A Million Reasons Why

by Jessica Strawser

  She sunk into the plush back of the chair. Sela had been a lot of things to a lot of people: More than they bargained for. More than they could handle. More than their heart could hold. For Walt, she’d been a wake-up call. He’d looked at Sela today, truly seeing her at last, and his anger and fear had faded to empathy—and everything on the other side of it.

  “I love you, Caroline. I love you in spite of our stupid plan that love didn’t have to be part of the equation. I love you enough to want to do better at everything if that’s what you need. I love you in ways I never intended. You can’t tell me you seriously don’t know that by now.”

  It was a strange world they’d created together, where falling in love with your wife meant breaking the rules. Yet she looked at him and saw how ridiculous it was that she needed to hear him say it in order to believe.

  What kind of woman would be upset when her husband confesses that he’s grown to love her more with time, a climb so steady they never stopped to notice the heights they’d reached, even as couples all around them lost hold, tumbling to their demise?

  The same kind of woman who’d agree to marry a man she didn’t love in the first place.

  This was her chance, to not say it back. To use his breach of contract as an excuse for that do-over she’d caught herself stubbornly wishing for—with Keaton, maybe, or just with herself, alone at the wheel, calling the shots. Calling off her marriage didn’t have to be as impossible as it seemed, even with the kids. Plenty of other people did and ended up far worse off than she and Walt could ever be. Sela and Doug, for instance.

  Or, she could see this for what it was: a gift. The chance to choose each other all over again. Or, rather, for the first time, knowing all there was to know.

  In a too-luxurious room for a too-depressing night, hundreds of miles from home, in the very place where she might have lived a parallel life quite comfortably, she realized: She wasn’t here with Walt just because of the irreversible decisions that had been made for her.

  It was because she loved him, too.

  She loved him in a way she might have loved Keaton. In a way she was fairly sure she could have loved Keaton. But it was Walt who held her heart now.

  Couldn’t she relate to what Sela had been doing? Wasn’t she guilty of the same? When she’d had to relearn who her parents were and what that meant for her, she’d dreamed up an alternate reality with Keaton. The one she’d been denied, against her will. She’d looked back at the marriage she’d arranged in its place and romanticized what she might have had instead. Romance, for one. But she already had it.

  How about that.

  There was no reason to be angry anymore. At Mom, Dad, Keaton, Walt, or even Sela. All she wanted was to pull them close, forgive them, and forget, impossible as it seemed.

  Impossible as she knew it was.

  “I seriously do,” she said.

  Caroline couldn’t say which of them moved first, only that suddenly they were in his chair together, given over to tears, arms around each other in a way she didn’t want to end.

  Later, they would find it in them to cut the bread. To sip the wine. To go back over the more unbelievable moments of this day. Entwined across their chairs, some part of them—their ankles, their fingers, her head in the crook of his arm—they’d debate, with abandon: Was it right for the system to deprioritize treatment for someone like Sela? Even if Caroline did want to help circumnavigate things, would a kidney be enough to save her troubled sister? What if she never recovered—and not just physically? What if Caroline’s sacrifice was for nothing?

  They asked questions no one could answer.

  They voiced things they had to say but would never repeat.

  When they’d exhausted the thread, they climbed into bed, lights out, and lay awake.

  “You know how you said that you look at Doug and think you don’t know how he could leave her?” Caroline ventured. “Even after … everything?” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know if I can leave her either.”

  “I know.” Walt took her hand across the sheets: a promise that he would not ask her to.

  * * *

  It wasn’t Sela who preoccupied Caroline’s thoughts on the way home. Nor was it Walt, though the new understanding between them filled the cabin of the car with a heat, a protective shield of sorts that brought an unexpected comfort. They hadn’t stayed for brunch; hadn’t lingered for the claw-foot tub. There’d been no question that they wouldn’t return to Sela’s now, but neither was there a question that they’d revisit the subject in the future.

  They would.

  When Sela was ready.

  Not before.

