerve to ask. I wasn’t going to ask.” A sob escaped her. “I’m not going to. I’m not asking.”

  Caroline’s mouth dropped open, but the thoughts swirling through her mind couldn’t assemble themselves into words. Walt, though, had no trouble.

  “You mentioned a possible predisposition to this condition that brought on the kidney disease.”

  Sela tore a napkin from the holder and pressed it to her eyes. “Glomerulonephritis.”

  “Right. Glomer—” He gave up on the word. “Does that mean it runs in families?”

  “It can.”

  “In your case?”

  “They don’t know.”

  He shook his head, even more incredulous. He was getting carried away, taking things in a direction Caroline couldn’t turn back if she allowed him to continue, but she felt frozen, incapable of interrupting. “So there’s a chance of a genetic component—which Caroline could also have?”

  Sela hesitated, then nodded slowly.

  “Riley, Owen, Lucy?”

  Another nod, almost imperceptible.

  “And you would risk Caroline, a perfectly healthy, young mother of three, donating a kidney to you, and then having only one left if her own started to fail? Or if one of our kids ends up needing one?” He was practically shouting now, and Sela pushed her chair back until she was flush against the wall, shaking her head hard.

  “I’m not asking,” she repeated.

  “Like hell you’re not asking,” he boomed. “You’re here, aren’t you? Hey, Caroline, turns out you might be the only one who can help, but don’t worry, I’m not asking you to?”

  The request registered with Caroline then—deep and heavy. Not through Sela’s words. Through Walt’s.

  “That’s not fair,” Sela protested. “If you’re saying I’m asking just by being here and in my condition, well—I can’t help that much. This is me. This is my condition. I know it’s a lot to take in at once. That’s why I held off on … the details.”

  “Don’t act like you’re just here. You’re not just anything. You ordered the test. You sought us out. Do you have any idea what my wife has risked for you already, so you wouldn’t feel ousted by Fred and Hannah? She’s the only one who has tried to do right by you, and this is what she gets?”

  Caroline knew she should correct him—at the very least for implying that this visit was an act of charity. Maybe she’d been a little fueled by a sense of duty, but that wasn’t the whole story. She’d felt called to do this for herself as much as for Sela—and up until moments ago, she’d thought she’d begun to understand why.

  But this was her body they were talking about, as if its rightful owner were up for grabs. She put her hands over her ears, not caring that it looked childish. “Stop!”

  “Caroline.” Sela’s eyes returned to hers, desperate. “Please believe me. This visit was not an ambush. It was exactly what we both thought it was.” Her voice dropped at the end, barely a whisper. “It meant everything to me. You. The kids. Just as it was.”

  “Hypothetically speaking,” Walt cut in, unmoved, “if I called your ex-husband, or your friends, even your doctor, to ask why you’re here, what would they tell me?”

  Sela buried her face in her hands. “I didn’t want to disappoint them,” she cried, her voice muffled. “I didn’t tell them I changed my mind.” She lifted her head. “But I did, I swear. I swear on my child’s life.”

  “So you lied to the people who know you, but are telling the truth now, to people you’ve just met?” Walt stood from the table, his chair rattling backward across the tile.

  “You didn’t want to disappoint them,” Caroline ventured, her voice smaller than she’d known it could be, “because they know your life might depend on me?”

  Sela didn’t answer.

  Walt’s gaze met Caroline’s and held it firm. Everyone was pleading with her these days. Forgive me. Let it go. Look the other way.

  She might be able to do that with her parents and the self-serving terms of their truce. With Keaton and his crestfallen assertion that bygones could be only that.

  But with this?

  “She’s not asking,” Walt repeated, all traces of sarcasm replaced with the desperate hope of convincing himself.

  It was too late now. In his rage, in his haste, he’d gone and put the question on the table for her.

  No one had the power to take it back.

