Mo did not say, That looked like some intense shit I walked into with you and Keat. She did not say, Holy fuck, not fair that he looks that good. She didn’t say, Tell me everything on the way. She didn’t say much at all, other than insisting Caroline not drive herself to the hospital.
That’s how Caroline had known it was bad.
What if Dad was already gone by the time she got there? The last thing she ever said to him would have been—what?
She couldn’t remember the words but knew the emotion behind them, felt it still. Disappointment. Distrust. Disbelief. All of it, though, borne from the infinite depth of her love for the man who had raised her, shaped her. Always been there for her, so dependably and so well that she resented having to think of who else he might have failed along the way.
They drove in silence, while Caroline fumbled with her phone, shame mounting at the way she’d scoffed like a melodramatic adolescent at Mom’s incoming call. While she’d been caught up with Keat, she’d missed nine calls from Mom, three from Walt—who’d given up and texted that he’d pick up the kids from school and meet her at the hospital—and two from Mo. None from Dad, no matter how long she stared at the log, willing his name to appear. She dialed his number, just to hear his voice on the outgoing message. Tears filled her eyes.
She should have foreseen something like this. Should have known better than to have the nerve to be glad she hadn’t heard from him this week. Should have sensed the danger in her marrow, instead of focusing on the wrong worries. The selfish ones.
“Don’t worry about responding,” Mo said gently. “Hannah’s phone can’t get service in the waiting room.” On my way, Caroline texted anyway. With a silent plea: Let it not be too late.
Mo dropped her at the main entrance and went to park the car. Caroline rushed through the hospital’s maze of corridors as fast as her sling-backs could carry her, skimming the wall-mounted signs, following the shaky instructions Mo had relayed. Above her, fluorescent lights emanated the aggressive artificial glow of a bad dream.
She loathed everything about this place. The way every event that had previously brought her here had started out as routine, then escalated in spite of assurances to the contrary: Walt’s “food poisoning” that revealed itself to be appendicitis. Riley’s broken arm from an innocuous-looking sliding board tumble. Owen’s jaundice, days after discharge from maternity. She loathed the way it made her bargain with God even when the odds were in her favor, the way it smelled of antiseptic desperation, the way it hummed and beeped and vibrated, a conduit for things she’d never understand. The way it held the people she loved in its grasp and decided unilaterally whether to let them go.
Never before had she stepped inside and thought that maybe they had done something to deserve this turn. But even as she ran toward her dread, she couldn’t help wondering.
And somehow, it felt like her fault.
She rounded the corner and spotted Mom, spine straight in the middle seat of a row of empty chairs. How long had she been here alone? A torturous hour, two? A magazine lay open in her lap, but her eyes were on a muted flat-screen TV tuned to the news.
Caroline went for her, arms open. The magazine slid to the floor, and then they were hugging tight, swaying, the way they’d stood in all the most wonderful and most terrible of Caroline’s daughterly memories. They were almost exactly the same height, and Caroline could feel the neck-and-neck footrace of their hearts’ anxious pounding.
“Oh, sweetie.” Mom pulled back to look at her. “You look lovely.”
The comment was as inane under these circumstances as the reasons Caroline had put in the effort. It already seemed as though a different woman had donned this dress, dabbed foundation over her sunspots, and wielded her neglected round brush while Maureen’s voice in her head—Think of this as getting out ahead of fate—talked over the preemptive guilt playing on her conscience.
“How is he? Is he out of surgery?”
“Not yet. But, it’s just an angioplasty, not a bypass. So that’s encouraging. They said it was lucky that he wasn’t alone when it started, that I recognized the signs—we got him here fast. As of now, the doctors don’t seem terribly worried.”
Caroline swallowed hard. “Was it—was it stress that brought this on?”
“Who can say?” Mom dropped wearily back into her chair, tugging Caroline down next to her. “All the more reason to put it behind us.”
Lucky that he wasn’t alone. One week earlier, and he almost certainly would have been.
For years, Mom’s care to his health had been the picture of unconditional love, as she overhauled everything from her diet to her home in solidarity. But the many forms of her devotion—nutritionist consultations, new appliances, salable remodeling—proved useless against the real threat to his heart: a mail-in DNA test. If this attack took him now of all times, Mom would never get over it.
And for what? What had happened with Rebecca was an actual lifetime ago. And Sela had yet to express any interest in Dad anyway. Besides, if Caroline hadn’t logged in to his account, these bombshells would have gone off differently. Less dramatically.
“Mom, I’m so sorry. That you couldn’t reach me. That I…” Tears flooded out her voice, and then Mom’s arms were around her again, pulling her close.
“None of that. It’s okay. You’re here now.” She seemed calm, reassured, though Caroline was not. Wouldn’t be, until she saw Dad with her own eyes.
If he pulled through … No, when … Her parents’ love—for each other, for her, for her children, and even for Walt—that was what should matter, carry with it the implicit gift of forgiveness. Life was too fickle for anything less.
