A Million Reasons Why

by Jessica Strawser

  “It’s been radio silence between you for, what, three weeks?” Sela nodded numbly. Leigh was actually jumping up and down now. “Quick! Before it goes to voice mail!”

  Doug thrust it toward her urgently. She’d been so eager to hear back from her sister at first, but with each day it seemed easier to avoid Caroline, even without an audience. What could she do, though, but take it?

  “Hello?” She turned away from her guests, as if that might afford her some privacy. Like Brody, the way he’d cover his eyes and assume no one could see him.

  “Sela? I’m glad you answered. I was worried—I mean, I’m so, so sorry to be just now getting ahold of you.” Caroline sounded out of breath, as if perhaps she’d had to run and hide to make the call. After the way their visit had ended, it was feasible that she had. “I’ve been thinking about, well, everything, and— Shoot, I didn’t even ask. Is this a bad time?”

  “Well, I—” She glanced over her shoulder at Leigh and Doug, who made no effort to do anything but stare at her expectantly. “A few friends are here. It’s Brody’s birthday.” The two exchanged an unreadable look.

  “Oh! I wish I’d known. Happy Birthday to Brody! And his mama.”

  “Thanks.” She walked back down the hall toward the front door, away from the scrutiny.

  “I won’t keep you, then. It’s just that—I’ve been feeling awful about the way we left things. The way you left.”

  “Please, don’t apologize.”

  “I need to. Walt was incredibly harsh, and even then you sent that gracious email, and I just … needed time to process everything. But it was wrong to leave you hanging.”

  “It’s okay. It was all…” What was the word? “Understandable.”

  “I want you to know Walt didn’t speak for me. I’m not the kind of person who’d rule out any way I could help or at least support you without taking the time to learn more.”

  And I’m not the kind of person who’d discover our mothers conspired against you—us—and have an easy time keeping it to myself. Even if I’m sure it’s the right thing to do.

  “I appreciate that.” Sela kept her voice low enough that she hoped they couldn’t hear her in the kitchen. “But my email was not just backpedaling, blowing smoke. You really don’t need to give this a second thought.”

  “I’ve been giving everything second thoughts lately. Don’t get a big head.”

  Sela laughed in spite of herself.

  “This might sound crazy, but I’m running a trade show down in Pigeon Forge next week, only a couple hours from you. The company used to be based here in Ohio, but they kept us on, and—well, anyway. Any chance you’d be willing to come up for a night or two, where we can talk away from everyone else? As director I get a suite at the host hotel—we can share it. There’s a lounge where you can work while I’m on the floor, and dinner would be on me.”

  “That’s a nice invite, but really not necessary.”

  “If Walt hadn’t blown up at you that way, would you feel differently about coming?” The breathless rush that had begun the call was back, only now Caroline sounded on the verge of tears.

  Sela didn’t know how to answer.

  “He was just being protective of his family,” she said finally. “But I don’t want to complicate things for you any more than I already have.” Sela didn’t mean just Walt.

  “This isn’t about things,” Caroline protested. “I still want us to know each other better. That hasn’t changed. Unless … you’ve decided you don’t?”

  “Of course not.” In truth, she had no real reason not to go. She could work anywhere, and Doug never balked at taking Brody. Weekdays were tougher, but his new neighbor was a retired teacher who loved to babysit. “I suppose I might be able to swing a day or two. If you’re sure my being there wouldn’t complicate your job?”

  “It would vastly improve my job. This is an easy show, and my coworkers would thank you for occupying me after hours, so they can run amuck on the moonshine distilleries.”

  “No fair.” Sela found herself smiling. “Where are we supposed to run amuck?”

  When the call was over, she sneaked a look into the kitchen. Leigh and Doug were murmuring to each other, while behind them the kids tried to ride ever-patient Oscar like a pony.

  They’d be all over this. Strap the unicorn horn on the front of her car, soap KIDNEY OR BUST across her windows, and accept nothing less. Her gut twisted around the precarious hope of a second chance with her sister. Was there any harm in letting them presume whatever they wanted about her intentions with Caroline? All they’d need to know was that it didn’t work out, one way or another, eventually. Why mar Brody’s birthday with an argument?

