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Yeah, they better have. Whether it was strictly ethical or not, the annual donations I had promised the teaching hospital hadn’t come entirely without implied payback. I couldn’t legally buy my sister an organ, but I was absolutely able to purchase the best care possible for her.
“Let me call Neil, and we’ll get a flight plan filed—”
“Seriously, the surgery is like, in a few hours. Don’t bother to come all this way.” Those were our other sister, Susan’s, words coming out of Molly’s mouth.
“Okay. I just want you to know that I can be there if you want me to.” I knew that Susan felt I somehow spoiled Molly. I didn’t think Susan resented the fact that we had money, just the fact that I could give her sister things that she couldn’t. She and her mother had chosen not to seek me out for years, not even to tell me about my father’s death until Molly had needed a kidney.
A kidney I couldn’t give her, owing to my fun new diabetes diagnosis.
“You’ll come to see me afterward when it’s okay to have visitors?” she asked hopefully.
“Hell yes. And don’t forget, I told you that the second you were able to, you were going to come out to New York and visit me.” There was no way Sasha would deny her daughter the chance to go see Broadway shows and tourist spots in the name of sisterly bonding.
“Yes! I can’t wait!” She went suddenly quiet. “Thank you, Sophie.”
“You’re fully welcome.” A lump rose in my throat, and I tried to talk around it. “Have a good surgery, okay?”
“I’m gonna crush surgery,” she promised, laughing. We hung up the phone without “I love you” because we hadn’t quite gotten there yet, but tears of relief washed down my cheeks. I swiped them away and only then noticed how many annoyed people had to nudge their way around me as I stood motionless in the middle of the sidewalk.
I wanted to shout, “Sorry to inconvenience you, but my baby sister is going to live!”
I quickly called my driver and told her to meet me at the end of the block, and to notify the pilot of our helicopter to be ready to go in forty-five minutes. I couldn’t wait to tell Neil, but I wanted to do it in person.
In the meantime, I would go tell my sister-by-choice.
“Take me to Holli’s?” I asked our new driver, Andrea, over the intercom once I hopped inside.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, and I bristled at being called “ma’am” for the second god damn time that day. But nothing could bring my mood down now.
Holli and Deja had recently moved into an artsy downtown loft on a street Deja described as “the last refuge of Gen Xers who don’t want to admit they’re aging.” Now that Deja owned the magazine we’d created—and since the print version had taken off, a fucking miracle in the digital age—and Holli had started pulling in increasingly bigger paychecks for her acting and modeling work, they lived like the coolest moms on Earth. Their building’s doorman wore a sharp suit instead of some outdated uniform, and he communicated with residents via a headset. He already had his finger to his ear, pressing the button and mumbling as I got out of the car.
“Ms. Scaife,” he greeted me. I came over so often, he’d learned my name within a month. “Ms. Williams said to come up. Does your driver need an off-street space?”
“No, I’m not going to be here that long,” I said, striding toward the stairs. It was only the second floor up, so there was no reason to wait for an elevator. When I reached their story, I took the short hall on the right and knocked on the door.
“Guess what!” I said excitedly as the door opened, but my enthusiasm faded quickly when I saw the look on Deja’s face. Somewhere within the apartment, Piett howled. In her ripped Smiths t-shirt and faded gray leggings, Deja looked more disheveled than I’d ever seen her.
And she’d gone to Vegas with me.
“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” I asked, reaching out to take her upper arm as though she were some shell-shocked victim of a terrible crime.
“I’m just really tired.” She burst into tears.
“Is Holli home?” I asked, stepping in and closing the door behind me. “I’m so sorry, I should not have just dropped in on you like this.”
“It’s fine,” Deja sobbed.
I shrugged off my coat and hung it on the industrial hardware rack on the wall. “What can I help with?”
“Can you get a teething baby with an ear infection to stop screaming?” she asked, wiping her nose on the back of her hand.
Yeesh.
“Probably not,” I admitted. “But I do know that you need sleep if you’re going to deal with that particular situation. How much have you had lately?”
