“You will get to know soon enough,” she assures me. “I’m calling to invite you to our engagement party tomorrow.”

  I hold the phone away from my ear to double-check that it is in fact Celine Theron I’m talking to. “Tomorrow?” I repeat into the mouthpiece. “Now, I know I’m hallucinating.”

  “Yes, we’re having a luncheon in the garden. At noon. I’ll text you the address.”

  “A ‘luncheon.’ In ‘the garden.’ Sweet Jesus, Cee, what is even happening? I don’t even know this guy’s name!”

  “His name is Ilarion,” she fills in. “And he makes me happy. Isn’t that all you really need to know?”

  All I want to do is scream, No. There’s a hell of a lot more I’m dying to know. But that road is paved with the thinnest ice imaginable. We’ve been down it, she and I, and it almost cost us our relationship. I swore I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  So even though all I want to do is tell her to run away from this, I can’t.

  Instead, I take a deep breath. “Noon. Luncheon in the garden. Got it. I’ll see you there.”

  I hang up and drop the phone onto the counter. Memories of Alec and Celine and tears, so many tears, run through my head in one jumbled mess.

  It’s only when my eyes stray to the mass of paper towels at my left elbow that I remember why I came into the bathroom in the first place. I glance over, almost as an afterthought. I’m jolted back into my body when I notice what’s in the window of the stick.

  Two thick and definitive blue lines.

  “P-pregnant,” I stutter. “Oh my god. I’m pregnant.”

  This jumbled mess just got that much bigger.

  10

  TAYLOR

  Walking back into my home is weird in a way I can’t really put into words. The creak of the third front step, the smell of must and Mom’s lavender cleaning solution seeped into the floorboards—it’s like pressing on a bruise I didn’t know I had.

  “Mom!” I call out as I let myself in. “Dad!”

  “Upstairs, honey.”

  I take the stairs two at a time and find my mother in the master bedroom. She’s lying in the armchair that faces the window, her legs kicked up on the footstool that Dad hand-carved for her on their twentieth wedding anniversary.

  “Hi, Tay,” she croons weakly, pulling her yellow shawl tighter around her shoulders as she sits up. The chair swallows her whole. She looks like a child in a fairytale who stole into the giant’s house and cozied herself up in his furniture.

  I give her a quick peck on the cheek and then I place her legs on my lap so I can sit on the footstool. When I look up again, Mom is beaming. “Celine said she already told you the wonderful news.”

  “Yeah, she did,” I reply cautiously. I want to gauge her reaction before I tread any further. “What do you think?”

  “I think—well, it’s certainly fast.”

  “Too fast, you might even say.”

  “Honey,” Mom says in that pump-the-brakes tone she uses when Dad tries to push new therapies on her. “I’m not sure this is the kind of situation that requires our opinions. Certainly not our permission.”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “I’ve never seen Celine like this,” she wistfully sighs. “She was so… full.”

  “She’s pregnant?!” I balk. “She didn’t say—”

  “No, no, no,” Mom laughs. “Full as in happy. Full of life.”

  “Great,” I mutter darkly. “Not sure that’s something we can cure. At least a pregnancy can be fixed.”

  “Taylor Marie Theron!”

  “Shit,” I mutter. “Did I say that out loud?”

  Mom leans forward to rap the back of my knuckles in a light scold. But the gesture wears her out and she slumps back into the armchair, wheezing quietly. “I was worried about this, too,” she admits as her gaze flits out the window to the bright day beyond. “I mean, this is Celine. She’s always been so cautious about everything. But when I saw them together today—”

  “Wait. Pause. Back up. You met him?”

  “Of course,” Mom says. “They came by for a cup of coffee. She wanted to introduce him to us.”

  “Why wasn’t I invited?” I ask, my face falling. Honestly, Mom’s the only one I don’t mind baring my soul to. She’s the one person I know won’t judge me over anything.

  Even if I happen to deserve it.