  20

  Sela

  Oscar was walking Sela, rather than the other way around. She didn’t discourage him from pulling her, stroller and all, down the sidewalk; he seemed to sense she could use the help. Autumn had followed her home from Ohio: Ahead, Main Street cut enticingly through town to a vanishing point in mounds of bright foliage, and the morning was cool enough that pedestrians sported knitted hats and scarves. Not Sela, though—beneath her jacket, her skin itched with sweat. As Oscar dragged them past the solemn concrete slab of the county’s war memorial—eleven dead in Vietnam, one missing in action—she looked longingly at the low stone wall fronting its manicured lawn. But she could tell from the eager bounce in the dog’s step that he’d spotted Aesthetic on the corner two blocks ahead, so she bore down, trying to catch her breath, conceding they were too close to stop and rest.

  She was not old enough for two little blocks to seem so far.

  At last, she secured Oscar’s leash to the bike rack outside—the one Ecca ordered the day she learned Sela’s college roommate was on the cycling team—and doubled over, ostensibly to help Brody climb out of his stroller.

  “Mama tired?” He eyed her ragged gasps with concern.

  “Mama tired,” she agreed.

  Even dodging the incessant calls from Leigh and Doug was exhausting. On the upside, she hadn’t had to break it to them that she had no intention of asking for Caroline’s help. The question was out there all right. On the downside, they were bafflingly undiscouraged when she told them it had gone over horribly, maybe even ruined the sisterhood as soon as it began.

  Give her time, they said. It’s a lot to take in, they said. She’ll come around, they said.

  Sela didn’t care about that. She wanted only to reclaim the things she and Caroline had discovered between them in that dive bar booth. The surprisingly easy laughter, the comforting sense of starting from a place of acceptance, understanding. Things she hadn’t had for too long. Things she hadn’t known she was missing until they were dangled within her grasp, then yanked away.

  As soon as she got home, she sat down at the keyboard, wanting to explain, repent, retract, for all the good it did. She spoke her heart and hit send, trying not to trip over the way Walt had sneered: one of your emails.

  A week of silence from her sister, and counting.

  Almost as worrisome: a week of her flare-up of symptoms refusing to ease.

  “Good boy,” she whispered to Oscar, scratching behind his ears. He wasn’t even panting, but his tail wagged at her to hurry up. Ivy still kept Ecca’s biscuit bin stocked for him inside, and he wouldn’t let her forget it.

  The mountain air smelled damp, though the day was dry, and as she took Brody’s hand and pushed open the heavy antique door, a familiar combination of warmer smells greeted her: herbal tea, fired clay, and the kind of dreamy ambition people belt out songs about on Broadway. Its melody sounded in the chimes dangling where a door knocker might have been.

  “You made it!” To Ivy’s credit, she didn’t drop her smile—or leap in alarm from her stool behind the register—as her eyes passed over Sela’s face to her heaving disappoin
tment of a body. “I meant that as a figure of speech, but you look like it might be worth celebrating.”

  “Water?” Sela managed.

  Ivy slid to her feet. “How’s your blood sugar? We might have muffins too.”

  That was all Brody needed to hear. He clapped his hands and ran after Ivy into the back room, and Sela felt a guilty pang that she didn’t bring him here more. She talked to him, of course, about the grandmother he couldn’t remember, but maybe here he’d feel connected to her in a deeper way. It was Sela who needed to ration her visits to Aesthetic like sweets.

  She pulled Ivy’s brochure order from her quilted messenger bag as she looked around the showroom. The gleaming hardwood and exposed brick were the same as ever, but the turnover of inventory displayed on the walls, pedestals, and shelves was impressive. When you’re lucky enough to find a town that puts its money where its mouth is, Ecca used to say, you stay put. Sela had always taken this as equal parts compliment to Brevard and referendum on the cookie-cutter world beyond, but now it seemed more like life advice. Which was why Sela kept the co-op as clients, though the work made her ache with longing for their missing partner.

