I shook my head.
Anna smiled at me. She did have a really nice smile. "Haley would like to meet you, if you"re willing," she said.
I stood. Anna put an arm around me as we walked into the hall. It felt like the arm of a stranger. She rested it lightly on my back, the way you"d guide someone you didn"t know well from one room to another. My mother"s voice echoed in my ears. I love you, Grace. I love you so much. I smiled a little to myself.
"My mother said she"s coming here," I said.
"Oh, that"s very good," Anna said. "We need to get some things straightened out, don"t we? How far away is she?"
"She"s in Wilmington...except she said she was already on her way, so I don"t know how close she is. My best friend and her mother are with her." I pictured the three of them driving together.
"Here we are," Anna said. We were back at the door to Haley"s room. "Come on in."
I followed her into the room and stood just inside the door.
"Haley, this is Grace," Anna said. "Grace, this is Haley."
Haley was sitting cross-legged on the bed and she was hooked up to a bunch of bags and poles and wires. She had very short brown hair that had either been shaved that way or was just growing in.
"Hi," I said.
"Wow, you are so not what I expected Lily to look like," she said.
I had the feeling I was disappointing both of them. I clutched my backpack to my chest. "Well, I didn"t expect to have a sister, period." I tried to smile again, but seemed to have lost the ability.
"And you may not have a sister," Anna warned. "Grace"s mom is on her way here, Haley, so we"ll get some answers then. Right now I"m going to call your dad." She glanced at me. "Why don"t you have a seat, Grace?" She pointed toward the couch across the room from Haley"s bed. I walked over to it and sat down, still hugging my backpack. "I"ll be back in a few minutes," Anna said, and then I was alone with Haley. My phone rang again and I pulled it from my backpack and turned the ringer off.
"Maybe that"s your mother," Haley said.
"That"s okay." I wasn"t sure what to say to Haley. I felt sorry for her for being so sick. I knew she was a lot braver than I"d be, hooked up to all that stuff. "How do you feel?" I asked.
"Mom explained the whole thing about the midwife and all that drama," she said, like I hadn"t asked her a question. Her eyes bored into me while she talked. "You look freezing."
I was shivering, though I didn"t think it had anything to do with the temperature in the room. "I"m okay," I said.
"Look under this techno bed," Haley said. "Grab a blanket to wrap up in."
I got up and pulled a blanket from the shelf beneath her bed. It was pale blue and soft and I wrapped it around my shoulders.
"Do you really think you"re my sister?" Haley asked.
"Did your mother tell you about the letter?" I reached into my backpack one more time and pulled out the letter. I handed it to her and watched her read it.
"OmiG.o.d," Haley said when she finished the letter. "This is totally crazy! It would be so cool if it"s real, though. I mean, me and my mom have made it, like, our job to find Lily. I never expected her-you-to just pop up like this."
I took the letter back, folded it in half and slipped it into my backpack.
"What are your parents like?" Haley asked. "The people who raised you? Did you ever feel like you didn"t belong?"
"All the time," I said, although it wasn"t quite the truth, was it? I"d belonged to my father, just not my mom. "I never felt like "oh, I"m adopted" or anything like that," I said. "But I don"t get along with my mother at all."
"What about your father?"
"He died in a car accident in March. One of my mother"s students-she"s a teacher-killed him because she was texting while she was driving."
"Holy s.h.i.t," Haley said. "That"s so terrible!" A machine on one of the poles next to her bed started beeping and she turned off the sound with a push of a b.u.t.ton, like it was no big deal. "I never really knew my father until now," she said. "I mean, I knew who he was and everything, but he left when I was little. When I got sick this time, he sort of showed up. I actually like him. I mean, I"m p.i.s.sed at how he wasn"t around for most of my life, even though he sent money and everything, but Mom says he was just really immature and he couldn"t take it when I got sick so he just pulled out of the picture. First Lily disappeared and my mom was sick and all that was hard for him to handle, and then I got sick and it was too much for him, which totally screwed up my respect for him. I mean, my mom didn"t have the luxury of walking out, right? But he"s back now and he"s trying to be a dad. He"s doing this big drive to try to find bone marrow donors for me."
"He"s my father, too," I said, still shivering beneath the blanket.
"If you"re Lily, then, yeah," she said.
