She knew she couldn’t afford to worry now. He’d come to pick her up so they could tell Emeline and Cecelia about her diagnosis. Sylvie had told William that he didn’t need to come, but he’d insisted. Her husband’s face had been set ever since she’d told him she was sick two weeks earlier. Something inside William had turned in a new direction, and he was intent on making sure his words and actions lined up with his new route. Sylvie knew that route had to do with her, but she didn’t know what it entailed. She was newly aware of a drain—like in a bathtub—deep inside her, through which her energy was escaping. She could no longer try to understand everything. She had to let this go. She wondered if dying was simply going to be an exercise in letting go of one thing after another.
She and William held hands while they walked the few blocks to the super-duplex. It was the middle of October, and the leaves were changing colors. What a tree, Sylvie thought, when they passed an old oak. She nodded at a cardinal sitting on the roof of a car. It was a cloudy day, but there was a triangle of blue in the left corner of the sky. William and Sylvie didn’t speak; they didn’t need to.
Cecelia and Emeline both met them at the door to Emeline’s house, their faces creased with concern. Sylvie had asked them to be home, said she had something to discuss. The four of them stood in the kitchen—Josie was at work, and Izzy wasn’t there—while Sylvie said what she had to say. It reminded her of the last time she’d gathered her younger sisters to tell them something they didn’t want to hear; the one-two punch of that day had been that they’d all had to let go of Julia, like releasing a balloon. Sylvie was still grateful to Emeline and Cecelia for forgiving her, and she felt terrible that she was about to break their hearts again. It was a relief that Izzy happened not to be there; the young woman had her own studio apartment now, but she still floated from one bedroom to another, the way she had her whole life. It would have felt like too much to have to speak to Izzy too. Sylvie needed to do this slowly, at a pace she could stand. She knew she would have to tell Rose as well, but she couldn’t bear her mother’s reaction yet. In a few months, when Sylvie was feeling sicker, she would call her mother or ask one of her sisters to.
When Sylvie managed to say the words, the twins responded differently than she would have expected. Cecelia cried, while Emeline got mad.
“Absolutely not,” she said, her voice raised. “No way. That’s not right!”
William looked at Emeline. “Nothing about this situation is right,” he said.
Cecelia said, “You double-checked everything with Kent?”
Sylvie nodded. It was remarkable how deeply they all trusted Kent. He was a sports doctor—not even a general practitioner, and certainly not an oncologist—but they all called him when they had a bad fever or texted him a picture of a cut on the back of a hand to get his opinion on whether stitches were required. Doctor was an unshakable identity, and Sylvie and her family, and all of Kent’s many friends, showed him their wounds and symptoms with a look that said, Can you fix me?
Emeline paced around the kitchen. Cecelia wiped tears off her cheeks, and more came.
“It was supposed to be me,” Emeline said, in a hard voice.
Sylvie and Cecelia stared at her. “Why?” Cecelia said.
“I’m supposed to be Beth, out of all of us. Not you. I always knew I would die first.” Her voice grew quieter. “Beth and I even have the same personality,” she said. “I’m the quiet one, the homebody.”
Sylvie stared at her sister with wonder. Emeline had apparently written a narrative for her own life, and Sylvie had just erased the ending. Emeline must have thought this would be the case since they were little girls. She’d always mothered and protected her sisters, and that meant taking the pain for herself. If there was a bullet, Emeline wanted to step in front of it. She had planned to do so and hated that there could be any other result.
“Oh, Emmie,” Sylvie said. “I’m sorry.”
William said, in a hesitant tone, “Isn’t Beth a fictional character?”
“This is awful,” Cecelia said.
“We can’t bear it,” Emeline said.
A great weariness ran through Sylvie, as if her blood had grown heavy. She thought, We felt that way when Julia moved away. But we got used to her absence, which means you’ll get used to mine too.
* * *
—
Later that night, Sylvie sat in bed with a book open in her lap. She was too sleepy to read, but the proximity of the book was comforting. Telling her sisters had required more strength than she’d had, and she was relieved it was over. William was lying next to her; he’d gotten into bed without a book. If he didn’t have the attention span or desire to read, he wouldn’t pretend to. Sylvie had always admired this about her husband. She carried a book at all times—to read, yes, but also as a handy shield for when she wanted to deflect the attention of other people. She would position a book in front of her face and think, or simply hide. For William, a book was picked up only when he wanted to read the contents.
“You and your sisters have so many reference points, such a dense history,” William said. “I never get used to it.”
Sylvie studied his face. She saw something new there, a suggestion that he was considering a long-ago piece of his own history. A reference point of his own. She said, “Are you thinking about your sister?”
William gave his smallest smile. “How could you tell? I haven’t thought of her in…” He paused. “A very long time.”
Sylvie thought, I just knew. She was aware that she had recently begun to think instead of speaking out loud, as if the two were the same thing. As if both carried the same weight and crossed the same distance.
William seemed to hear her, though; he nodded. “I was remembering when I was in high school and I broke my leg. That’s the only time I remember thinking about Caroline when I was a kid. I couldn’t play basketball, and I wanted to be gone, like her. But I think…I think I wanted to be gone in part because I wanted to be with her. I didn’t like living in my house without her. It never occurred to me in so many words, but I missed her.” He paused. “I somehow miss her even though I never knew her. Isn’t that strange?”
Sylvie put her hand over his. They had both seen the raw pain on her sisters’ faces today, when Emeline and Cecelia were forced to consider life without Sylvie. It felt true that if one of the four Padavano sisters had died as a baby, the other three would have missed her—and been missing part of themselves—for the rest of their lives.
“It makes sense to me,” she said, and tightened her grip on William’s hand. She remembered holding his frozen hand in the ambulance, decades earlier. She wanted to hold on now, so tight that nothing could pull them apart.
William