  Too many people had forced too many expectations upon poor Sela, and Caroline would not pile on. Nor would she repeat the mistake of staying away. She didn’t know what had happened after they’d left Sela in Janie’s capable hands last night, only that Janie and Leigh had promised to keep Caroline posted—now and from now on. She was thankful to have other ways to check on Sela now, a scrappy little team in her sister’s corner.

  Better still, with a clearer head today, she thought she might know someone who could help.

  She left a message for Janie. And then her mind obeyed, for once, when she asked it to sit back and wait. It was easier now that she wasn’t trapped in these thoughts alone.

  For now, she and Walt had decided not to decide. When the time was right, they’d face it together, with a renewed commitment not only to each other but to all the things they had to be grateful for, in a world where fortune was distributed without regard to what was fair.

  As they pointed the car north, then, it was no self-defensive trick that Sela was not the one filling her thoughts.

  They belonged to the people she most wanted to get home to.

  The people she’d awoken feeling desperately, ravenously hungry to hold.

  Riley. Lucy. Owen. If she didn’t have them …

  If she woke up tomorrow and they were gone …

  “Please can’t I come?” Riley had begged when they left, wanting so badly to see Sela and her studio and her wisp of a wish of a son. Who could blame Riley for not understanding but why not? Caroline hadn’t been free to explain. Riley didn’t give up easily on anything she set her mind to—not on footwork on the field, not on letters on a canvas, and certainly not on people. She kept at things even when no one was watching to applaud her for it. You didn’t have to be one of her younger siblings to look up to her.

  And Lucy, she’d seemed to sense there was more to Sela than some vague past connection with her mom. There was, if hope was good for anything, a future connection with them all. Lucy’s very essence was a reminder that there was more to life than light and dark. There was twilight, sparkle. That’s what Sela’s advice had helped her keep hold of. Even knowing what she did now, Caroline wouldn’t take her sister’s “superpower” words back or even disclaim them. As Sela had said, they worked.

  Which left Owen, always trying to catch up, fueled by sheer innocence and energy. Caroline’s deepest ache was to get back to her baby. She loved the way he stood out in any preschool crowd: Raised among such spirited sisters, you could spot him by his free will to play however he wanted, whatever he wanted, without regard to what was tough or cool. With a mom like Sela, Brody might have had that same magic; Caroline mourned that they’d never know.

  Sela’s was the kind of heartbreak anyone could imagine. But only a mother could know: that it was the absolute worst thing.

  The thing you might never come back from.

  The thing you might never want to, even if you could.

  I want my mother, Sela had sobbed when they left, as Janie soothed her.

  Some losses could be truly understood only by those who’d experienced what it was like to be responsible for the beating of a tiny heart—a heart that belonged to someone else but would never not also be yours. Some defeats were so thoroughly devastating, they could be shared only inside the kind of bond that could be neithe
r replicated nor replaced.

  But Sela had lost both sides of that, in such a short time. Maybe if she still had a mother to turn to …

  Caroline would forgive her own. Outright. Her dad, too.

  Somewhere between Ohio and North Carolina, she already had.

  Janie rang her back. Caroline distracted herself with follow-up for a while, then laid her head on Walt’s shoulder as he drove. Six yearning-filled hours later, he went alone to pick up the kids. Much as she wanted to see them, there was someone she needed first.

  By the time she got up the front walk, Mom was waiting at the door. As if she’d been expecting her, tuned to those moments when her daughter could be nowhere but here.

  “Caroline? Is everything—” She stopped short as she took Caroline in. Puffy face, no doubt. Drawn but determined. Lost and found at the same time.

  “I need to talk to you,” Caroline said simply. Then she was crying—ugly, full-throttle tears. Mom stepped back onto the rug, just as she had that morning everything changed, when Caroline found her here, fraught and furious in her nightgown.

  But this time, she opened her arms.

  Caroline stepped in.

