“Do you know what you’re going to do?” she says.
If there was ever a question to open with, I guess it might be that. The elephant in the room.Joni’s life just fell apart.
“Um,” I say, wobbling. “Well—”
“You can move in with Leo and me!” Stevie bursts in, clutching my hand. “Oh my god, we’ll be gone for three months, and you can get all settled into the office—it’s tiny, but you can totally fit a twin bed in there—and then when we get back, we could beroommates, and—”
“Stevie,” our mom cuts in, eyes staying on my face. “Maybe Joni wants some time to figure it out for herself.”
This is part of what’s wonderful and terrible about this place: it lets you forget about things for a while, regroup when something has gone wrong, but it spits you out on the other side having not faced it. “That’s so scary, though,” I say, tears brimming.
“Maybe,” she says, swiping a thumb across my cheekbone. “But I think you’re going to be just fine.”
We curl closer together, and I let them wrap their arms around me. When I apologize for this mess, they both shush me.
Eventually, I’m sitting up straighter, eyes cleared, smiling.
“Now, when were you going to tell me you’d finally realized you were in love with Ren?” my mom asks.
“Did everyone know?” I groan, laughter bubbling out of me when they both smile. “Someone could havetoldme.”
“You wouldn’t have believed us if we tried,” my mom says.
The door flies open.
“The photographer will be here in fifteen minutes!” Sasha shouts. When her eyes land on me, she throws her hands up in the air, stalks toward us. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she says, crouching down on the floor at the foot of the bed to join our huddle.
We fold around each other again and, after a while, I feel Sasha settle her cheek on my knee. When she finally leans away, she has to swipe a hand over wet cheeks.
“Sash,” I say, grabbing her hand. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually seen her cry. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, you know,” she sniffs from her spot on the floor. “Weddings always bring out the emotions in everyone.” But when her gaze meets my mom’s, her face falls again. “Do you and my mom tell each other everything?” she asks.
“This family loves secrets,” my mom says.
Sasha’s hand is still in mine, and I feel her palm tense before she looks almost apologetically at Stevie. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone else for a while. It’s still so early, so there’s a lot that could go wrong,” she says. “But I’m pregnant.”
Stevie shrieks, sliding off the end of the bed to pull Sasha into a hug. I feel like I did when we first found out about Katie: some sort of awe at the fact there would be a whole new human in our family, that time keeps diligently passing and bringing so many changes with it.
I move to the floor to hug her too, then realize she’s still crying. She looks at me and waves a hand. “I’m fine,” she says, then, at some expression my mom shoots her, “I am. I’m just—I had this whole plan. I was going to get pregnant when we owned a bigger place and I could take more time off work and none of that will happen for at least another two years, and you’re supposed to be so excited that you’re having a baby, but I’m freaking out and—”She breaks off, pressing her face into her hands. “We aren’t supposed to be talking about this during your wedding, Stevie.”
“Have you seen what’s going on around here?” Stevie asks. “Please, let it out. If anyone has anything else they want to share, I’m all ears. Besides, you’ve done a remarkable job hiding it.”
“Really?” Sasha asks, lifting her face and looking at my sister. “I feel like I’ve been a huge bitch. I wanted everything to go as planned this week, but that also meant I didn’t let myself absorb what was happening to me. It’d only been a week since I found out, and I was trying to act fine. And then I felt sick the next morning at Fern’s, and it all just hit me.” I remember, suddenly, Sasha almost throwing up in the flower beds on the way to breakfast. I’d been so distracted that morning that I’d forgotten she hadn’t been drinking the night before, that she couldn’t be hungover.
“You mean when you told Thad he’s a terrible father?”
“Stevie,”I say.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay, she’s right,” Sasha says. She nestles against my side, leans back against my mom’s knees. “I talked to Thad. We’re good. It wasn’t fair of me to take it out on him.”
“I bet he’s so excited,” I say. “You’ll all be in LA together.”
Sasha almost rolls her eyes. “I think he’s almost as excited to be Uncle Thad as he was to be a father.”
“You’re going to be a great mom, Sash,” Stevie says, snuggling against her. “You’ll have the most badass baby.”
