“I knew it,” said Hadley, but for once, she didn’t sound happy about being right. “I called her around nine a week or two ago, and I swear she didn’t know who I was right away. Then she tried to act like it was fine. I let it slide, and I shouldn’t have.”
“Crap. What was in the boxes?” asked Piper.
“Cosmetics and grout cleaners and cooking tools and . . .” I shook my head. “Basically, a ton of junk she doesn’t need and maybe doesn’t even want, given that she’s leaving it boxed up. It’s awful, but that’s not all. She’s losing her mind, you guys. Or at least her memory. Hadley, I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. Piper, I owe you an apology, too. We could have addressed this sooner if I’d been here. I think I didn’t want to see it because, deep down, I knew how awful this was going to be.”
My sisters’ arms were around me before I’d even realized that I’d started to cry.
“It’s okay,” said Piper, stroking my hair.
“Don’t worry, Laine,” said Hadley, pulling me close. “I knew you’d understand when you saw it for yourself. I’m just sorry I wasn’t wrong.”
“That’s the first time you’ve ever said that,” I said, sniffling, and she elbowed me lightly. “Seriously, though, she’s only seventy-two. That’s so young to have dementia.”
“Maybe it’s Parkinson’s, like Nana Meyers had,” said Piper.
“I’d considered that, too,” I admitted.
“I don’t know for sure, but I’ve been looking into this, and it really doesn’t seem like she has any other symptoms,” said Hadley, frowning. “Either way, we need to get her to a neurologist. I should’ve made her see someone months ago.”
“I should have,” I said. “You’d just had the twins—you didn’t need one more thing to deal with.” I could’ve found a way to help my family without abandoning Belle. Why hadn’t I at least tried? “I’ve been slacking, and I’m sorry.”
Piper’s face crumpled. “Is this going to happen to us? I mean, first Nana Meyers, now Mom. What are the odds?”
Summer had arrived early, and it was nearly eighty out, but a chill ran up my spine. Yes, I didn’t want to pass on some unknown condition to my hypothetical child. But there was another issue, and it was just as weighty. Piper had her three kids to care for her when she was old and gray. Hadley had her twins, not to mention a younger husband and money enough to buy whatever help they needed. Me?
I had no one.
No wonder my biological clock had turned into a gong.
“What do we do now?” I asked. “We can’t force her into a nursing home. We’d have to jump through all kinds of legal hoops to do it, and even then—well, we all know she thinks it’s a live burial.”
“What else are we going to do? There’s really no other solution.” But even as she said this, Hadley’s eyes homed in on me.
“No way, Hadley,” I said, because I knew exactly what she was thinking. “I can’t. I’m not moving back.” Because I want to get pregnant and have a child, and New York City is the last place I want to raise them. The myriad inconveniences of raising a child in the city began parading through my mind: Having to schlep a stroller up and down the subway stairs. Preschool that cost as much as college tuition. Walking six blocks just to find a small patch of grass to let the baby play on. I’d face plenty of hurdles raising a child in Michigan—but they wouldn’t be nearly as bad as those I’d encounter here.
“Why not? If you’re serious about getting divorced . . .” she said.
“Then this could be your fresh start,” said Piper, finishing her sentence.
“What happened to you two wanting me and Josh to make things work?” I said.
“Well, that’s not out of the question. And if you do make up, I know he’ll move here for you,” said Hadley, and I didn’t bother telling her that Josh was more likely to get struck by a stray comet than move here; as much as he liked the buzz of other people, he claimed the cost of living was insulting. “And now that Roger and Rohit are gone, you could take the upstairs apartment. I bet we could work it out to where you’re barely paying rent—maybe an early inheritance kind of thing. And there’s a second bedroom, so you could keep writing from home.”
“But my organizing business is just getting going,” I said. And I needed that money now more than ever; our health insurance was terrible, and based on what I’d found while researching single parenting, raising a child cost a cool $233,000—and that was if everything went right. “I’m between clients right now, but I have another lead—a big one,” I said, thinking of Ravi and Melinda’s palatial home.
“New York would be a way better place to make bank. I know so many people who need to hire someone,” said Piper. “I’d be happy to help you.” Her enthusiasm must have been contagious, because I’d started to smile. Piper would help me? I didn’t hate the sound of that.
“And wouldn’t it be amazing if we were all living in the same place?” said Hadley. She hugged me again. “You’d be able to see the kids more. And us! This could be a blessing in disguise.”
I nodded, but instead of imagining my nieces and nephews, I was thinking of Ben. Even though our run-in had been awkward and had stirred up some old feelings I would’ve preferred to keep buried, at least a small part of me was curious about the possibility of living three doors down from the man formerly known as my best friend. I doubted we’d ever be as close as we used to again; too many years had passed, and too many un-take-backable words had been exchanged. Yet he’d been happy to see me, and I had to admit that seeing him had made me feel . . . younger somehow, and beneath my angst, sort of warm and fuzzy. What if—just what if—there was some way for us to be friends again?
Except there was one massive problem about moving back—and it rendered any thoughts about Ben inconsequential. How could I possibly care for a child and my mother at the same time?
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t want to become Mom’s minder. It would ruin our relationship.”
“Or it could make it stronger,” said Hadley. “It just depends on the intention you set.”
“Spoken like someone who doesn’t want the job,” I said.
“I can’t have the job,” said Hadley. “Our nanny just quit.”
“Leticia?” said Piper, just as I said, “Why?”
“She found a family that will pay her more and rent an apartment for her. She didn’t even give notice,” said Hadley with a sigh. “We’ll find someone else—at least, I hope we will—but now I have no childcare and a full-time client load. Laine . . .”
She didn’t have to finish. I knew. I was the one who was childless, and now dog-less, and who could work from anywhere.
Who owed it to her sisters to pick up some of the slack.
Guilt enveloped me as I thought about how little I’d done to help my family over the past decade, let alone the past year.
“For the sake of argument, let’s say I move here,” I said. “I’ll need to work; I won’t be able to be there with Mom twenty-four seven. So doesn’t it make more sense to hire someone to help her? A home health aide or something?”
“Yeah, right. She’ll never go for that,” said Hadley. “You know that. Even if that weren’t ridiculously expensive, she’s too private to allow someone to stay with her. Anyway, it sounds like what she most needs is someone to be there overnight. We could set some kind of alarm so you knew if she wandered outside or upstairs.”
I could almost imagine raising a baby in the upstairs apartment. There was a second bedroom, and the place was bright and clean and had built-in shelving that would go a long way to keeping things uncluttered. But then I pictured my mother barging through the door moments after I’d gotten my baby to sleep, and then having to help her and my wailing infant.
“I love living in Ann Arbor,” I said quietly. I wasn’t ready to tell them about wanting a child—not when it would seem like more evidence that I was making a mistake in divorcing Josh. “You both know that.”