Chapter Eighteen
Micah
I FIND MYSELF AT VICTOR’S OFFICE, HOPING TO GET SOME clarity.
Being home doesn’t feel right.
There should be more. While I couldn’t be happier with how things went in Colorado, Tanya’s scavenger hunt feels … unfinished.
Everything we’ve learned, everything we’ve seen, all that to end with a mini vacation? It just doesn’t seem like how she would end things.
Maybe she ran out of time. Maybe the illness made it so she couldn’t finish it the way she wanted to.
“Micah, come on in,” Victor says, walking around his desk and greeting me with a handshake.
“How’s it going, Victor?”
“Just fine. Have a seat,” he instructs, lightly running his fingers over the glass-covered rose on his bookshelf as he takes a seat. “Something on your mind?”
A lot of things. “I’m just—I’m trying to understand, I guess.”
“Understand what?”
“Why the ending of Tanya’s quest feels so sudden. Are you sure there weren’t any other clues for us to follow? Any more videos to watch?”
He leans back in his chair, tapping his fingers along the top of his desk. “Care for a game of chess?” he asks.
Confused, I agree, watching as he pulls out a wooden chessboard that looks awfully similar to the one in Tanya’s home.
He glances at me as he sets the pieces up on the board. “I’ve given you every clue I had to give you.”
He doesn’t say there aren’t any more clues, just that he’s given us all the ones he had to give us. Did we miss something in Colorado?
“Do you think that maybe you just didn’t want it to end? No matter the circumstance, it must’ve been nice hearing her voice again.”
Well, of course part of me wants to continue in the hopes that we’ll get one last video message from Tanya.
One final chance to see her face and hear her voice.
But that’s not the reason I feel unsettled.
My gut is telling me this isn’t over. Victor knows more than he’s letting on, but I suppose it’s not time for me to know.
“Did she leave any videos for you?” I’m not sure why I ask or even if I should, but I find myself more curious about Victor and Tanya’s relationship.
He takes his move, the ghost of a smile on his face. “She left me one.”
“And how many times have you watched it?” I consider my options carefully before deciding to move one of my pawns.
He opts to castle kingside, which leaves me reconsidering my approach. “More times than I can count,” he says.
Right. “Does it help? Hearing her voice?”
He nods solemnly. “It does. But it helps more knowing she’s at peace. At the end. It had been a tough road, but on the day she passed, it was like all the suffering ceased to exist. She was happy. Do you want to know what her last words were?”
My heart is beating out of my chest, waiting. Dani will want to hear them too. She’ll be so happy to know Tanya wasn’t alone in the end.
I tip my head forward. “Yes.”
“She said, ‘They’re gonna be alright.’”
I won’t make a liar out of you, Tanya.
After I beat Victor in two of our three games of chess, I leave.
I start to head to the gallery, but Bailey texts me that she won’t be in today because she’s having an MS day.
On its face that’s not concerning. Multiple sclerosis can rob you of the strength in your muscles.
It does in Bailey’s case, at least. It’s been hard to see my baby sister go through this, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that sometimes the fatigue wins and she has to allow her body the time to rest.
Bailey’s apartment is shrouded in darkness when I walk in. That’s not surprising because she lives like a vampire most of the time, but the silence is off-putting.
Bailey can never sit in silence. The sounds of music or TV are always booming through the halls of her place.
She usually has her AirPods in at the office so she can constantly listen to whatever playlist or podcast she wants.
She can’t even sleep without some kind of sound playing, so the overarching quiet doesn’t sit right with me.
She’s not on her couch, so I rush back to her bedroom, not even bothering with knocking before barging in.
“Now why the hell would you be sitting here like that?” Her weird ass is under the covers, sitting straight up with her arms folded across her chest.
“Because I knew your Papa Smurf head ass was gonna come over here, and I wanted to hear you coming. I was about to fall back asleep, so I’m glad you came when you did.
I needed my bit to pay off.” She pushes a button on her phone and a cover from Vitamin String Quartet starts playing through her speaker.
I laugh when she turns over and pretends to snore.
“But forreal, you tired, sore, or both?”
She sighs. “I’m exhausted like no amount of sleep will fix it and my legs feel really heavy. But do not start doing the most. I just need to rest. I don’t need you to do a damn thing.”