  “Okay,” Mom whispered, crying now too. “Okay. We’ll talk as much as you want. We’ll talk it to death: Keaton, Walt, whatever you need. We’ll talk you into hating me and then out of it again. We’ll talk until I can convince you how sorry I am. Truly sorry.”

  If she’d repented this way from the start, where might they have ended up? This wasn’t about that anymore.

  But Mom wasn’t going to stop now that she’d opened the floodgates. “I knew I was wrong, and I never meant … I just couldn’t bear—” She shuddered with sobs. “I’ve messed everything up for you, haven’t I?”

  Caroline hugged her tighter, thinking what an odd thing it was for the roles to reverse, to offer comfort to the person she’d always sought it from.

  Of course, a child did not have to grow into an adult to comfort her mother in the most essential ways.

  “It’s not that, Mom.” She took a deep, shaky breath and pulled back to look her straight in the eyes. “It’s Sela.”

  40

  Sela

  There was a difference between someone running scared and simply recognizing when it was time to back away. To breathe, take a break, afford space. Sela knew she had every reason to worry she might never see Caroline and Walt again.

  But she didn’t. In part because she was too frayed to expend the energy. In part because she understood they couldn’t stay right then. And in part because Janie could.

  Janie did.

  I’ll make some calls, Janie had said to Leigh. I’ll keep you updated, she’d promised Caroline. I’ll take tonight, she’d told Doug. But to Sela, Janie simply said, I’ll keep you company until we have a plan. And then, with no mention of whether she’d had somewhere else to be for her Friday night or the whole of Saturday, she sank onto the couch and started browsing video apps, looking for a series neither of them had watched yet.

  It was a little odd not resenting her presence. Sela wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t understand exactly why Janie would not leave her. She might have exploded, I’m not going to hurt myself, okay? I’m just bereft. Just let me be bereft. But instead, she agreed to a time-travel fantasy and managed to binge half the first season before drifting into exhaustion on the couch. Hours later, she awoke to find Janie still there, in the filtered sunlight. Awake-all-night caffeinated, smiling like it was no big thing.

  Twenty-four hours in, calls had indeed been made. Caroline to Janie, clearing the idea. Caroline to a psychologist she’d met—a leap of blind faith. The psychologist, in turn, to Janie, trading questions. Then, Janie to Caroline: Okay, worth a shot. Rounds of muffled back-and-forth behind closed doors. Sela might have minded this, too, in an I’m right here sort of way—but she had the good sense to be grateful enough to keep mum. And so, the good nurse set her up in front of the webcam, secured the connection, and—the Sela baton securely passed—left to pick up dinner.

  This call would determine what happened next. The big stuff, like whether she could keep her position on the list. And the little stuff, like whether Janie could go home and sleep.

  No pressure.

  She stared into the webcam, pulled the heated blanket around her lap, and nodded that she was ready to begin.

  * * *

  “Well, that gives me what I need to complete this initial evaluation.”

  At the other end of the video call, Dr. Kay Adams took off her reading glasses and set down her pen.

  It could have gone a lot worse, Sela had to admit. Agreeing to things she knew to be true was easy enough. Even if they didn’t feel true.

  She didn’t confuse the two, most of the time.

  “Here’s the deal,” Dr. Kay said. She preferred not to be called Dr. Adams—the Morticia jokes and finger snaps get old fast, she’d explained. “Starting next week, I’m going to be in pretty rough shape. But I’ll also have nothing but time on my hands. So, we’ll aim for three video sessions a week, an hour each, but bear with me if I need to change a time based on what I feel up to. I’ll also need your go-ahead for me to check in with Janie weekly—I won’t violate your confidentiality as far as what’s said in therapy, but I will check her own assessments against mine, since she’s physically there, to be sure there isn’t a vast gap between our impressions.”

  “What about when your recovery is over and you have real patients again?”

  “Make no mistake, you will be a real patient. This might be off the insurance grid, and pro bono, and God I hate the term unorthodox. But the work you and I will be doing together will be necessary and real. As long as I feel you’re making a sincere, honest effort, Janie and I will both keep this under wraps.”

