I just looked at him and realized we didn’t see the world the same way anymore.
Absorbing the despondent look in Doug’s eyes now, Caroline grasped the depth to which this was true.
Sela saw the world with Brody in it.
Doug saw it the way it actually was.
A piercing grief seized her, right at her core—for the little boy who had never become a little boy, for the mother who’d so clearly loved her child as fiercely as Caroline loved her own. Caroline hadn’t needed to meet Brody for him to be real to her. The realization was like the release of a valve, and the air rushed out of her, taking with it her ability to speak.
But not Walt’s.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he breathed, “this woman made up a child? Trying to make herself—what, more sympathetic? More worthy of what she wanted Caroline to give?”
His initial rage at Sela, and all the suspicions Caroline had talked him out of, had reset. What kind of mother, he’d soon explode, would use her dead baby for leverage?
It was too cruel to say and too cruel to be true. Caroline knew it instantly. Sela was not that kind of mother.
She’d spoken of Brody with a love concentrated enough to make your teeth hurt. Helped Caroline’s own children through things Caroline herself could not. In one short visit with her nieces and nephew, she’d encouraged their passions, eased their fears. Sela was a good mother. An enamored one.
A heartbroken one.
Leigh lifted her wet face from her hands to lock her steely eyes on Walt’s. “No. It’s not like that.”
“She’s a liar,” Walt shot back.
“Not exactly,” Doug said. But he nodded, as if this opinion was understandable.
“Back up,” Caroline told Walt, finding her voice at last. “You jumped to this last time—”
“This time it’s true.”
“Sela isn’t a liar,” Leigh said. “She’s sick. Sicker than you know.”
Walt ignored her. “Hell, I’m starting to think last time it was true. She—”
“Please,” Leigh cut him off. “This is part of the reason I brought you here. To have this out with us and not with her. Hear us out. Get the full story.”
Caroline implored her husband with a look, and he held up his hands in surrender. She took the one that had been holding hers and clutched it between her own. He’d wanted to come, to do this together, so that’s what they’d do. No more dividing.
“Why don’t you start at the very beginning,” Caroline said.
“I wish you really could,” Leigh said automatically, as if she’d been waiting to get past the requisite present and back to the good times. “I wish you could have known her then.”
It was the strangest thing. The woman Leigh and Doug painted a picture of wasn’t the same shape or color as the one who’d written those long emails to Caroline, crossed state lines to meet her, begged forgiveness, and then run away. But Caroline could recognize the underpainting: the tone and intent and heart beneath the surface.
“Sela was so much fun,” Doug said, his eyes far away. “There was no such thing as boring when she was around—not even a lazy kind of boring day, the kind you don’t mind. She put her own twist on things you wouldn’t even think could be another way.” He turned to Leigh. “Remember how everything she made had a special name? Even just, like, grilled cheese?”
Leigh smiled—and though her sadness shone through, so did her affection. Looking at the two, anyone could have guessed correctly which had stayed and which had not been able to bear it. “If you were in her circle,” she said, “you were treated to this whole little world of extra touches. A signature drink because it was Wednesday. A handmade card on your windshield at the end of a rough workday. A dinner ‘reservation’ that turned out to be a barefoot picnic.” A clandestine outing to a neighboring resort’s rooftop spa.
“I was completely taken with her,” Doug said, almost as though he regretted it. “Done for. She could be exhausting to keep up with—but in that irresistibly lovable way you can’t get mad at. Like a kid.”
Impossible to hear that and not jump to what a good mom she’d have been. But no one said it.
“She’s still about as fun as anyone in her shoes would be,” Leigh pointed out. “As loyal, too. If anyone says anything bad about someone she loves, you’ll never catch her giving in and admitting maybe her mom was too involved in her life, or maybe I am a lousy hostess, or maybe Doug shouldn’t have left.” He looked at his lap, clearly ashamed, though his reasons were starting to look more justifiable than Caroline could have imagined. “You know it’s true,” Leigh told him. “In a lot of ways, she’s the same. It’s us who can’t cope well enough to just let her be.”
Caroline couldn’t help thinking of the night Walt had drawn that unlikely comparison between Sela and her father. An impression that she must have really been something to see in her day, he’d said. Kind of a strange vibe to get from a younger person.
“When she was diagnosed, I thought she should end the pregnancy,” Doug said. “I’m not sure she ever forgave me that, even after … everything. The risks were high, though, and I thought maybe if we could manage her symptoms first, we could try again later, with precautions in place. But she wouldn’t hear of it. She was furious at the suggestion.”
His hands balled into fists. “It’s not like I didn’t want a family as badly as she did. By the time we got pregnant, it was all we talked about. I was on board, even with some risk—there’s always a little risk, right? But this…” He shrugged. “Once I saw how adamant she was, I found the point impossible to argue, and it seemed unhealthy to pile on additional stress by fighting about it. Maybe if I’d insisted…”
“There’s no reason to think there would’ve been a better outcome,” Leigh said, as much to Caroline as to him. “There was no guarantee that her illness would worsen the way it did, or that he’d be born so early, but the probabilities were there.”