“So you don’t want the salad I got you from DiPasquale’s?”
She blinks one eye open and sits up again. “Well, go on and get it. I can’t, I’m simply too weak.” She holds the back of her hand up to her forehead and sighs dramatically.
I grab a sweater off the chair in her room and launch it at her.
“You do know you don’t have to come over every time I’m MSing, right?
” she asks, not looking at me as she bites into a piece of eggplant from her salad.
Not long after she was diagnosed, she started referring to having flare-ups as “MSing.” She found that it was easier to explain her symptoms to us when she related them to PMS symptoms.
Of course I know I don’t have to come over for every rough day, but she’s my baby.
I know she can take care of herself, but it’s my job to protect her.
She has a habit of not asking for help, so I like to see her face-to-face to know if she’s being honest with me and herself about how she’s feeling.
“I know, Franky. Pass me the remote.” This is our normal routine when she has an MS day.
I come over with food, she reminds me I don’t have to do that while eating; I turn on One Piece for us to watch until she falls asleep; and then I clean around her house and take stock of things she needs so I can make a store run.
She tosses the remote at me, still chomping away at her salad. “Let’s watch the Marineford Arc. I could use a good cry,” she says around a mouthful.
I’ve seen all the episodes of One Piece only because I’ve been watching it since it came out in the nineties. Bailey hasn’t because we tend to skip around, ignore some filler episodes entirely, and revisit her favorite arcs rather than progressing.
I settle into her swivel chair, which is probably the most comfortable chair I’ve ever sat on, and she moves the remnants of her salad over to her nightstand, sinking deeper into bed.
I expect her to audibly sigh when Ace meets Shanks the way she does every time we watch these episodes, but she doesn’t. Instead, she’s watching me warily.
“You good?” I pause the TV.
“Why didn’t you tell Dani about my MS?”
The question knocks me so off guard, I have to blink slowly to process. “Wait, what?”
She pushes herself up farther, flopping her hands in her lap. “Why didn’t you ever tell Dani about my MS? Weren’t you two dating or whatever when the signs first started showing?”
All those years ago, when Bailey’s symptoms were—rightfully so—scaring the shit out of her, I made the decision to come home from New York and help her find out what was going on.
I didn’t tell Dani because I didn’t know what to say.
I was scared too. We didn’t know what was going on with Bailey, why her legs were failing her at random times and why her vision kept getting drastically worse, and the doctors we went to either couldn’t figure it out or didn’t care to listen to her complaints.
Our mom and dad wanted to drop everything to take care of her.
Our mom was ready to walk away from the daycare center she dedicated her life to in order to spend every minute of every day running Bailey back and forth to different hospitals.
When she wasn’t doing that, she was helping our dad, who had injured his knee badly at work and needed surgery and then months of physical therapy.
I couldn’t let my mom give up the center and watch her and Bailey stretch themselves thin, so I took over.
I moved Bailey in with me to keep an eye on her.
I took her to doctor after doctor, fighting with everyone who tried to turn us away.
I stayed up all hours of the night, letting Bailey cry on my shoulders because she thought her dreams of becoming a dancer were being stripped away.
And through all of that, it never seemed right to tell Dani what was going on. With her, I felt pure bliss. Long distance was challenging, confined to mere phone calls and texts, and I didn’t want to spend what little time we had drowning her in my fears.
By the time Bailey was diagnosed, Dani had long removed herself from my life. It’s been weeks since Dani learned about Bailey’s MS and I had no idea Bailey was harboring these emotions, but I feel awful.
I tell Bailey all this and her posture relaxes with every word.
“That makes sense,” she says.
“Did you think I was embarrassed of you or some shit?” I ask incredulously.
“A little.” She shrugs when I balk at the ridiculous suggestion.
“I mean I remember you telling me about Dani. You never said as much, but you had it bad. I’ve never seen you like that.
You were prepared to move to New York just to give the two of you a real shot and I remember being jealous that I wasn’t gonna see my brother every day.
And when you came home, you talked about her less and less, then not at all.
You never told me why things ended between you, but I was sad because you had been doing so much for me, and then you lost the thing that was just for you. ”
I never told her because I didn’t want her to blame herself. It wasn’t her fault, or Dani’s. It was mine.