  He looked up from Oscar then, met her eyes, grinned. This was his day. She’d carried on the tradition of the banner, hanging it in his room so he’d wake and see it first thing: Happy Brody Day. A day that had, historically, not held the happiness it should have. Too much of his life had already been about her—fear, disappointment, work-arounds. The kid deserved a day. They could talk about this later.

  Two years down, how many to go? Without finding a living donor on her own, how long would the wait be? How to make the years ahead more bearable—for Brody, for her, for Leigh, Doug, and anyone else unlucky enough to be stuck with a Sela tie?

  Maybe the answer was waiting in a Pigeon Forge hotel. Just not the way anyone else thought.

  She opened her arms, and Brody came running.

  25

  Caroline

  She took what was left of that fat bottle straight over to Mo’s, was what she did. Mo took one look at her and shook her head.

  “If you had wine left over from the family thing, you’re doing it wrong.”

  “What else is new?” Caroline grumbled.

  She’d walked out as soon as they were home from her in-laws’, leaving Walt to put the kids to bed, not asking permission.

  There were plenty of things, if you thought about it, that she didn’t need permission for.

  “Bunch of overthinkers,” Mo proclaimed, once Caroline had finished recapping the day’s frustrations.

  “Are they?” Not a rhetorical question. They were thinkers, sure. But this was serious.

  “Not just them, honey.” Mo drained her glass and breezed off the couch and over to the dry bar. By the sounds of things, the boys were playing a raucous game of basketball in the bedroom directly overhead, but she remained admirably impervious to the noise. She held two bottles of Pinot Noir in the air and Caroline pointed to the one with a horse galloping across the label. Oh, to be free that way, wind in her hair, discussing anything but this. Mo plunked it between them on the coffee table and started on the corkscrew.

  “It’s been how long since the first shoe dropped here? Bombshell email numero uno?”

  Caroline counted back the weeks, surprised by how many. “Over two months,” she admitted.

  “So, you’ve all had time to get used to the idea, but no one wants to. Let a third party lend some clarity then, okay?” Mo didn’t wait for an answer. “I know you and Fred are all about breaking down the data. And the question of the kidney stuff—it is heavy. But no one needs to answer that right now. In the meantime, you don’t need to dissect why you want to know your sister. It’s because she’s your sister. Or why you’re so hurt to find out what your mom did. It’s because she’s your mom. Or why you’re so angry to have lost the chance at Brevard, and Keaton. It’s because you loved them.”

  Caroline couldn’t help noticing the last point was the only one in past tense, and she hoped it belonged there. She didn’t like the way Keaton and Sela were all twisted together in her brain now. Didn’t like that she still thought of her last minutes with Keaton and wished for the impossible: a chance to set things right. She couldn’t keep squandering the ones she still had.

  Mo filled her glass and placed it firmly in Caroline’s hand. “Stop trying to justify how you feel. Just go ahead and feel it.”

  Caroli
ne called Sela, right then.

  She had every intention of telling Walt, right away, of the plans they’d made. The house was quiet by the time she got home, the kids asleep. But she hadn’t been the only one keying up to talk. He started in as if no time had passed since they’d left the birthday party.

  “You see now,” he told her, his face garish in the glow of the muted TV. “Right or wrong, like it or not, donation isn’t the kind of thing anyone should pursue without the full support of their family. And your mom and dad—they’re light-years away from coming around to any of this.”

  “There’s more to our family than that,” Caroline tried, biting her tongue on the premature word pursue. “The kids care for Sela. You see that now. If they knew who she really was, they’d be happy.”

  “Happy to have a cool aunt, maybe. Not happy their mom would entertain the idea of putting her life on the line for her.” Mo wasn’t always right about Walt—there was too much she didn’t know, had never known, about them. But she was right about this: Time wasn’t having much effect on his initial reaction to this whole thing. “Besides,” he went on, “even if you wanted to go rogue and tell them, this situation is beyond their understanding. Hell, it’s beyond mine.”

