“Well, she has a funny way of showing it sometimes.”
“I think she’s just trying to protect you.”
“And I think you should probably get some sleep. It’s been a long day. It’ll be even longer tomorrow.” Caroline climbed reluctantly to her feet. While part of her desperately wanted to stay, another part of her recognized the danger of getting too attached. Could she really afford to lose another daughter, even one that was never really hers?
“Do you have any old pictures?” Lili asked before she reached the door.
In answer, Caroline changed direction and went to the walk-in closet opposite the sofa bed. She pulled open the bottom drawer of the built-in dresser and removed three old photo albums, two of which she’d rescued from the garbage bin at her mother’s house right after her father had moved out. Lili immediately cast aside the pillow she’d been holding to gather the albums in her lap. She opened the top one, her arm brushing against Caroline’s and sending a spasm of chills throughout Caroline’s body, like an electric shock.
A young man and woman stared up at them from the first page of the album, their arms uncomfortably resting around each other’s waists, their faces blank. “Are these your parents?” Lili asked.
“That’s the happy couple, all right.”
“Your dad’s really good-looking.”
“Yeah. He was.” The sight of her father brought tears to Caroline’s eyes. Or maybe it was the feel of Lili’s shoulder pressing against hers. She ran a gentle finger over her father’s handsome face.
“He’s dead?”
“Long time ago.”
“Your mother never remarried?”
Caroline shook her head, burrowing even closer into Lili’s side as she turned the page. “I haven’t looked through these albums in years.”
A large photograph of Caroline’s mother holding a baby filled the center of the next page. Mary was wearing a pink-and-white-striped sundress, and her hair was styled in the familiar tight helmet of curls she still sported today. The baby in her arms was maybe three months old and almost totally bald. “Is that you?”
“It is. Apparently I was hairless for almost a year. My mother actually took me to the doctor to make sure I wasn’t…follically challenged.”
Lili turned toward Caroline and smiled. “Hard to believe you didn’t have hair. It’s so beautiful now.”
“Thank you. So is yours.” She fought the almost overwhelming impulse to run her hand through Lili’s blue-tipped, shoulder-length hair.
“It’s really different than my mother’s…than Beth’s,” Lili said, using the woman’s given name for the first time. “Her hair is much coarser than mine, much curlier. Even curlier than your mom’s. And it’s darker.”
“And your father?”
“He was like you were…follically challenged. Even before the chemo.” She fell silent, casually examining the next several pages: pictures of Caroline as a baby in her father’s arms, as a toddler walking with him along the ocean’s edge, then sitting proudly beside him as he held his newborn son. “And this is obviously your brother.”
“Yeah. He was a beautiful baby. Lots of hair.”
“Are these all of him?” Lili flipped through the rest of the album till the end. “Where are you?”
Caroline pointed to the picture on the very last page. “I think that’s my arm.”
Lili chuckled and opened the second album. It was filled with photographs of Steve: Steve with his mother, with his father, with both parents. There were some pictures of the whole family, although Steve was always the focus. Even when Caroline was included, she was somehow separate—standing aloof and apart, she couldn’t help notice.
Lili opened the last album, the one Caroline had put together herself. “There you are,” Lili said, indicating a picture of Caroline in a long mint green dress standing beside an awkward-looking boy in a dark blue suit.
“Oh, God. My senior prom. Me and Michael Horowitz. I was about your age.” She stared at the picture, then over at Lili, then back at the picture, hoping to see the resemblance her mother had been so sure of.
“What do you think?” Lili asked, clearly thinking the same thing.
“Hard to tell.”
“I don’t really see it.”
“Well, it’s not the greatest picture. Green isn’t exactly my color.”
The next pictures were of Caroline’s wedding.
“Wow—you and Hunter are sure a gorgeous couple.”
“I guess we were,” Caroline agreed.
“Did you get divorced because of me? Because of what happened with Samantha, I mean?”
Another question Caroline had asked herself repeatedly. Would she and Hunter have divorced had Samantha never been taken from them? Or had what happened only speeded up the process? “I think it was bound to happen sooner or later.”
“Because Hunter was cheating on you?”
“You know about that?”