  Her face burned at the phrasing: a sincere, honest effort. Perhaps Dr. Kay had already seen through her, right to the escape hatch she’d failed to mention on her closet shelf.

  Plenty of sick people kept one, though, just in case. It was even legal in some states. That was not the unique thing about Sela. So maybe it went without saying. Plus, she hadn’t lied when she said she wasn’t having thoughts of using it. She hardly could when good people were putting themselves at risk for her, right now. Dr. Kay included.

  “Can I ask why you’d do this for me? I mean—couldn’t you lose your license or something?” She’d tried to ask the same of Janie. It was the only time she’d seen the nurse look angry with her, so she didn’t press for an answer when none came.

  Dr. Kay’s eyes remained clear, sharp. “Thinking of turning me in?”

  “Of course not. I just don’t want to see anyone else in a bad spot because of me.”

  “So I hear.” The doctor raised an eyebrow, undeterred. Might whoever was receiving her kidney next week get some of this clever efficiency? She seemed so no-nonsense, so sure.

  “First, I believe there are more gray areas in life than many people—including those in my profession—prefer to acknowledge. Especially where the minds of highly creative people are concerned. Also pertaining here, I believe tragedy can shade us in the deepest grays for a while, whereas some of my colleagues see that darkness as more in the realm of black.”

  “So, you feel like you should, because you think you can?”

  “Well, I hope I can. Your sister hopes I can. Nurse Janie hopes I can. I’d like to know if you hope I can.”

  Sela wasn’t sure how to answer.

  “You know, when Caroline called to ask if I might be willing to talk with you, she said I’d made some wrong assumptions about your relationship, the first time I met her. I felt bad at first, that I’d gone on about my own outreach to this stranger when it wasn’t much different for you two—but you know, I don’t think you’re strangers after all. I don’t need to see you together to see the connection. I hope you see it too.”

  “I see that I’ve complicated things for her in ways I wish I hadn’t.”

  “
Well, you can’t help that you’re her half sister, just like you can’t help being your mother’s daughter or your son’s mother or your ex’s ex. You’re also you, full stop. We can’t define ourselves solely by our relationships.”

  Sela could not remember the last time she’d come to any kind of full stop.

  “Deal or no deal?” Dr. Kay tilted her head, pleasantly unsmiling.

  Sela heard the rustling of paper carryout bags downstairs, signaling Janie’s return. She was suddenly ravenous, aware of how long it had been since she’d enjoyed a meal.

  Too long.

  She nodded into the webcam. “Deal.”

  41

  Caroline

  “I saw. The way Fred and Rebecca looked at each other. Of course I saw.” Mom sniffed hard, dabbing a balled-up tissue at her puffy cheeks, though they were dry now. She’d cried herself out long before she’d taken her turn to talk. “Honestly, everyone had to have seen. But for me—she was like a sister, the only person I’d let really know me, and let myself really know, until I met Fred. And he was … Well, he was all I wanted.”

  Her eyes searched Caroline’s, but they were no longer pleading with her to understand. Only looking for some sign that one day she might.

  “When she left, as if that might redeem her … I want to describe it as grief, but that’s not right. Grieving someone I love, I take comfort in hearing their name still come up in conversation, and in sharing favorite memories. With Rebecca, I heard things, but tried my damnedest not to. If she came up, I changed the subject. If she wrote me, I tore it up unread. I gathered every postcard and note she’d ever sent me, every photo I could find with her in it, and threw them in a gas station dumpster. If I could have bleached her from my mind, I would have. But what I really wanted was to erase her from Fred’s.”

  It seemed even Rebecca’s death hadn’t eased the searing pain of her betrayal. The decades since had left their imprint on Mom—the good days evident in her laugh lines, the bad nights shadowy in her creases. But when Caroline looked into that weary face, she could still see a young newlywed and expectant mother named Hannah determined to hold on to everything that had been promised her. Determined to avoid a household broken like the one she’d grown up in—not just for herself but for her daughter.