Caroline cleared her throat. She didn’t want to make them relive it, but she had to know how much truth there was in Sela’s delusions or exaggerations or—whatever they were. Had Brody been born alive? Had they thought for a time he’d pull through?
“What exactly happened?” Walt asked for her. An apology and a question rolled into one.
Leigh looked to Doug, but he didn’t speak.
“She did tell me Brody was born premature.” Caroline’s voice trembled. “I’m trying to remember now if I assumed he was okay, or if she implied it.…”
“He was never going to be okay,” Doug said. “But he hung on. Long enough to make you hope, in spite of what they said.…” Tears came to his eyes, and he blinked them away. “It was torture. Watching him. Watching her watch him.”
“I came only once, and the way she looked at me—” Leigh shook her head. “I was coming up on my due date, and felt like I was rubbing her face in it, even in trying to be there for her. I still do.” She gestured at her baby bump, more pronounced now that she was seated.
“When Brody finally passed,” Doug said, “Sela was still in bad shape herself. They were trying new meds to stabilize her blood pressure and other things, and she had to stay in the hospital.”
“I’ve said this to her, but I don’t know how anyone gets through that,” Leigh said. “As a mother—incomprehensible agony.” Caroline had heard stories of women who’d lost a baby in the delivery room, or the NICU, and then had to be wheeled out of the hospital alongside parents holding healthy newborns. The only thing worse she could think of was staying there, being tended to in some other wing, when you were supposed to be in the maternity ward.
When you were supposed to be headed home.
“The first couple times she referred to Brody like he was still with her, I ignored it,” Doug said. “I literally couldn’t—how could I—I was grieving too.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t just losing Brody. They told us she could never sustain a pregnancy again. To give up the idea and focus on getting her
well. They said if she could regain her quality of life, we could explore other options then.”
Caroline had wondered before what Doug was like. But never had she imagined him so full of raw emotion.
“I didn’t want to kid myself that way,” he continued. “Didn’t want her to either, if I’m honest. It seemed far-fetched that anyone would approve an adoption for someone chronically ill. They might not call it terminal, but one way or the other…” He shrugged. “It was a huge disappointment, but I thought we’d be better off trying to accept it. To consider it a victory if we could live a relatively normal life for as long as possible, even if just the two of us.”
“She didn’t go for that, I take it.” Caroline already knew the answer.
“Ha. Yeah. She was personally affronted by my efforts to accept it. At the same time, she kept pointing out that this was happening to her, not me. That I could still go off and have a family with someone else—not an option that had entered my mind. I loved Sela. This was the hand we’d been dealt: not her, us.” He looked to Leigh, presumably for confirmation that he wasn’t the deadbeat their visitors must have assumed, but she was lost in thought. His eyes pleaded with Caroline for understanding. “But sustaining that alone was … Even if you took her inner life or whatever you want to call it with Brody out of the equation, it wasn’t sustainable. She looked at me like she wondered what I was still doing there. Frankly, she still does.”
Sela had taken that tone with Caroline on the phone. After literally writing her off in Tennessee. Caroline had dismissed it as something she could hop in the car and resolve, but now she was unsure.
Unsure whether it was possible. Unsure whether she still wanted to try.
“I’m trying to comprehend exactly what this inner life you mention consists of,” Walt said—slower now, more careful. “She was—what? Talking to an imaginary friend?”
Doug and Leigh shook their heads in unison. Caroline wondered when they’d first started conferring behind Sela’s back. You could tell it was uncomfortable for both of them even now.
“It’s hard to explain,” Doug said. “She’d say or do some little, subtle thing, and all of a sudden you could tell where her mind was.”
“She never forced the idea of Brody on anyone,” Leigh said. “She kept him to herself. It was more like she’d slip up. I could never decide if she knew he wasn’t real but sometimes got carried away pretending, or if the reality she constructed had tight borders. Either way … Rebecca thought it best if we all sort of went along with it.” Her frown deepened.
“She called me unimaginative,” Doug said, his years-old disbelief still as palpable as if he were arguing the point to his late mother-in-law’s face. “I honestly wondered if she was losing it too. She and Sela were so close it was understandable she’d get defensive, but this went beyond protecting her daughter.” He again turned to Leigh for backup, and this time she gave it.
“It was almost like she was weirdly proud of Sela for creating a coping mechanism. Like, whatever works.”
“You actually played along?” Walt was incredulous. “Acting like Brody was alive?”
“We never did that,” Leigh said quickly. “Rebecca was adamant that we not challenge Sela, though. So we—gave her space.”
A chill passed over Caroline as she remembered that late-night conversation she’d overheard in Lucy’s bedroom.
My mother used to tell me that my imagination was my superpower.… 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.
Lucy had asked, with every ounce of her innocence: Who?
Sela’s response had made so much sense. Whoever you’d most like to have with you.
They’d given her space, Doug said.
It sounded innocent enough.
But what they’d done equated to leaving her alone with only Brody for company. With only Brody for comfort.
“If you felt like her mother was letting her go off the deep end,” Walt said, “or going over with her, why didn’t you try to get her help?”