  “Maybe we’re overthinking it.”

  His eyes flared. “There’s too much at risk. Everything from your health to how well we can get through a family dinner. I can’t be objective here.”

  Maybe it was too much to ask of him. But it was also too much to ask of her to drop it. He was verging on overstepping, and they had rules against that. If Walt knowing about her arrangements to see Sela again was going to make things harder, well, then he didn’t have to know.

  She could justify flying under the radar, so long as they were both bending rules. So long as she didn’t let anything happen in Pigeon Forge that she couldn’t take back. She wouldn’t reveal to Sela that she’d gotten as far as calling to ask about getting tested. She’d just spend a day or two, see how it went. If Caroline decided against getting more involved—with any of it—she’d have saved Walt the trouble of arguing moot points. And if she didn’t?

  She’d once been so sure there was no problem they couldn’t talk out.

  She hoped that, least and most of all, was still true.

  * * *

  “Mind some company?”

  Walt, impossibly young then—God, they both were—dropped into the lounger next to Caroline without waiting for a response, and her eyes shifted in his direction. The last of the sunset was fading into stars, but she hadn’t bothered to remove her sunglasses. She watched as the dark shapes of his legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles, mirroring her own, then tipped her head back again, staring up through the lingering heat of the summer night.

  Here, at the level-two end of the trilevel deck, she and her cocktail were blissfully out of splash range of the pool below and, equally important, away from the drunken foot traffic going in and out of the house above. It was hardly fair to keep the spot to herself.

  Cries of “Marco” and “Polo” punctuated squeals of laughter from the lagoon-style in-ground pool. The game in progress was a “couples edition,” girlfriends clinging to the guys’ backs, which only served to highlight how many couples were at this party. Aside from Walt and Caroline, the only other person not paired off was Maureen, who was coupled off with the house itself. She was house-sitting for her still-new boyfriend (and, few suspected, one-day husband), Seth, who’d taken his kids to Michigan for the week and who, more to the point, was a decade older and exponentially more flush. Most everyone in attendance—a loose crew of twenty-somethings, old high school and college friends that had grown to include friends of friends—resided in apartments, condos, or at best “starter homes.” Out here at the edge of the suburbs, Seth’s half of his pending divorce settlement was ripe for the kind of house party none of them could throw unless someone’s overly charitable parents went out of town.

  Caroline had no idea whether Seth had sanctioned this shindig. She also had no idea why his estranged wife had not wanted to stake claim to this McMansion, especially in sharing custody of the kids. All night, she’d entertained visions of the woman driving up, stomping in, demanding, Who the hell are you people? with that last-straw expression women wear when they already guess their fool husband is responsible.

  Still, she knew Maureen and Seth’s relationship wasn’t as midlife-crisis-y as it might appear from the current state of his bikini-clad, margarita-wielding belle. They gave the impression of the kind of unlikely combination that was better than either of its parts, and Caroline couldn’t bring herself to caution Mo about getting involved with him so soon. Her own judgment was hardly on a winning streak anyway.

  Come to think of it, maybe she did understand why Seth’s ex didn’t want this house. Caroline had had to find a whole new set of haunts in Keaton’s wake.

  “No date tonight?” she asked Walt, lest he think her unfriendly. Silence suited her fine; she hadn’t minded sitting alone, to Maureen’s chagrin. It was nothing personal that Caroline didn’t enjoy these invites out, but … well, she didn’t enjoy much anymore.

  “Is that so shocking?” She checked his tone: not flirting, only asking.

  “Yeah.” He always had a date—though rarely the same one. That was probably why they hadn’t talked before. “I couldn’t help but notice how interested you are in dating.”

  “I couldn’t help but notice how uninterested you are in dating.”

  Touché. “I’ve sworn off love.”

