I barely hear the rest. My mind has become one of those FBI corkboards with zigzagging red string between every pushpin it can find, trying to make things add up, to make all of it fit into one uninterrupted pattern, proof that this can work, that I can have this, that it’s not too good to be true.
When I hang up, I sit on a bench beneath a streetlamp, waiting for the daze to fade. After six full minutes, I still feel like I’m inside a fishbowl, everything surreally bent and distorted around me. When I finally walk back, the bells over the shop door seem to chime from miles off, but Libby’s voice is close and jarring. “There you are, finally.” With obvious annoyance, she adds, “Can we go to dinner now, or do you have a board meeting to get to?”
I feel brittle, stretched too far in too many directions, and when she rolls her eyes, something in me finally snaps: “Can you not do that, Libby? Not right now.”
“Do what?” she says. “You said you’d be fully present after five, and—”
“Stop.” I lift a hand, trying to hold off the fresh onslaught of red string and pushpins raining down on me, reality crashing in from every direction.
Because even if I want this job, I can’t have it.
Just like I couldn’t last time. But at least then, Libby told me what she was going through. At least I wasn’t throwing darts in the dark, hoping they’d plug up the holes of a sinking ship.
“What’s going on with you?” she demands, brow lifted, face torqued with dismay.
An unstoppable wave rises through me. “Me?” I repeat. “I’m not the one sneaking around, disappearing, not answering her husband’s texts, keeping secrets. I’ve been fully present, Libby, all month, and you’re still keeping me in the dark.” My pulse feels erratic. My fingers tingle. “I can’t help if you don’t tell me!”
“I don’t want your help, Nora!” She pales at the thought, sways between her feet. “I know I used to rely on you a lot, and I’m sorry for that, but I don’t want to be another excuse for you not to have a life—”
“Oh, right,” I fume. “I don’t have a life! ‘The only thing that matters to me is my career.’ Guess what, Libby? If that were true, I’d be an editor right now! I wouldn’t have passed on the job I actually wanted to make sure you could afford the best fucking doula in Manhattan!”
Her face is white now, her brow damp. “Wait . . . y-you . . . you . . .” Her breath is shallow. She turns, setting one palm on the counter. Her other hand rises to her forehead, eyes fluttering closed. She shakes her head, gathering herself.
“Libby?” I take a half step toward her, my heart in my throat.
That’s when she collapses.
27
I CATCH HER, BUT I’m not strong enough to hold her up. “Help!” I scream as we slump to the ground, the worst of her fall softened.
The door to the office flings open, but I’m still shrieking Help, screaming like it’s doing anything, as if just shouting the word has power. Action over inaction. Movement over stagnation. An illusion of control.
Charlie comes running, crouches beside us. “What happened?”
“I don’t know!” I say. “Libby. Libby.”
Her eyes slit open, flutter closed again. God, she’s pale. Was she that pale all afternoon? And her heart is racing. I can feel it shivering through her. Her hands are icy. I take one between mine, rubbing it. “Libby. Libby?”
Her eyes open again, and this time she looks more alert.
“Let’s get her to the hospital,” Charlie says.
“I’m okay,” she insists, but her voice is shaky. She tries to sit up.
I pull her back into my lap. “Don’t move. Just take a second.”
She nods, settles into my arms.
Charlie’s on his feet already, headed for the door. “I’ll pull my car up.”
* * *
Charlie is the one who talks to the receptionist in complete sentences when we arrive.
Charlie is the one who pulls me away when I start half shouting at the nurse who tells us we’re not allowed through the doors Libby’s ushered through. He’s the one who pushes me into a chair in the waiting room, takes hold of my face, and promises it’ll be okay.
You can’t know that, I think, but he’s so sure that I almost believe him.
“Just sit right here,” he says. “I’ll figure this out.”
Seven minutes later, he returns with decaf, a prepackaged apple fritter, and the number of the room Libby’s been moved into. “They’re running tests. It shouldn’t take long.”
“How did you do that?” I ask, voice hoarse.
“I was on the high school paper with one of the doctors here,” he says. “She says we can go and wait in her hall until the tests are over.”
I’ve never felt so useless, or so grateful not to be in charge. “Thank you,” I croak.
Charlie nudges the fritter toward me. “You should eat something.”
He ferries me through the hospital, stopping by another vending machine for a bottle of water, then to a pair of hideously outdated chairs in a hellishly lit hallway that smells like antiseptic.
“She’s in there. If they’re not out in five minutes, I’ll find someone to talk to, okay?” he says gently. “Just give them five minutes.”
Within twenty seconds I’m pacing. My chest hurts. My eyes burn, but no tears come.
Charlie grabs me, pulls me in around his chest, and wraps a hand around the back of my head. I feel small, vulnerable, helpless in a way I haven’t for years.
Even before Mom died, I wasn’t much of a crier. But when Libby and I were kids and I was upset, there was nothing that could make me tear up faster than having Mom’s arms wrapped around me. Because then—and only then—I knew it was safe to come apart.
My sweet girl, she’d coo. That’s what she always called me.
She never did the You’re okay, don’t cry thing. Always My sweet girl. Let it out.
At her funeral, I remember tears glossing my eyes, the pinprick sensation at the back of my nose, and then, beside me, the sound of Libby breaking, descending into sobs.
I remember catching myself holding my breath, like I was waiting.
And then I realized I was waiting.
For her.
For Mom to put her arms around us.
Libby was crumbling, and Mom wasn’t coming.
It was like a collapsed sandcastle leapt back into place inside me, rearranging my heart into something passably sturdy. I wrapped my arms around my sister and tried to whisper, Let it out. I couldn’t get the words past my lips.
So instead I dropped my mouth beside Libby’s ear and whispered, “Hey.”
She gave a stuttering breath, like, What?
“If Mom had known how hot the reverend here is,” I said, “she probably would’ve made it down here sooner.”
Libby’s saucer eyes looked up at me, glazed with tears, and my chest felt like a can being crushed until she let out a scratchy jolt of laughter loud enough that Hot Reverend stumbled over his next few words.
She lay her head on my shoulder, turned her face into my jacket, and shook her head. “That is so fucked up,” she said, but she was shaking with teary laughter.
For that second, she was okay. Now, though, when she really needs me, I’m useless.
“Why couldn’t we be in the room for tests?” I get out.
Charlie inhales, shifting between his feet. “Maybe they think you’ll give her the answers.”
There is absolutely no conviction in his joke. When I draw back, I realize he’s not doing so hot himself.
“Are you okay? You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“Just don’t like hospitals,” he says. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to stay.”
He takes my hands, holds them between our chests. “I’m not leaving you here.”
“I can handle it.”
His mouth shrinks, the crease beneath it deepening. “I know. I want to be here.”
A group of nurses pass with a gurney, and an ashen cast seeps onto Charlie’s face.
I scrounge around for something to say, anything else to think about. “Sharon called me.”
His lips press into a knot.
“She told me you put me up for a job.”
After a beat, he murmurs, “If I overstepped, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not that.” My face prickles. “It’s just . . . what if I’m bad at it?”
His hands skim up my arms until he’s cradling my jaw. “Impossible.”