  “Oh, honey, don’t take it personally. It was an impromptu visit,” she reassures me, patting my hand. “That being said, you have no one but yourself to blame. You’d have met him if you still lived here.”

  “Pulling out the guilt card, huh? I’m shocked, Mrs. Theron. Simply shocked.”

  She laughs, the same musical laugh it’s always been. “You’re twenty years old; of course you want your own space. I don’t fault you for that.”

  “Dad does.”

  She sighs, but the smile remains on her face. That’s what I love about my mother. Even after everything she’s been through, all the doctors, the chemo, the false hope, the painful years—even after all that, she hasn’t lost her smile.

  “Your father is getting older,” she says. “I think he just worries about who’s going to take care of you girls once he’s gone.”

  “He’s not going anywhere anytime soon. The stubborn ones never do.”

  The two of us giggle together. “Still,” she sighs when the laughter fades, “he’s always been a traditionalist. The night we were married, he told me that he was going to take care of me. That I didn’t need to work if I didn’t want to.”

  “I’m sure you took that one lying down,” I tease.

  “Why, I would never,” she jokes back. “But once I got pregnant with your sister, I realized that I wanted to be your mother more than I wanted a career.”

  “You big softie.” I tickle the bottom of her bare foot.

  She chuckles and waves me off of her. “I worked for three years before I had Celine, though, and he never touched a penny of the money I earned. He told me that his money was ours, and my money was mine.”

  I do a double take. “I didn’t know that.”

  “There’s a lot of things about your father you girls don’t know,” she chides. “Before he was your father, he was this gorgeous, mysterious, capable man. I couldn’t believe that he’d even look my way.”

  “Hush, Mom. You’re beautiful.”

  She shrugs. “Yes, yes, butter me up. I didn’t believe that until he told it to me, though. It took meeting your father to teach me what love—real love—was all about.”

  Hearing her talk reminds me of the old days. B.C.: Before Cancer. She and Dad used to hold hands when we walked to the park together. He’d bring her a cup of coffee every morning so that she could drink it in bed. When she fell asleep on the couch halfway through a movie, he’d pick her up and carry her to their room, making sure to skip the noisy floorboards so he didn’t wake her up.

  “Sometimes, I forget,” I murmur.

  “Sometimes, I forget, too,” she says, taking my hand. “It used to be just Archie and Fiona. Then it was Archie, Fiona, and our girls. Now, you girls are moving into your own lives, so it’s back to Archie and Fiona again—and Cancer. We’re never really alone anymore.”

  “You just forgot your love language somewhere along the way, ” I say, cupping her cold-to-the-touch ankle in my palms. “It happens.”

  She shakes her head, and I take a moment to mourn for the beautiful blonde locks that used to fall down her back like corn silk. There were days—B.C. days, of course—when people would look at Mom and wonder if she was my older sister or my mother. Old age seemed uninterested in her.

  But the last few years brought what she was owed and then some. Wrinkles came fast, the hair went faster, and gravity pressed her spine into the shape of a question mark.

  “We didn’t forget our love language, sweetheart. It just changed. Even through the worst of it, your dad’s still here, taking care of me. That’s our love language.”

  She pats the empty space beside her, inviting me in. Sighing, I squeeze myself into the armchair with her. She wraps her too-frail arms around me and I rest my head against her bony shoulder.

  “Used to be that all three of us could fit into this chair,” she chuckles longingly.

  “I remember. You used to read us a story every night before bed. You and Dad would take turns doing the voices.”

  “Celine always wanted stories with princesses and fairies. You wanted the ones with a little more action to them.”

  “So what you’re saying is, I was the more interesting one?”

  She nudges me in the ribs and winks. “I know it seems like you and Celine are light years apart sometimes. But the truth is, your deepest nature is the same.”

  I frown. My whole life, people have told us how different my sister and I are. You leap before you look. You shoot first, then forget to ask questions. But Celine is an old soul. A wise soul. Cautious, not reckless. Careful, not rash.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “You both love with your whole hearts. You’re both loyal, kind, and passionate. And you care for each other—that’s another thing you have in common.”