  “Here we go.” Ivy reappeared with a mason jar of ice water in one hand, a napkin-wrapped muffin in the other, and Sela accepted them gratefully, though the muffin was a bit of a cheat. How many ounces in a mason jar? She took a long, slow sip, closing her eyes as the cold liquid soothed her throat. She heard Brody run by her and opened them to see him climbing onto the club chair next to the About the Artists table, half-eaten muffin in hand and crumbs across his chin, to flip open one of the picture books Ivy kept there to occupy young visitors.

  Beside him, a table talker caught her attention—the only part of the display she had not designed. You Could Make a Difference, it read. A group picture showed the co-op artists gathered around Sela in their art fair booth, captioned by lots of fine print—the sob story, no doubt—and, larger, a toll-free number for interested donors.

  Just when her breathing had started to stabilize.

  Ivy followed her gaze. “What do you think?” she asked, as if unveiling some great surprise. “Worth a shot, huh?”

  Ivy—who’d known her mother’s feelings on Sela’s father as well as anyone—did not know about the possibility of Caroline. Sela had been too afraid of what she might say—first that she’d question her judgment and then that she’d encourage her too eagerly. Sela had come today relieved she wouldn’t have to deflect more questions about her sister and her kidneys, and yet …

  “I thought I did all your advertising.” Her voice came out in a croak.

  “You do.” Ivy gestured at the poster. “Look at your pretty face, advertising away.”

  “Ivy, I—” Sela stopped. She wanted to say that though this had been done with her in mind, it made her feel the opposite—not worth consulting to speak for herself. But Sela had seen how hard it was for Ivy to move on at Aesthetic without Ecca, whom she’d spent nearly every day here with for twenty-five years. Whom she still wanted to do right by, enough to overpay Sela and forgive late work and put up a damn sign soliciting help.

  “Did Ecca ever talk to you about her friends from back in Cincinnati? A Hannah, maybe?”

  Sela hadn’t realized she was gearing up to ask the question, but of course she had been. That her mother had been friends with Caroline’s was the only true surprise from Sela’s trip north. And now that she was home … she had to at least ask.

  If Ivy was put off by the change of topic, she didn’t let on. “Once,” she said slowly. “But only because she was sauced. You know personal history pre-Brevard was off-limits with her.”

  Sela raised an eyebrow. She did know. Just as she knew Ecca wasn’t much of a drinker.

  “Sauced, huh?”

  “It was an emotional time. You’d graduated college, moved in with Doug.… She didn’t let on to you, of course, but letting go is never easy for a mom.”

  Sela’s gut twisted. She thought of the way Ecca had often stopped by with little gifts in those early months. Tea towels embroidered with tiny poppies. Handmade soaps that smelled of eucalyptus and sea salt. A stamped metal umbrella stand. Always with a genuine smile, never staying longer than a cup of tea. So respectful of Sela’s space, and Doug’s, too, but so present at the same time. Hardly a typical empty nester, and Sela hadn’t gone far.

  Then again, Ivy’s generalization was true. What’s more, had Ecca shown any hesitation, Sela would have tuned in to it, maybe even followed suit. Ecca had always been careful of that.

  “Do you remember what she said?”

  “Oh, sappy stuff. Ever get so drunk you end up crying that you love someone?”

  “I don’t need to be drunk for that.” Sela meant it in a light, self-deprecating way, but Ivy’s face fell, and she regretted it instantly.

  “Aw, kid.” Ivy looked nothing like Ecca—didn’t even look like an artist, really, more of a 1950s housewife type, complete with apron and poodle-cut hair—but she sounded like her then, evoking the deep, growly sorrow that had marked Ecca’s last year on earth, thanks to Sela.

  “How did Hannah come up?” she prodded, desperate not to lose the thread.

  Ivy swiped at the air. “Who knows? I was pretty sauced too—friends don’t let friends drink alone.”

  Sela laughed encouragingly. Come on, remember something. Anything. “But you remember the name.”

