“Are you hungry, sweetheart?” Mom asked.
Of course I wasn’t. The idea of food made me sick to my stomach, but I knew what’d I get if I refused. I’d get that look from Dad, as if he were saying “Of course you’re hungry, but you think you have to say you’re not so you can keep up appearances for your mom.”
In a strange way, I could take it as a compliment that my dad thinks I’m far more crafty and clever than I really am, that I can think ten moves ahead like a chess player just to keep everyone fooled.
I compromised and agreed to a cup of Mom’s chicken soup, the only thing I could stomach these days. Even though I had agreed to some food, I could tell my dad wasn’t really convinced I wanted to eat. He knew that after I finished slurping unenthusiastically at the broth, I would send a pile of carrots and chicken down the disposal. It was as though he knew I was doing it to appease him, so he’d think I wasn’t playing any games—which, of course, is a game.
While waiting for the soup, I got my phone and checked out the Likes on a “get well soon” Instagram post that Addy had made, alerting the world that, once again, Meghan Gerard had been in the hospital. I noticed the Likes weren’t as many as when I first got sick. Same as my father, social media had a limit as to how long it would care.
“Need anything?” Dad said before kissing the top of my head.
Yes! I wanted to scream. I need you to pull me into your arms and tell me everything is going to be all right. I need your reassurance that someday soon, I’ll be able to kick a soccer ball around and not feel the ground drop out from under my feet. I need your love and unconditional support. But, most of all, I need you to believe me.
Those were my thoughts, but the only words I managed were: “No thanks, I’m fine.”
“I’m going to go to bed, then,” my dad said, giving me that look again.
As an objective observer, I got his problem. After all this time, there should have been some kind of diagnosis to explain my headaches, muscle weakness, heart palpitations, weight loss, my trouble concentrating, my general malaise—a word my mom uses with pretty much every doctor we see. I should be bedridden in a hospital, but I’m not sick enough to even get admitted. I’m not sick in any measurable way that he could understand. My dad thought if it could be measured, then it could be cut into a recognizable shape, and then, and only then, could it be put into its proper place. But my blood work was fine. My labs were fine. My vitals were fine. Everything about me was fine. But even though my tests said that I was fine, they couldn’t tell how I was actually feeling.
Nobody but me could feel what was happening inside my body when my arms and legs went tingly while kicking around a soccer ball. My dad wasn’t looking out of my eyes when I saw sunshine one second, blackness the next. But he could judge me based on those damn numbers, those stupid test results. He thought I was trying to get attention, or make my mom happy, or whatever. That’s the vibe I got from him. That’s the look he gave me. It wasn’t disappointment. It was a look of disbelief. He thought my biggest secret was that I was faking it. But we both knew that wasn’t true.
My biggest secret was that I knew his.
CHAPTER 5
BECKY
Two days after she brought Meghan home from the hospital, Becky was back in her tidy office that could have been a bedroom for another child if only Carl had gotten his wish. He had been open and honest about his desire to have more children, never fully accepting Becky’s insistence that Meghan would be the only one.
More children meant more chances of something going wrong, because when you lose a child, no matter the circumstances, every day comes with potential new dangers. Playgrounds cause tetanus. Toys are choking hazards. Pets carry disease. A cough portends the flu. A stomachache signals salmonella. Becky feared life’s mishaps and disasters like a child afraid of the dark.
Nobody in Becky’s current orbit knew of Sammy. She never talked of him to her friends. They had moved to Concord when Meghan was still an infant. They bought a quaint colonial, intentionally not sharing their forwarding address or new contact information with former friends and neighbors.
Carl had even changed the name of his business from Gerard Construction to C. G. Home Remodeling to make it more difficult to track them down. Some friends of Carl’s remained in the picture, but for Becky, being a transplant from California had made it easy to create an entirely new life for herself.
The years had gone by in a blur, the small colonial regularly upgraded to bigger, better homes as fortunes improved, but time and distance could not erase the dark and painful memory.
Becky had her therapist and her Xanax, but mostly she had her quiet desperation, a gnawing fear that any day could be the day tragedy visited her again. Becky had tried to continue her real estate venture after Meghan was born, but separation anxiety made it impossible to do the job. She felt silent judgment from other stay-at-home moms who had more kids to juggle, but chances were they’d never set foot inside an eerily quiet nursery or experienced that dreadful knowing.
Becky heard a knock at the door. She spun around in her chair to see Holly in the doorway, a thick file folder of papers in her hand. Holly was petite and fit with straight, dark hair like her twin girls, Addy and Danielle. Becky had never been particularly close to Holly until they’d found common ground in the world of difficult-to-diagnose disease. She’d often complained how it had taken more than a year for doctors to figure out that Addy had Lyme, but at least she got a diagnosis.
“Carl saw me coming up the driveway,” Holly said, “so he let me in. I only have a minute, but I wanted to drop off the folder in person.”
The two women exchanged a quick hug before Becky took Holly’s research on Lyme. She thumbed through the contents cursorily.
“Thank you so much,” Becky said. “I’ll go through this more carefully later.”
Pressed up against a wall near Becky’s desk stood two large metal file cabinets filled with research on various diseases. Eventually, Holly’s folder would find a home in one of those drawers.
“Do you want some wine?” Becky asked.
She probably should have been embarrassed that the bottle was in her office and not the kitchen, but she’d long moved past the give-a-crap stage.
“No, thank you,” Holly said. “I can’t stay. I’ve got to take Sarah to soccer.”
Sarah was Holly’s eldest of her three. She and Meghan used to be good friends as well, but less so since Meghan got sick.
“Any chance Meghan will play next season?” Holly said pleadingly. “The team just isn’t the same without her. They only won a handful of games.”
“No. Definitely no more soccer, at least not until we figure out what’s going on with her,” Becky said a bit more forcefully than intended. “We can’t risk it.”
“Have the doctors come up with anything?” Holly sounded exasperated for her.
“We still don’t know,” Becky said with a sigh.
Becky was grateful for Holly’s help, but now that she had the file folder, there was not much more to say. She had little in common with friends in town anymore—the women with whom she’d once shared chaperone duties, planned birthday parties, attended soccer games, jewelry parties, movie nights, and a host of other experiences that had bound her to them. Their kids were healthy; even Addy had been cured of Lyme. Those kids still played soccer, or did whatever, and Becky often felt the only thing she had in common with her former cohorts was a zip code.