I thought of how that must feel to Haley. She finally got a relationship going with her father and then this strange girl shows up to claim part of him. "I didn"t ask for this," I said. "I"m not trying to step on your toes or anything. I just need to-"
"Hey, chill," Haley said. She was smiling. "If you"re Lily, we want you, okay? We"ve prayed to find you. Or, at least, I have. My mom doesn"t really pray, but I"ve been looking for you since I was a little kid."
"How old are you?" I asked.
"Almost thirteen."
I couldn"t believe she was more than three years younger than me. She was pale and a little puffy and it was clear she was sick, but she seemed so together. So confident and sure of herself, like Jenny. I already felt in compet.i.tion with her and I"d known her five minutes. "You"re so...you"re not like me at all," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"You"re very...you seem more like my mother. I mean the mother who raised me. You"re more like her than I am. You seem really positive and outgoing."
Haley shrugged. "I"m not always so positive," she said. "I can get majorly depressed. Like, I"ve been on antidepressants a million times. But I"ve got hope, with a capital H. That"s my middle name. I mean my actual middle name is Hope. I"ve had leukemia before and went into remission. I think this time, though, hope"s not going to be enough." She glanced up at one of the bags hanging from the pole next to her bed. "This disease sucks."
"I"m sorry," I said. "Your mother said a bone marrow transplant could help you."
"Only we can"t find a donor. She"s hoping that if you"re Lily, you might be a match."
"I know," I said.
"My mom always hoped she"d find Lily," she said. "She looked for her everywhere. She never gave up looking for her. We went to Wilmington a bunch of times, just looking for someone who looked like me."
"I"ve been there the whole time," I said.
"What"s your life been like?" Haley asked.
"My life"s been..." I had to stop and think, the question catching me off guard. I thought of my house, always obsessively neat with the exception of my room. I thought of how Jenny and I redecorated our bedrooms during the summer, filling them with color and polka dots as we talked about Cleve and Devon and laughed our b.u.t.ts off. I thought of how Daddy and I would invent elaborate coffee drinks together. I remembered how people brought us food for weeks after he died. With an ache in my heart, I thought of how my mother always planned my birthday parties down to the color of the sprinkles on the cake. That"s the way she shows her love, Gracie. I thought of growing up with Jenny and Emerson and Ted and even Noelle as my extended family. Of Wilmington and everything I loved about it, from the Spanish moss hanging on the live oaks to the Riverwalk to the little park in my neighborhood. And suddenly, I couldn"t imagine my life without all of that. All of the good and the bad that made up my existence. It seemed so wrong to be glad that Noelle had stolen me, yet in that moment, I was glad.
How could I possibly explain all that to someone who didn"t know all the people and places in my world? "My life"s been, you know, the usual," I said weakly. "Some good and some bad."
"I hope you"ll get tested," Haley said. "I wouldn"t blame you if you didn"t want to be, though. I mean, you just show up and meet your real family and they all grab you and go after your body parts." She laughed and I wrapped the blanket even more tightly around myself.
"Your mother said just a cheek swab or something like that," I said.
"Right. First it"s only the cheek. Then if you match up with your cheek cells, they look at your blood. And then if that"s a match, you have to have surgery to remove some of your bone marrow, but I don"t think it"s all that bad. Not as bad as what they"ll put me through. They"ll do chemo and radiation to kill off my whole immune system so I don"t reject the bone marrow. But it"s, like, my only chance."
I thought of my father and the way I"d felt when I learned he died-how it seemed like there should have been something I could do to bring him back to us, if only I could think of what it was. I thought of the email I"d mistakenly sent to Noelle that might have caused her to take her life. This time, maybe there was something I could do to save someone. Something hard and horrible, but good and right. It would mean needles and scalpels and probably staying in the hospital overnight. But maybe I could save a life. My sister"s life.
The thing was, I wanted my mother with me before I"d let them touch me.
I wanted to hear my mother tell me that everything would be okay.
52.
Anna Oh, s.h.i.t, I was afraid.
I sat near the hospital coffee shop and dialed Bryan"s cell phone number with trepidation so deep and wide I felt as though it might drown me. Bryan had only recently found the courage to move back into our lives. He was only now finding his footing with the two of us. Now this. I was afraid he would run again. Maybe stay in California. I reminded myself that he was not the man he"d been back when Lily disappeared. Not the man he"d been when Haley first got sick. He"d grown up. He was solid. Or was I kid ding myself? I worried that I was only imagining that he was the man I wanted him to be. An even greater worry right now was that I"d allow myself to believe the girl in Haley"s room was truly Lily and then have those hopes dashed yet again. I"d taught Haley never to give up hope, yet I knew the truth: hope could lead you down the garden path.