“It’s not okay,” Caroline said, sniffling. “Last time you and I talked, I was—”
“Let’s forget it, sweetie. Dad is our only concern right now, which is as it should be.”
She nodded numbly. As it should be.
She closed her eyes against the image of Mom seated across the table from the first man Caroline had ever truly loved, pouring fuel on his insecurities, carefully, casually derailing their future together. The same woman had called 911 today, saved Dad’s life. For better or worse, Hannah was never afraid to do what she thought was necessary, thought was best.
It wasn’t such a bad trait when she turned out to be right.
“You have to hand it to the guy,” Walt said. “He knows how to time a brush with fatality.”
He and Caroline watched from the hallway outside Dad’s hospital room while Owen, Lucy, and Riley pushed every button on his bed—reclining the top, elevating the bottom, cranking the TV volume, and accidentally calling the nurse three times. Under threat of losing their evening screen time, they now knew which button not to push again, which freed their Gramps to direct them in folding him into a pretzel.
“A little higher at the top … Now at the bottom … There! Perfectly comfortable!” The kids burst into giggles.
He’d been here for three days. With any luck, he’d be headed home tomorrow. Caroline and her crew were taking this shift while Mom was off filling his new prescriptions and stocking the fridge with what few of his favorite foods he was still allowed to have.
She tried to smile at Walt, though his comment had been only half in jest. “If you’re going to have a heart attack, might as well double as a perspective check,” she agreed.
That’s what Keaton had called his own hospital stay. I was one of the lucky few, he’d said. Nowhere near a disaster, he’d said. Then again, he’d confessed to feeling lucky he’d run into Hannah that night, too.
“Is it working?” Walt put an arm around her shoulders. “I mean, for your parents, obviously. But for you?”
Mom had gone so far as to express gratitude that this happened in a treatable way. “Now that he’s out of the woods, I mean,” she’d rushed to add. “Obviously his other medications weren’t doing the trick, so hopefully the stents will.” In those moments, Caroline tried hard to see Mom as glad, not smug. Grateful for the right reasons, not relieved for the wrong ones. Embracing his new start rather than getting her way.
Now, Caroline braced her free hand against the painted cinder block of the wall. The sturdiest thing, by far, in the hallway where she and Walt stood.
“All week, I’ve been telling myself this trumps everything else,” she said, not taking her eyes off the kids and their Gramps. “And it does. I mean, look at them.”
Walt knew what everything else referred to. The first night here, after she’d finally been able to squeeze Dad’s hand and reach between his IV lines for tentative, tearful hugs—him taking one look at Caroline and croaking, Sorry to scare you, kiddo, her instinctively brushing him off, Don’t be daffy, and meaning it—they’d given her parents some time alone. Mo, the day’s hands-down hero, took the kids to her house, and Caroline and Walt headed to the cafeteria. Over grilled cheese and coffee, he asked about her talk with Keaton, and she told him.
Not the way it felt, but what was said.
He knew her well enough, for better or worse, to deduce the rest.
Which was why he was asking this now.
“But?” he prodded.
She turned away from the window, away from him, to stare blankly across the hallway. “But,” she said slowly, “now that the initial panic has died down, I’m realizing that trumping everything else is not the same as erasing everything else. I can be glad my parents are okay and together and here, and still be hurt that Mom sold me out. I can accept that it’s useless to rehash what either of them did again, and still need time to get used to the things I learned.”
Useless was putting it kindly. They’d been warned not to stress Dad. Which conveniently meant not stressing Mom.
She risked a glance at Walt and caught a flash of worry in his eyes before they met hers. Reassurance took its place. “Of course you can,” he said. “I’m right there with you. This is a lot for anyone to take in. We can’t all be as selectively harmonious as Fred and Hannah.”
Whispering through arguments. Going years without acknowledging an infidelity aloud. Pretending an illegitimate child was just that, nothing more. Then burying it all—doctor’s orders.
Keaton had talked about not wanting anyone to feel sorry for him, back when he’d been laid up. Dad’s thinking was clearly not the same. Eager as Mom was to have him home—and earnestly as he lapped up that eagerness—he seemed to like it here fine in the meantime. Boasting to the nurses about “his girls” whenever Caroline and Hannah walked through the door. Sweet-talking his way into extra visiting hours. Riding the bed right now, like a carousel.
She nodded her agreement. “Selectively harmonious. Good one.”
“I always think I’m funny until Mo sweeps in with her Asterix army and conquers me.”
A smile twitched at her lips.
His arm slid back around her neck. “Seriously. You okay? Anything I can do?” He must have asked this ten times a day since this had happened. Draped beside her, his fingers curled helplessly around the empty air, itching to repair whatever was broken. Yet even in calling out Dad’s uncanny timing, Walt had no idea how precise it had been.
If I could do it again, Caro … Keaton didn’t get to finish. Never would. As she’d run out and left him sitting, stunned, him insisting of course she had to go, they’d both known the conversation had gone far enough that there’d be no reason to pick it back up just to add a final word. It was over. Done, in every way.