  Even to her own ears, it sounded run-of-the-mill. A melodramatic postbreakup proclamation at which people would smile with knowing-better politeness, humoring her while confident she’d recant after time had healed her burns.

  “Let me rephrase,” she said before he could patronize her. For some reason, the idea of it coming from a player like Walt was especially off-putting. If he turned on the charm, suggested he might be the one to change her mind, she’d feel minimized. But if he didn’t, that might say more about her than it did about him. Not in a good way. “I’ve been reevaluating my ideas about love. Trying to figure out what I’d really want it to look like. And the thing is, I’m not sure that version of ‘love’ exists in real life.”

  “It doesn’t,” he said, throwing her. She hadn’t explained what that version was, much less expected him to agree. Walt was a gregarious enough guy, not the biggest catch at any gathering, but a good one who was frequently caught. She turned to see if he was serious and found his face scrunched in thought, as if she’d asked him to elaborate. “We all expect too much.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true.” She knew plenty of people who were infatuated with less-than-deserving mates. She found it tough to watch classic films—men courting women, dressing up for them, learning to dance for them—and not lament how low expectations had sunk. These days, if the guy called more or less when he said he would, and invited you to perch cutely on his couch while he and his friends watched the game, and didn’t cheat on you as far as anyone could tell? That was supposed to be a catch.

  And even then, if you had the audacity to expect not a ring or an income bracket but simply a kept promise? That was “too much,” too.

  “Isn’t it?” Walt pulled the paper umbrella from his margarita and discarded it on the arm of his chaise. “By today’s standards, our spouse is supposed to be not only both friend and lover, but our best friend. Not merely our love, but our soul mate. Someone who will become our family, but remain less annoying than our family. A true partner we can count on by day, and a sexy mystery date by night—because we can’t let reliable turn into boring. No, we want someone who will be even more appealing fifty years from now than the day we met.”

  Huh. She’d been coming at it a different way, but—he wasn’t wrong. He tipped his glass toward her—cheers!—and drank deeply.

  “I guess I’ve been thinking of it with more of a too-many-eggs-in-one-basket feeling,” she a
dmitted. “Like, okay, that didn’t work out, and there goes not just my boyfriend, but my best friend. And all the comfort that goes with it—but like you said, the excitement too. Aside from how crummy it feels to lose all that, there’s also everyone looking at me, like, Shit, what’s she going to do now?”

  “I should probably pretend I haven’t heard anything about this, but you were planning a lot of things around the guy, right? Where you’d live, what job you’d get?”

  She nodded, nearly a year past caring about the gossip. “Yeah. And this might sound bitter, but I’m not sure I want to even pursue that kind of love again, where everything is so tightly hitched to someone else. It’s a lot to trust somebody with.”

  “It’s a lot to put on somebody.”

  Hard not to feel defensive at that. Still. “I guess we both have a point.”

  She tried to call up specifics of the women she’d seen with Walt. She’d chatted up a few—in line for the bathroom, on the same team of a silly party game. A medical resident, a preschool teacher, a law student. Not arm candy, not typecast. Engaging, intelligent, funny women.

  “Doesn’t seem to stop you from trying,” she observed.

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?” He shook his head. “Look, it’s not like I’ve got this all figured out. I like and respect women too much to stay away from them. And I like and respect them too much to get too close.”

  “So you’re like, what, an overly self-aware player?”

  “And you’re like, what, an overly philosophical cynic?”

  They scowled at each other. “It’s not like marriage was better before people started wanting more from it,” she muttered. Admittedly this did dampen the charm of those black-and-white films. The courtship had better be lovely if the man was going to convince the woman to spend the rest of her life making him pot roasts in high heels and not bothering him too much about raising the children.

  There had to be a middle ground. Caroline didn’t want to be a cynic. And look at her own parents, after all these years. They weren’t exactly lovey-dovey, but they had something good going. Something content. Fred still brought Hannah flowers, and Hannah fussed over his health and happiness as if it were her own. Because it was. She’d never seen in either of them a trace of restlessness or regret. They’d never given her a reason to look for one.