Doug and Leigh exchanged a look. “The specialists did coax her to a few postnatal therapy sessions, plus some counseling for us as a couple,” he began. “But it didn’t last long enough for me to realize the extent of … things. She was unreceptive, just sat there, and eventually refused to go back.”
“That’s it?” Caroline frowned. “I’ve noticed you’re not exactly the unpushy type.”
“That’s not it,” Leigh said. “But once a certain amount of time passed, we couldn’t make too big a deal. Because of the points system—” Her voice broke on the last word, and Doug touched her shoulder. She jerked away, and he looked chastened, cleared his throat.
“Where Rebecca had us,” he explained, “was with the transplant list. Once we understood how it works, and that Sela might end up on it—” He shook his head. “Generally, the youngest and healthiest get priority. But a mental health flag?”
“My God,” Caroline whispered.
Doug looked up at the ceiling, as if some new, even worse revelation might fall on him.
“What are you supposed to do,” Leigh asked through fresh tears, “when trying to help someone get better in one way means hurting their chances of getting better overall?”
“Would they really knock her down the list that far?” Walt’s face crinkled. “I mean, given what she’s been through … Maybe if she completed therapy, she’d earn the points back.”
“Every transplant center makes its own guidelines, and I’ve never had an opportunity to get ours clarified, for obvious reasons,” Doug said. “But my understanding is … even one point could cost her. Maybe her life. We didn’t want to be responsible for that.”
“Have you ever known American health care to be sympathetic? To do anything but look for excuses not to cover something?” Leigh fished a tissue from her pocket and wiped at her cheeks. “I was so scared to say or do the wrong thing, to make things worse, I didn’t trust myself to be around her. It was too devastating. But leaving her to Rebecca … That turned out to be a short-term solution.”
“I couldn’t take it,” Doug said. “I couldn’t stay. Then Rebecca died, and I thought maybe, maybe I could go back and be there for Sela. Maybe with her enabler gone…” He trailed off.
“She was still—?” Caroline didn’t know how to finish the thought either. What exactly was it Sela had been doing? Imagining? Acting? Dreaming while she was awake?
“She did seem better. But I couldn’t tell for certain where her head was. And not knowing wasn’t good enough.”
He closed his eyes for a long moment, and when he opened them, Caroline knew somehow what he was about to say—and wished he wouldn’t.
This must be how Sela felt.
“The other day, she gave me a scare again, but I talked myself out of it, told myself I was blowing things out of proportion, it was just a lapse. She’d had a bad string of days—physically, mentally. Especially since Tennessee…” He wasn’t thoughtless enough to finish. “She’s been avoiding me, and frankly I took that as a good sign. When she’s feeling the best is when she has the least tolerance for me.” His attempt at levity fell flat.
“Sela is not a liar,” Leigh said again. “The only person she’s manipulated is herself. As far as I can tell, Brody has been a living, breathing part of her reality since long before she even considered looking for you. And honestly, she never felt comfortable reaching out to you. Doug and I practically forced her to.”
Caroline waited for Walt to interject—a sarcastic Thanks a lot, perhaps—but he kept quiet.
“It’s only since she found you that I’ve had that bad feeling again,” Doug said. “Either she’d gotten good at hiding it but doesn’t have the energy anymore, or it really did go away but now…”
“She’s worse,” Caroline finished. It was what Leigh had been trying to tell them, on Sela’s front walk. It was why Leigh had
brought her here.
If only any of them could have seen the look on Sela’s face that Cincinnati afternoon on the stairs of their mothers’ old high school. Caroline had posed the question she thought more wry than astute:
Did you know that before they used the clinical term depression, they used to diagnose people with nostalgia?
Sela hadn’t looked interested or amused at the insight. She’d looked grateful. She’d looked seen.
Did it work? Lucy had asked Sela later that night. What your mom said to do?
Sela hadn’t hesitated: Like a charm. She’d been glad even then for the peace of mind her strategy had managed to buy. Even at a price steeper than anyone should have to pay.
Walt slid his hand up Caroline’s back. Even through her shirt, it felt clammy.
The hand of a terrified man.
“I think we should hold off,” he began, “on going to see Sela until we’ve had a chance to wrap our minds around this. Maybe in the morning—”
But Caroline was already shaking her head. She faced Walt full on, trying to push down her own fear. To focus, first, on this.
“We can’t. What if she saw us?”
“I’m pretty sure she did.” Leigh’s voice sliced the air between them. “The blinds moved when we pulled away.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Caroline felt woozy. What must Sela think?
“I had to talk to you first.” The knife edge of Leigh’s voice had gone dull. “Find out what was what. And … let you know.”
Caroline turned back to Walt. She wanted nothing more than to let him take her home. Even a hotel was too close to all of this.
But she couldn’t.
“We have to go to her, Walt. We won’t stay. We’ll book a room for the night. But we need to hear her side, see how she is.”
Leigh frowned. “I had to really work to get her to let me in earlier.”
Doug held up his hand, revealing a key.
“If Sela finds a donor on her own,” Caroline said quietly, “she doesn’t need the list. It wouldn’t matter how many points she had. Or had deducted.”
No one dared answer. They all knew it was true, but also what it meant.
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