  Again, my mind flashes back to that moment two and a half months ago. The reason that those two little blue lines appeared at all today. To a storm on the horizon and a dark-eyed dream standing in front of a car that kept growling like it was alive.

  What do you want? he’d asked. What do you want?

  I told him. And then I let him give it to me.

  Celine would never have acted so impulsively. She certainly wouldn’t have slept with a stranger without a condom.

  Although now, she’s engaged to a man she barely knows, so maybe Mom’s right. Maybe we aren’t so different after all.

  “I’m worried that she might be making a mistake here,” I admit. “She’s already engaged to this guy and she only met him two months ago. She’s twenty-two, Mom! Why does she need to get married now?”

  “Because she loves him, dear.”

  “So you’re okay with this? Really and truly?”

  Mom sighs again, and her soft blue eyes flatline. “I will always worry about you girls no matter what. But I learned a long time ago that you can’t force certain decisions on anyone, least of all your children. I raised you and Celine to be strong, independent women, and that’s what you are. And now that you’re both adults, it means I have to trust you both.”

  “Trust, huh? Sounds terrifying.”

  “It is. It’s also wonderful.” She smiles and touches my cheek. “You should try it sometime.”

  11

  TAYLOR

  Whenever Mom is really tired, she starts drooping, like a wilted flower that needs reviving.

  It still comes as a shock, even after two long years of her sickness. I think I’ve frozen her in my mind at a particular point in time. A time when she could kick around the ball with us in the backyard. When she could drive us to Lake Michigan for the day. When she could stay up with us all night telling ghost stories and eating homemade s’mores around our fake fireplace, a.k.a. the stove, saying, Okay, just one more again and again until we were all so full of sugar that our stomachs hurt.

  It’s cruelly ironic that every time I see her wilt, I also see the woman she used to be.

  B.C.

  “Come on, Mom,” I say gently, rousing her as I clamber out of the armchair. “Let’s get you to bed.”

  “No, darling. I’ll sleep when you leave.”

  “You can’t kick me out that fast,” I tease her. “Why don’t you take a quick nap and I’ll wake you up when it’s time for dinner?”

  Her eyes light up. “You’ll stay for dinner?”

  “I’ll do you one better and I’ll cook it, too.”

  “Okay, well, you know where we keep the takeout menus.”

  I suppress a bubble of laughter. “I resent that. At least I don’t burn toast like Dad does.” I frown. “Where is Dad, by the way?”

  “He decided to take a walk right after your sister left with her fiancé. Said he could use the fresh air.”

  I raise my brows as I coax Mom out of the chair and into bed. She barely makes a dent in her mattress anymore. If I run my fingers over its surface, I can feel where twenty years of sleeping in the same spot wore a groove into it. Now, though, she isn’t anywhere close to filling it out.

  “I wouldn’t read too much into it,” she says. “I think he’s just processing. In his own way, just like the rest of us are.”

  “What does he think about Il-ar-i-on?” I ask, doing my best not to roll my eyes as I drag out the unfamiliar syllables of his name.

  “Be nice, Tay.”

  “I’m always nice.”

  Mom shoots me an appraising look that might be insulting if it wasn’t so on the nose. “If you want to know what your father thinks of Ilarion, you can ask him yourself.”

  I sigh. “Do I have to?”

  “If you’re staying for dinner, you can’t avoid talking to him.” She grabs my hand just as I’m about to straighten up. “Honey… go easy on your father, okay? I know he’s not blameless in this. I know you have every right to be mad, but…but…”

  “I know,” I say gently as her sleepy lips fail to shape the words the way she wants them to go. “I will. Don’t worry, okay? Just sleep.”

  I drop a kiss on her forehead and run my hand over her bald scalp. It had taken a while to get used to seeing her without hair. She’s still beautiful. But there is no avoiding the fact that she is sick.

