Twenty-Two

twenty-two

My parents drive me to the small hotel on the island without saying a word, periodically looking at me in the rearview mirror. I try to hold their gazes—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—but every time I do, they look away.

Nobody’s spoken by the time we park the car. I follow them meekly, feeling more like a kid than ever, not only because I’m in eighty-six kinds of trouble, but because I’m entirely dependent on them. I left with nothing but my camera and my keychain. I don’t even have my phone.

My mom starts microwaving hot water the minute we get into the hotel. I’ve never had more than a few sips, and as far as I know, neither has she, but the tea ritual has become a defining thing of sorts. If it’s a problem, we figure it out. If it’s a Problem, Mom makes tea.

After that we all sit, them on the couch, and me on the wheelie chair by the desk. I fidget, and they are ramrod still, only moving to look at each other in some silent conversation.

“We didn’t want you to find out like this,” I finally say. “We only wanted to—I don’t know. Figure out what happened, I guess.”

“You couldn’t have just asked?” says my dad.

I bunch up the loose fabric of my shorts between my fingers. I should tell them the truth: I knew even then that we were digging up something too big for the world above it. That I didn’t want to give them the chance to lie.

And how it hurt, knowing they kept this from me. That if sixteen years passed, they were probably planning on keeping it from me my whole life.

“I’m asking now,” I say instead. The words take a lot of courage to put into the air, and I don’t even realize until I breathe out and my bones feel spent by it. “What happened?”

My mom clutches her tea but doesn’t drink it, holding it to her face and closing her eyes briefly.

“You know your father and I got married young.”

I nod. I have a feeling it’s going to be a lot of nodding from here on out.

“Well—what you don’t know is why.”

“Because of Savvy?”

My mom shakes her head. “Because … your father … well—we didn’t know if he had a lot of time left.”

I let out a laugh, a genuine one followed up by a quiet, uncertain one. Neither of my parents laugh, their faces solemn and drawn. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them this serious. They look like zombie versions of themselves.

“When I was twenty, I got a really bad case of pneumonia,” my dad tells me. “It, uh—well, the long and short of it is, I had an undiagnosed heart defect. The pneumonia triggered it. And it really did a number on me. I was in and out of the hospital for a few years.”

My mom reaches out suddenly and grabs his hand. I watch them both squeeze—my dad first, and then my mom. I wonder how many times I’ve watched them do that. I wonder why this is the first time it’s made me understand just how much they say to each other when they’re not saying anything at all.

“They even had him on the donor list for a while,” says my mom. “Things got pretty bad, and we—we were in love, and we just … we got married. We didn’t think there was much of a future, so we wanted to do as much as we could with what time we thought he had left.”

My throat is thick. I can’t imagine a world where my mom exists without my dad, or my dad without her. It’s strange to think there was even a time when they hadn’t met.

“Even having a baby?”

“The baby—Savannah,” my mom corrects herself. She says it the way you say a word you’ve read in a book a hundred times but never said out loud. “That was an accident.”

“We were in over our heads,” says my dad. “We were married, but we weren’t ready for … at least not under the circumstances.”

“He was so sick,” says my mom, “and we were so young, and we were—we were already trying to plan what life would look like without him. I didn’t—the idea of—of being in a world without him … I thought I was too young to handle it on my own. I know I was.”

You don’t have to explain,I want to say—but it’s not that. I need her to explain, and I think she needs to explain. But she doesn’t have to justify it. She’s my mom. Even before I knew the circumstances, I understood she’d made an impossible choice.

“So we decided to give her up for adoption,” says my dad. “And then…”

“You got better.”

He nods. My mom’s grip around his hand tightens, the two of them pressed so close to each other that they look like a force. I’m starting to understand it now. That unnerving level of calm in the face of every Abby-made or little-brother-related catastrophe that’s come our way. They’ve already faced much worse than what we could throw at them, and come out the other side.

“Right before Savannah was born, they put him on an experimental treatment plan, and it was like it never happened. It still is. He hasn’t had any issues since.”

My dad sees the question poised in my eyes but misinterprets it. “And as far as we know, neither will you or your brothers. We got all of you tested.”

“But Savvy?”

“Does she have…?” My mom’s hand goes to her heart, her face paler than it was before.

“No,” I say quickly, wishing I’d realized wording it like that would scare them. “I meant—when you gave her up. You know her parents.”