I"d dared to leave Haley and Grace together for the time it would take to make this call. I had to talk to him before Grace"s mother arrived. I just couldn"t hold on to this revelation alone any longer.
"Hey," Bryan answered. "Everything okay?" Oh, the warmth in that voice! I was so afraid of losing that warmth. I was afraid that whatever Bryan and I had recaptured between us would be gone in a few moments" time.
"Yes," I said. Nothing was okay, of course, but I knew what he meant. He meant, Nothing"s changed for the worse with Haley, has it? And nothing had.
"Something unbelievable"s happened," I said.
"Uh, unbelievably good or unbelievably bad?"
"A girl showed up at the hospital today claiming to be Lily."
He said nothing and I wondered what the words meant to him. Was he as afraid of hope as I was?
"Who is she? What"s her game? Do you think all the publicity-"
"I don"t know." I cut him off. "She has this letter with her." I told him about the letter. About the date of birth on her driver"s license. "I don"t think anyone put her up to this," I said. "But something doesn"t feel right about it. I can"t put my finger on it. Her mother is on her way here from Wilmington. Apparently, the girl-her name is Grace-found all this out from a friend and took off with out telling her mother. Her father is dead."
He was quiet, taking it all in. "Have you spoken to the mother?" he asked finally.
"Not yet. Bryan, the girl"s willing to be tested to see if she"s a match."
"Do you believe she"s really Lily?"
"I don"t know what to believe. I... Of course I want her to be but she doesn"t look like I imagined Lily looking. She doesn"t look like either of us and nothing like Haley. She"s beautiful and seems like a nice kid, but-"
"Where is she now?"
"With Haley."
"You let her meet Haley?" His voice told me he didn"t approve, but I felt confident I"d done the right thing.
You still don"t really know your daughter, I wanted to say to him. "I explained it all to Haley. I told her my doubts. She wanted to meet her."
"Look, I"ll get a flight back tonight," he said. "The interview went great today and I have one scheduled with a higher-up tomorrow morning, but I"ll tell them I have a family emergency and need to-"
"No, don"t," I said. "Stay there and do the interview. I can handle things here."
"You"ve been handling everything alone for ten years," he said. "I want to be there."
"All right," I said. "I"d better get back to the room. Call me when you know what time you"re getting in."
I hung up the phone and walked back to Haley"s room, a small smile on my lips. He was coming home.
53.
Tara I must have dialed Grace"s number ten times from the car before she finally picked up.
"Stay on the phone with me!" I said to her. "Please. Just stay on until I get there."
"I don"t have that many minutes, Mom. It"s one of those prepaid phones. As soon as you get here, I need you to give them permission to get a test to see if I"m a match for this girl who"s my sister. Do you...do you know about her? Haley? She has leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant and they need to see if I"m a match."
I was horror-stricken. What were they doing to my daughter? I had never thought of her as so vulnerable, so in need of me, as I did at that moment.
"Grace." I kept my voice far calmer than I"d thought possible. We needed a lawyer. I wished Ian would check his d.a.m.n voice mail. "Slow down, honey, please. I need to get there and talk to...the medical staff and everyone. You may feel as though you know these people but you don"t. We don"t. You are my daughter." I bit off each word. "Do you understand that? And you do not have my permission for anyone to lay a hand on you. When I get there, we"ll sort everything out."
Emerson took her eyes from the road to glance at me. "What"s going on?" she asked.
"She could die," Grace said, but I knew that voice. She was afraid. She wanted me to say no. To protect her. I knew my daughter better than I"d realized.
"I"ll be there in... How close are we?" I asked Emerson.
"Very close," Emerson said. "Depending on this d.a.m.n traffic."
"Minutes," I said to Grace. "I"ll be there in minutes, honey."
"Mom? I don"t know what to do."
My eyes brimmed with tears. "I"ll take care of it, Grace. We"ll work this out together."
I didn"t want to let her off the phone but she was gone before I could say another word. I turned off my phone and looked at Emerson.