I remembered feeling that I was making a mistake, that this wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go. Mel wasn’t supposed to be sick. But if she was, then I was supposed to stay at the Cohen house until after dinner. I was supposed to sit on the slightly lopsided living room couch, wedged between Luke and Ro, while Mel told us her news. Ro and I were supposed to find ourselves in the dark of the backyard shed afterward, the place we always went after big moments to collect our thoughts. We were supposed to lean back against the metal walls, whispering truths too heavy for a bright summer evening in July. We would talk and cry and hurt, and it would suck, but we would do it together. Because we were family, and that was what families did.
I remembered hugging Mel before I got on my bike to ride home, tears streaming down my face the entire time because I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was going the wrong way.
And I didn’t even know why.
THEN
In the end, my mother had been the one to tell me.
As soon as I got home, I’d taken the stairs two at a time to my parents’ bedroom, where I knew my mom would be if she wasn’t at work.
Everything was blurry through my tears, but I saw her right away.
She was a lump in the bed, a blade of light slipping through the crack in the curtains just enough for me to make out her form.
I padded over to where she was, touched what I thought was her shoulder. I’d spent seventeen years trying not to disturb her when she wanted to be alone, but tonight was an exception. Tonight I actually needed her, and for once Mel couldn’t take her place.
“Mom,” I said to the mound of blanket that still hadn’t moved.
She pulled the covers away from her face and squinted at me like she was staring directly into the sun.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Mel’s home from the doctor,” I said. “Can you call her and find out what they told her?”
She blinked up at me, probably wondering why I couldn’t call myself or where I’d come from, if not the Cohens’.
“Okay,” she said finally, slowly pulling herself into a sitting position.
I grabbed the phone on her nightstand and held it out to her.
Her fingers brushed mine as she took the phone, and I wondered how her hands could feel that cold in the middle of summer.
“Melanie, hi.” Her voice was bright and breezy, as if she hadn’t been lying in a dark room for what was probably hours. “Oh, me too. I meant to call and congratulate you on Luke’s graduation.”
I sat at the foot of her bed, hugged my knees to my chest, and listened to my mother’s side of the conversation. To her laughter and easy banter. She couldn’t always pull it off, but sometimes, for short spells, she could pretend to be okay. She somehow managed to pull it together for the things that were really important to her. Like work or the occasional parent-teacher meeting, though those were more Dad’s territory.
But I wondered for the hundredth time why Mom bothered pretending for Mel, who easily knew more about me than either of my parents did. Mel, who knew about the days my mother spent in bed, the medication she wouldn’t take, the therapists she wouldn’t see. You wouldn’t think my mother would be opposed to medicine; she was an optometrist, for God’s sake. But she was one of those people who believed it was okay for everybody else, but not for her.Shewas just tired, overworked or under the weather, or in need of some alone time. So we lived with it, this nameless, shapeless thing that had hollowed out my mother.
Mom got quiet now as Mel talked on the other end of the line.
I was far enough away that I couldn’t make out distinct words, but Mel’s voice sounded somber, like the melody of something in a minor key.
While she was talking, my own phone vibrated in the pocket of my cutoffs.
It was a text from Luke.
Why’d you leave like that?
He didn’t text me very often, and when he did, he did so frustratingly. In complete sentences, with punctuation and zero emojis. It was so aggressive.
Usually, though, I knew him well enough to know he wasn’t mad.
But tonight he sounded like hecouldbe mad. At the very least, he was confused.
I considered telling him the truth—that his brother had told me to leave—but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Something was going on with Rowan, and even though I wasn’t sure he deserved it right then, I felt like I had to protect him. If I told Luke what had happened, he would confront Ro, and Ro would ... well, no one ever knew what Ro would do.
There was something I forgot to do,I texted back. I knew how lame it sounded, but I couldn’t think of anything better.
