Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
ALICE
When we get home from bingo, I wait until Charlie’s house gets quiet. Then I hide in the bathroom and check my phone. My heart pounds as I get ready to face the family news I’ve been avoiding all day, ever since my brother reminded me about our sister’s appointment.
There are two missed calls from him and one text. I go straight for the text. Medical news is better when it’s quick.
Marcus: It’s official. She has Stargardt’s.
That takes a moment to sink in, but it isn’t a surprise. Our sister Nicki has been slowly losing her vision for over a year. She kept quiet about it for a long time, until her husband left and I showed up on Christmas Eve. But keeping something a secret doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
The diagnosis itself also isn’t a surprise. Stargardt disease is rare, but it’s what her specialist in Dallas suspected for months. He just needed a genetic test to prove it.
There are no treatments or cures, but her condition isn’t fatal. And Nicki always said she’d rather have a known diagnosis than a mystery. That if she had to have something, she at least wanted to know what it was.
I should call her.
Nicki and I have been trying to get her eye condition figured out for months, long before the rest of our family found out anything was wrong. We’ve talked about this moment—her official diagnosis—a dozen times, but suddenly calling her feels impossible. My very own Mount Everest.
So I take the coward’s way out.
Alice: Marcus told me about your appointment. Do you want to talk?
Nicki: No.
Nicki: Thanks, though.
She’s not being harsh or abrupt; she’s just being Nicki. My younger sister has always been our family’s Queen of Secrets—that’s what worries me. Much like last Christmas when I showed up to visit her in Nashville on a whim only to find out her entire world had fallen apart, that girl could watch everything burn down around her and never tell a soul. If she’s taking this news hard, if she needs anything, I’ll never know. Nobody will.
I consider calling her anyway to see how she’s really doing, pulling my Big Sister card whether she likes it or not. Except this is Nicki’s news, her tough day. If she doesn’t want to talk about it, nobody should make her.
When I finally leave the bathroom, Lydia is already asleep. Charlie’s guest room is quiet, but I know I won’t be able to fall asleep too. My stomach is in knots. The same feeling that’s made it impossible to finish a book since Christmas is never going to let me rest.
Tiptoeing downstairs, I slip outside for some fresh air. I can see Muriel’s bed-and-breakfast across the lawn, looming behind a cluster of juniper trees. Jason is over there with Tiffany somewhere, but that doesn’t bother me as much as it should. I always thought he’d be with me when my sister got her diagnosis, that he’d help me through it the way I helped him with his last year of grad school. But it’s probably better this way.
If there’s anything my ex could never handle, it was feelings. And I have a lot of them.
I call my mother instead, a woman who excels at feelings. She’ll know what to say, even if she’s still a little mad at me for keeping Nicki’s eye problems a secret.
“Hey, sweetie,” she says when she picks up. She doesn’t sound mad tonight, not even a little, and my soul exhales.
We talk about the diagnosis, and she promises Nicki is fine. But I can tell she’s worried about her too, that she’s worried about all of us. Stargardt disease is rare, but it’s genetic. If Nicki has it, there’s a one-in-four chance any of us kids could also have it. That it might show up slowly over time, the way it showed up for her.
We don’t talk about that, though, what might be waiting in my DNA. Not even if we’re both thinking about it.
“How’s Emma?” I ask. Because that’s a touchy subject I actually do want to talk about: my other sister, Nicki’s twin.
It’s not the twin part that makes this conversation difficult. Emma and Nicki aren’t identical. She has the same one-in-four chance of getting that eye condition as the rest of us. The situation with Emma is more complicated than that.
My mother hesitates. “She’s…working through some things.”
“Does she still hate me?”
“Hate is such a strong word.”
That means yes.
I guess I understand. I kept a secret from her about her twin for months. If Emma hadn’t figured it out on her own, staging an ambush that would’ve made our father proud, I was never going to tell her.
Nicki swore me to secrecy before she let me in her apartment on Christmas Eve. I promised I’d stay quiet before I even knew what was wrong, and she only agreed to stay with me in Texas if I kept my word. Lying to the rest of our family about her vision loss was a mistake—I knew that all along—I just wasn’t sure what else to do. Nicki was drowning, and I would’ve done anything to keep her afloat.
But none of that matters to Emma. A betrayal is a betrayal.
There isn’t much to say to my mother after that. It isn’t until we hang up that I realize she never asked how I was doing or how things were with Jason, but I don’t mind. What does that matter now?
I stand in Charlie’s yard a little while longer. There’s a hollow ache in my chest I don’t know what to do with, and I can’t bring myself to go inside. Then I hear a strange noise.
The faint hum of an exhaust fan rumbles in the distance. It’s coming from behind Charlie’s house, and I sneak closer. There’s a small white shed perched on the grass, right before his yard dips toward the creek that runs along the edge of his property. With my luck, it’s probably a murder shed.
I don’t have to move closer. But after my sister’s medical news, this is the perfect distraction…except for the part where I’m being stupid and dangerous late at night. Oh, well ? —
It’s time to ignore my feelings and make Poor Choices instead.
Though it doesn’t look like much of a murder hut—that shed is actually pretty cute. Anxiety crackles in my chest anyway as I reach the door. My pulse thudding in my ears as I twist the knob.
It’s unlocked.