“We were friends,” says my dad carefully.

It’s clear neither of them are going to elaborate. “So … what the hell happened?”

My mom folds in on herself. She’s always been small—more Savvy-size than I am—but right now she looks like she could sink into the couch cushions and disappear. “It’s complicated.”

“And the part where you kept a secret sister from me for sixteen years isn’t?”

“Hey,” my dad warns me.

“It’s okay, Tom,” says my mom.

I wave in their direction, a gesture of surrender that comes off a little awkward because I’ve never really had to make one before. Even I’m surprised at myself for challenging them. It isn’t easy, but it’s not as hard as I thought it would be either. Like I’ve been saving up all these little moments over the last year where I could have, would have, should have said something, and something so big that I can’t ignore it has finally pushed me over the edge.

“I already know the rest of it,” I say. “Why can’t you tell me?”

“Because…” My mom shakes her head.

“And—and what about me? I mean, how do I fit into this?” I ask, before I lose my nerve. I’m shaking. “I mean—you gave her up and had me a year and a half later. Were you, like—super accident-prone, or—”

“Honey, no,” says my mom.

“It’s okay,” I say, and I mean it. “I mean, I always kind of figured I was, and I know it doesn’t mean you guys love me any—”

“Honey, you weren’t an accident, you were—”

My mom cuts herself off, because in her haste to reassure me, she’s given something away.

I feel weak, like I’ve climbed up something too tall and don’t know if I have it in me to get back down. “The whole thing … it doesn’t make sense.”

“I know,” says my mom, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I know.”

I can feel my window to ask shutting. They’re going to find some way to close this, to seal it tight. I try another tactic. “If you can’t tell me now—will you ever?”

They glance at each other, and this time it isn’t a mystery. Neither knows what to tell me.

“Because—because I’m going to have to know someday. Savvy’s a part of my life,” I tell them, and only then do I feel like I might be losing what ridiculously small amount of control I have over the situation. Only then do I realize that this isn’t just about what they lost—I have something to lose, too. “We’re friends. What we did was shitty, and I’m sorry about that, but I’m not sorry about the part where we found each other, because—”

I have to stop, because my mom’s crying again. She puts her face in her hands, shaking her head like she didn’t mean for me to stop. But she breathes in and it comes back out in this big, gasping sob, a noise I’ve never heard her make before, and it clamps my mouth shut so fast that the rest of the words die halfway up my throat.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m…”

My dad pulls his hand from hers so he can put an arm around her shoulders, steadying her. I don’t move, stunned by this unexpected power I have over them, by how quickly it broke them. I don’t want it. I just want to understand. I don’t want all the pain that comes with it.

But the understanding and pain are woven together, tighter than a knot, and together make something so immovable that it doesn’t matter what I mean and what I don’t. It’s all going to end with me yanking on something that can’t be undone.

“We’re going to turn in for the night,” says my dad, helping my mom to her feet. “There’s a deli, just outside, and cash in your mom’s purse—”

“Wait,” I say, leaping to my feet. “I know that … this is a lot. But if you could let me stay—”

“Abby,” my dad starts.

“—because I’m actually making progress. I really am! I got a 720 on a math practice exam two days ago. A 720! Me!”

They’re not even hearing me. I feel like I’m in an alternate dimension. I don’t know what else I can say, how else to make it stick.

“And I’m making friends, and … and I’ve taken so many photographs. Beautiful ones.”

My dad glances at me. I have his attention, but not enough to hold it. The next words are some of the most nerve-wracking I’ve ever said in my life, but I’m desperate.

“Let me show you.”

My dad stops at this, and we stare at each other, trying to figure out which of us is more surprised. I’ve never shown them more than one rare photo at a time before. They’ve only ever had good things to say, but they’re my parents and obligated to say nice things. If anything, it only makes me more self-conscious.

This, on the other hand, might fling my sense of self straight into the sun.

“Send them to us. We want to see them,” he says, and though his voice is grim, and his face ashen, I can tell how much he means it. That he knows how much it means to me. “We do. But Abby?”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

“I … I don’t want you to get your hopes up. It’s not anything to do with you, or the summer school thing. It’s bigger than that, okay?”

The word tastes like metal on my tongue, but there’s nothing else to say.

“Okay.”