  Celine and I had offered to buy her a wig. She flat-out refused and then barely said two words to us the rest of the day, she was so insulted. “I’ll wear my own hair or none at all,” she’d informed us sharply. “There’s no sense in lying to the world.”

  I turn at the door to tell her I love her—for that, and for so many other reasons, too—but she’s already sleeping. I linger in the threshold and watch her for a moment.

  “Mom,” I whisper into the soft rasp of her snores, “I just wanted to let you know that I’m…I’m pregnant.”

  Saying it out loud is as surreal as it is terrifying.

  I’m pregnant, and I have no idea what to do about it.

  There was a time not too long ago when I would have sprinted straight to my mom and told her everything. I’d have put my head in her lap and cried until the reality of my situation stopped terrifying me so much.

  But that was B.C.

  And we don’t live in those days anymore.

  12

  TAYLOR

  I’m in the kitchen draining rice when I hear Dad come home.

  He appears at the doorway. Like Mom, he doesn’t fill up the spaces he used to. Once upon a time—B.C., of course, but before he started looking so terrified all the time, too—he’d loom in any doorway he stood. I thought he was the biggest man alive. Now, his shoulders don’t even take up half of it.

  He clears his throat awkwardly. “Didn’t know you were stopping in today.”

  I put the rice on the stove to cook and turn to him. “I’m cooking dinner.”

  “Should I go find the takeout menus?”

  I roll my eyes. “Very funny. Mom beat you to that joke already, though.”

  He takes a seat at the circular kitchen table. It came with the house, as the old story goes. Dad wanted to throw it away—“or burn it,” he always interjects at that part of the telling, “whichever happened faster”—but Mom insisted we keep it because it was yellow and had pink daisies and purple butterflies painted along the legs.

  She’s always had a thing about yellow. The whole house has little pops of it sprinkled through. “Like we live in a sunflower patch,” she tells anyone who asks. “It’s a dark world sometimes. I think it could use some brightening.”

  “Want something to drink?” I ask, glancing toward Dad. “Iced tea?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Hot tea?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Bourbon, then?”

  Dad glances at me as though he likes that idea a little too much. He starts to shake his head, but before he can, I nod. “Bourbon it is.”

  I grab a glass from the china cabinet in the hallway and pour him some bourbon. He almost never drinks before eight o’clock, but judging by the look on his face, I don’t think he’s going to object tonight.

  I hand him the glass and take the other open seat. The silence stretches and folds in on itself. The cuckoo clock on the wall ticks. Dad’s heel bounces on the tile. I rap my nails on the tabletop again and again.

  I’m keenly aware of the fact that he and I haven’t had a proper conversation since I moved out. It’s lurking between us, this ugly, unspoken thing, like some rotten stuff we’re both pretending not to smell.

  He takes a sip of his bourbon and sighs, but he makes no attempt to talk to me. I sit there for a full five minutes waiting for him to say something. When he doesn’t, I check on the rice, grab a couple of ice cubes from the freezer and a mallet from the drawer, and head back to my chair.

  I place the ice cubes on the table and smash them with the mallet.

  “Goodness!” Dad splutters, gawking at me in shock.

  “There. Now that I’ve broken the ice, we can talk,” I say with a straight face.

  He stares at me for a moment, and then his face cracks. The two of us burst out laughing. “That… that was… Good God, that was terrible,” he wheezes, still choking on his cackles and dabbing tears from the corners of his eyes.

  “The worst,” I agree. “Some guy at a bar used that line on me last year.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t go out with him.”

  “I let him buy me a drink. I thought it was creative at the time.”

  Dad just shakes his head and wipes the last of the tears from his eyes. Then he sighs deeply and his shoulders sag and, just like that, he’s the same sad old man he was when he walked in again.

  “You deserve a man who doesn’t need to use a pick-up line at all,” he murmurs. “You deserve the best. You and your sister both.”