“What do we need to do?” Charlie asks.
“It’s pretty simple,” the doctor says. “She’ll need to take an iron supplement, and eat more meat and eggs, if possible. She’ll also want to do the same with B12. We’ll get you a printout on the best sources for those, though I assume she’ll remember from last time.”
Last time.
This has already happened. I didn’t just miss it once, but twice.
“She’ll possibly have to deal with nausea, but having more, smaller meals throughout the day should help. I’d like to see her next week, to make sure she’s doing better, and then after that, she’ll need to have regular checkups with her doctor until delivery.”
That’s manageable. It’s fixable. List-able.
“Thank you.” I shake his hand. “Thank you so much.”
“My pleasure.” He smiles, a remarkably warm, patient smile. “Just give her time to rest. The nurse will let you know when you can see her.”
As soon as he’s gone, I feel exhausted, like a thousand-pound weight just lifted off me, but only after hours of carrying it.
“You okay?”
When I look at Charlie, he’s blurry; my vision is distorted.
“Breathe, Nora.” He grips my shoulders, taking an exaggerated inhale. I match it. We stay in sync for a few breaths until the pressure releases. “She’s okay.”
I nod, let him pull me into his chest, wrapping me up tight against him.
I try to tell him I’m just relieved, but there’s no room for words— for logic, reason, arguments. My body’s decided what to do, and it’s this: nothing, in Charlie’s arms.
He buries his mouth against my temple. I close my eyes, letting the waves of relief crash over me.
Gradually, they draw back, and I’m left floating, drifting in a current of Charlie: his faintly spiced scent, the heat of his skin, the fine wool of his light sweater.
A picture of my apartment flickers across my mind. The yellowy-red streetlights catching raindrops on my windowpane, the sound of cars slushing past, the radiator hissing against my socked feet. The smell of old books and crisp new ones, and the cologne whose cedarwood and amber notes are meant to conjure up the image of sun-soaked libraries. The creak of old floorboards, the shuffle of footsteps, half-drunken singing as revelers make their way home from the tequila bar across the street, stopping for dollar slices of pizza dripping with oil.
I can almost believe I’m there. In my home, where it’s safe enough to relax, to undo the brackets of steel in my spine and slip out of my harsh outline to—settle.
“You’re not useless, Charlie,” I whisper against his steady heartbeat. “You’re . . .”
His hand is still in my hair. “Organized?”
I smile into his chest. “Something like that,” I say. “It’ll come to me.”
At the creak of Libby’s door, my eyes open.
The nurse smiles. “Your sister’s ready for you.”
28
LIBBY PERCHES ON the bed, already changed back into her purple polka-dotted sundress and looking thoroughly chastened.
A meek smile tugs at her lips. “Hi.”
“Hi.” I close the door and go to sit beside her.
After a moment, she says, “Are you okay?”
I balk. “Libby, I’m not the one who passed out and nearly cracked her skull on an old-timey cash register.”
Her teeth sink into her lip. “You’re mad.” She wrings her hands in her lap. “That I didn’t tell you this happened before.”
“I’m . . . confused.”
Her eyes dart furtively toward mine. “I’m confused why you didn’t tell me you had a chance at an editing job.”
“It was years ago,” I say. “On the bottom rung, and the pay was shit. It wasn’t all about you. There were a lot of reasons to stay at the agency.”
She looks at me with watery sapphire eyes, a wrinkle between her brows. “You should’ve told me.”
“I should have,” I agree quietly. “And you should’ve told me about all this.”
Libby heaves a sigh. “No one knew except Brendan. And he wanted me to tell you, but I knew it would freak you out. And it’s super common. I mean, my doctor was pretty sure everything would be fine. I didn’t want to burden you.”
I reach for her hand. “Libby, you’re not a burden. You’re it. You come first.” I add lightly, “Even before my career. And my Peloton.”
Huffing, she pulls her hand from mine. “Do you know what kind of guilt that comes with, Sissy? Knowing you’ll drop everything to manage my life? That you’d give up on your dream job to — to mother me? It makes me feel . . . incapable.”
“I just want to be there for you,” I reason.
“I shouldn’t always come first, Nora,” she says softly. “And neither should your clients.”
“Fine,” I say. “From now on my bagel guy comes first, but you’re a close second.”
“I’m being serious. Mom expected too much from you.”
“What does Mom have to do with this?” I say.
“Everything.” Before I can argue, Libby continues, “I’m not saying I blame her — she was in an impossible situation and she did a fairly amazing job with us. But that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes, she forgot whose job it was to take care of us.”
“Lib, what are—”
“You’re not my dad,” she says.
“Since when has that been on the table?”
She huffs again, grabbing my hands. “She treated you like her partner, Nora. She treated you like you were — like it was your job to take care of me. And I let you, after she died, but you’re still doing it. And it’s too much. For both of us.”
“That’s not true,” I say.
“It is,” she replies. “I have my own daughters now, and let me fucking tell you, Nora, there are days I get into the shower and sob into a loofah because I’m so overwhelmed, and maybe keeping it hidden from them isn’t the answer either, but I can’t imagine putting my worries on Tala or Bea like Mom did to us. Especially you.
“She had it really hard, but she was our only parent, and there were times she forgot that. There were times she treated you like you were an adult.”
An icy pang lances through me. Guilt or hurt or run-of-the-mill homesickness for Mom, or all of it braided into one icicle right through my heart, burning like only cold can.
Like the most precious thing — the only precious thing — in my life has frozen over so deeply that there are spiderwebs of ice veining through me.
“I wanted to help,” I say. “I wanted to take care of you.”
“I know.” She lifts my hands between hers, holding them against her heart. “You always do, and I love you for that. But I don’t want you to be Mom — and I definitely don’t want you to be my dad. When I tell you something’s going on, sometimes I just want you to be my sister and say, That sucks. Instead of trying to fix it.”
The distance between us. The trip, the list, the secrets. I’ve seen all of these as little challenges to overcome, or maybe tests to prove I can be the sister Libby wants, but Charlie is right. All she really wants is a sister. Nothing more, nothing less.
“It’s hard for me,” I admit. “I hate feeling like I can’t protect you.”
“I know. But . . .” Her eyes close, and when they open again, she struggles to keep her voice from splintering, our hands trembling in a tightly gripped mass between us. “You can’t. And I need to know I can be okay without you.
“When we lost Mom, I was gutted, but I was never scared about how we’d get by. I knew you’d make sure we did, and — Sissy, I appreciate it more than I could ever put into words.”