She laced her fingers between Walt’s now, stilling them. “I’m trying to be.”
He leaned over, kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry this has been so—”
The ring of her phone cut him off. She’d left the volume cranked ever since this had happened, taking no chances. She couldn’t imagine ever silencing it again. She fished into her purse and saw an unidentified number flashing on the screen. North Carolina, in big letters.
Walt averted his eyes. “Did you give Keaton your number?”
Could it really be him?
“I didn’t. Maybe Mo did? He might be worried about Dad, the way I ran out.”
“You should answer.”
She met his eyes, frozen. Only when he nodded encouragement did she lift it to her ear. “Hello?”
“Is this Caroline?”
A woman’s voice. Embarrassing, how her heart fell.
The voice didn’t wait for a response. “This is Sela.”
Oh. That unknown number in North Carolina.
“Wow. Sela, hi.” Walt’s eyes went wide. He turned back to the window, flashed a thumbs-up that the kids were still occupying their Gramps, and motioned for her to go ahead, find some privacy. “It’s so strange to hear your voice,” Caroline ventured, heading obediently down the hall toward the elevator bank. Did they sound alike? Or, rather, half-alike? Over the din of the cardiac wing, she couldn’t tell.
“It is,” Sela agreed. “Yours too, I mean. Is this a bad time?”
Comically bad. But would there ever be a good one?
“I have a few minutes. What’s up?”
Gah. That sounded juvenile. Cavalier, for a first conversation. What should she have said? How are you? Walt would have gone corny to break the ice: What can I do you for?
“Oh God.” Sela laughed. “I feel like we’ve been online dating, and this is that awkward first offline thing.”
Caroline found herself smiling. “Is that what we’ve been doing? I knew I should have used a fake headshot.”
“Didn’t you? Wow, those are really your boobs?”
They both burst out laughing. It was doubly ridiculous, between Caroline’s flat chest and the photo she’d sent: of the whole family posed in front of the fireplace for their Christmas card.
And though it was hardly the time or the place to laugh about anything, it felt good to let it out. Like a horrifying giggle she’d been suppressing at a funeral.
Sela cleared her throat. “I hope this isn’t weird,” she said. “I actually did try online dating once, and in my experience, the longer we went without talking offline, the weirder things were when we finally did.”
“You’d think it would be the opposite,” Caroline said amicably. Of course this was weird—how could it ever not be, let alone now, when steps away their father’s heartbeat was being tracked by a sea of monitors? But the window for analyzing whether she wanted to take Sela’s call had closed when she answered the phone, expecting Keat. Served her right, too.
“I know. But I found that in between emails or posts or whatever, your imagination fills in the blanks. And when you fill them in wrong, the real thing is a little disorienting.”
Caroline’s imagination had been doing a lot of filling in lately. There was kindness, too, in what Sela didn’t say: that it was Caroline’s turn to write back, and she’d left Sela hanging. That the aforementioned time between emails had been lengthened by, unbeknownst to Sela, this all-consuming family emergency. One she’d be part of if things were different. “I can see that.”
“I didn’t plan this,” Sela admitted. “I was thinking of writing you again, and then—I don’t know, I picked up the phone before I could talk myself out of it.”
How many hours, days, years, had Caroline squandered not calling Keaton, back when she still could have?
“I talk myself out of good ideas all the time.”
“Do you? Okay, so. Um. I’m in the process of talking myself out of another one.”
She sounded so tentative. Though her voice was soft, it spoke loud and clear: that the one who’d gotten lost in all of this was Sela. Sela, who didn’t have the luxury of keeping vigil with family she felt maddeningly, simultaneously grateful for and furious with. Sela, who’d gotten only half of the parenting she was entitled to and yet cheerfully called her sister up and joked about her bra size, as if everything else were water under the bridge. Sela, whom neither Caroline nor Walt had the decency to consider, even now, when a Brevard area code appeared on her phone.
“Try me,” Caroline said.
“Well. When they sent my DNA results, they left out tips for our particular scenario.”
“They were under disclaimers.” They dissolved into laughter again, the kind that goes on and on and starts up again every time you think it’s going to fade.
“See,” Sela squealed. “That’s the kind of thing you would never type in an email. Or you would, and then you’d worry the other person would take it wrong.”
“Even now, I’m grateful you didn’t take that wrong.”
“That’s just it. So what if we just—meet? Would it be too soon?”
All week, she’d been looking from her parents to Walt and the kids to her newest memories of Keaton and thinking three words, over and over: It’s too late.
Too late to do anything different.
To hold her parents accountable, go back, reverse course. Even if she wanted to.
Now, here was Sela, wanting to know if it was too soon.
Though her blinders had slid away, slowly, since receiving Sela’s very first email, Caroline truly hadn’t seen anything clearly until now.
There was one path not taken that she could still turn and follow, see where it might lead, without letting someone down, breaking a promise. One chance denied her that she could still take, better late than never.
Better soon than never.
Sela.