  “Yeah. Well, once the floodgates broke, she went on and on. That I was her best friend since Hannah, she’d never do anything to hurt me, et cetera. Would’ve been sweet if she hadn’t been so worked up. I had to put her to bed.”

  Sela frowned. “That was it? The only time she mentioned her, ever?”

  “The only time, ever.” Ivy’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Did you hear from this person?”

  “No, no,” Sela said truthfully. “Just missing Ecca. Wishing she was still here to ask about—well, everything.”

  Ivy softened. “Me too, kid. Believe me.”

  “Do you ever think maybe we should have tried harder? To—I don’t know. Get her to open up about that part of her life?”

  “I do not. And neither should you. Your mother and I agreed dwelling on the past is overrated. What matters is finding ways to cope with the present.” She cocked her head pointedly at the You Could Make a Difference sign, and Sela flushed.

  “I don’t mean to be ungrateful. I’m just uncomfortable trying to talk people into this.”

  “You’re not the one doing it,” Ivy said, eyebrows disappearing into her bangs the way they did when she got fired up. “We are. And we have zero qualms. This is your life we’re talking about. We don’t need to be convinced of what it’s worth.”

  The Aesthetic collective skewed older and did not boast healthy lifestyle choices. A few—Ivy included—had gotten compatibility tested all the same, and a handful of others went out of their way to explain to Sela why they weren’t candidates, which was just as touching. The rest she didn’t blame for liking their kidneys right where they were.

  Ivy always spoke with such conviction. Sela wished she could feel that sure of anything, let alone herself.

  “Let’s talk about what these are worth,” she said, flipping open the box of brochures on the counter. “Everything look okay? Like you expected?”

  Ivy didn’t look. “Would you tell us, Sela, if it got to be too much, to keep working?”

  Too much. They all phrased their misdirected worries this way. How could they so easily assume that Brody might be too much, or that work might be too much, and yet refuse to consider that donation might be too much to ask?

  “If you’re worried about Rebecca’s life insurance payout running low, we have ideas. Auctions, benefits…”

  “I’m fine,” Sela said. Ivy looked down at the brochures but didn’t smile. Didn’t reach for them. “Unless—you’re unhappy with these?”

  “They are perfectly serviceable,” Ivy said, the words coming fast—a telltale sign she
was about to get blunt. “But they don’t have your spark.”

  Sela slid the jar of water she’d been holding onto the counter next to her untouched muffin. She wasn’t offended. She was worried.

  “They don’t need spark,” Ivy went on. “It’s a standard trifold. I’m only mentioning it because you do. You are spark, honey, always have been. I don’t want to see you without it.”

  On that much, at least, Sela could agree.

  * * *

  Ecca’s old desktop computer booted up with a groan. The thing was antiquated long before Sela had brought it here and stowed it away in the cupboard beneath the stairs, with every intention of tossing it once she was sure all her mother’s paperwork was accounted for. Ecca was always the last to update her technology—she’d still been using an old flip phone when she died—but when Sela hit the power button, the machine miraculously obeyed.

  She waited until the slow grinding of the hard drive stopped before opening the old email client. She didn’t have much faith the in-box would load, but then there it was, greeting her with a screen full of unopened newsletters and notifications. All dated after Ecca’s death.

  She found the search toolbar and typed Fred Shively.

  No results. She hadn’t expected any—just wanted to make sure. Then:

  Hannah Shively.

  She should have known, even without hearing Ivy’s story that didn’t sit quite right.

  Or, maybe, she should have left well enough alone.

  Either way, there they were: four results. One correspondence thread in a folder marked Saved and three unsent replies in Drafts.

  Before she could think too hard about privacy violations and what she might learn and whether she really wanted to, she opened the saved thread, checking the time stamp. It was dated more than a decade ago. For the first time ever, she was glad Ecca had been such a Luddite.

  Dear R:

  I can’t even bring myself to type your name, but here we are. Every year, you write to tell me you’ll do anything, whatever it takes. And every year, I don’t reply, because there’s never been anything you could do that would help set things right between us. Until now.