A Million Reasons Why Read online

  “You know Mo.”

  Don’t leave me hanging, she’d texted, sweetening her appeal with a GIF of a dangling kitten. Then: I promise not to delight* in the fact that your parents are less than perfect after all. *Outwardly.

  Mo’s inclusion of their signature Asterix dated back to a middle school health class, when they’d taken to passing notes mimicking their antiquated textbook’s footnotes—notations on the reproductive systems that struck them as uproariously funny. By high school, not an unaltered page remained in their yearbooks by the time Caroline and Mo got done with them. The superlatives that featured their friends were Caroline’s favorites.

  Most likely to succeed.*

  *At using the fake ID that looks nothing like any of us—God bless those distracting DDs!

  Walt shuffled toward her in a crouch, his flimsy foam-dart-loaded battle vest swinging over the white button-down he’d worn to work. He came to a stop inches away and blinked at her earnestly through the goggles. “Is the first line item a discussion of how none of this would be possible without your idiot husband’s idiot Christmas shopping?”

  The smacking of three small sets of bare feet across ceramic tile came from the adjacent kitchen, followed by maniacal giggling. They both crouched lower.

  “You’re in luck,” she whispered. “Considering the other husbandly fail on the agenda, that would make me seem petty.”

  “Remind me to thank your dad,” he hissed, and she elbowed him, hard.

  Neither of them knew how to talk about this—how much to analyze or speculate. Walt was not emotionally exempt as he tried to reconcile the family he thought he’d married into with the reality of this particular skeleton closet. He listened in attentive silence as she read Sela’s emails aloud but didn’t volunteer much beyond prodding for her observations—which Caroline either kept vague (I guess she sounds nice? I guess I should write back again?) or kept to herself.

  There was no reason not to have told him about that fraught call with Mom. Caroline had done nothing wrong. But that night, after hanging up the phone, she’d been consumed by tears—and letting him see the raw power such a long-ago betrayal could wield over her seemed unkind. She’d gone to bed early, they’d all been in a hurry come morning, and now …

  “Chaaaaaaarge!” Cries in octaves ranging from soprano to screeching brakes tumbled over the couch, along with a cascade of rubber-tipped darts. Caroline popped up to defend herself, plastic bow in hand, and promptly caught a chair cushion in the face. The force sent her stumbling backward, and Walt grunted as she crashed on top of him.

  The kids roared with laughter, doubling over and dropping their toy weapons with a clatter. The rest of the family might be turning inside out, but these three were her constants. They didn’t seem to have a clue anything was amiss; in fact, it was Dad’s gift of new Nerf for their arsenal that had inspired this battle. They’d been too excited to question why Gramps had come for an unprecedented “sleepover” without Nana.

  “I’m going to pee my pants!” Lucy squealed, bolting bowlegged from the room, and Owen and Riley threw their arms around each other and cackled louder.

  Walt met her eye as they untangled their limbs and grinned. “You really want to tear yourself away from all this and go to happy hour?” He turned so the kids couldn’t see and mouthed, Take me with you.

  She laughed. “I must need to have my head examined,” she said, winking.

  If only it were entirely untrue.

  * * *

  “You’ve never looked up Keaton? Come on. Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  On the patio of their favorite brewery, Caroline and Maureen had pulled a pair of Adirondacks as close as they could stand to one of the blazing firepits. The place was usually uncrowded on weeknights, but tonight the taproom was packed for a new Oktoberfest release. So they’d brought their pints out here, though the sun’s orange-streaked descent was making for the first truly chilly evening of the season.

  “Inhuman.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment on my restraint.”

  Maureen set her beer on the wide arm of her chair, reached into the pocket of her sweater coat, and pulled out her smartphone.

  “What are you doing?”

  Her thumbs were flying across the screen, which she thrust toward Caroline seconds later. “Found him!”

  “No!” Caroline jerked her head away. “That’s not what I—”

  Mo retracted the phone with an eye roll. “Fine. I’ll look for you.” She tapped the screen and smiled. “He looks good. He’s—Holy shit.”

  “What?” Caroline leaned forward involuntarily, then caught herself. “Wait. Don’t tell me. I didn’t look on purpose, Mo. Obviously.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Caro, but you just gave me a ten-minute rundown of your parents’ soap opera–worthy fallout, followed by a twenty-minute rant on how this subsequent injustice could have happened to you.”

  A flush of embarrassment climbed her chest. “Sitting here with you just got me fired up. I mean, you were there that night Keaton came over and, you know. Pulled the plug. You had a front seat for the whole rapid decline.”

  Maureen frowned. “I still consider it my biggest friend fail that I’d already signed another roommate to the lease. When you had to move out anyway…”

  “It wasn’t your fault! But it is why you’re the only one I can vent to. Knowing my mom not only did something to help cause that, but kept it from me? And it’s not like she gave me a play-by-play—it’s driving me crazy not knowing exactly what was said, or how much weight he gave it. I mean, how did she turn him off past the point that he’d just talk to me about it? Give me a chance to set things straight?” She shuddered, as much at her own words as at the memory. “But, you’re right. I’m on a tangent.” She smacked the knees of her jeans. “The game changer is, I have a half sister.”

  Maureen picked up her beer and set her phone in its place, letting the screen go black. The tension holding Caroline’s shoulders eased a little.

  “Do your parents know you’ve been emailing?”

  “I think they’re instituting a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.”

  “Worked great for the military. What could go wrong?”

  “I know. But … I couldn’t not write her.”

  “What’s she like?”

  Caroline took a long, hoppy sip of her pint. “It’s hard to tell over email, but she seems…” She paused, trying to think of how to describe Sela. “Different.”

  “Different how?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. She doesn’t come out and say things the way you or I would. She’ll explain not just that she works from a home office, but that it’s the place she feels most in control of her life. Not just that she likes her work, but that it gives her a way to channel her dreams into something she can see. I think those were her exact words.”

  “Huh. You must have read them more than once.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  A tilt of Mo’s head conceded the point. “What does she do?”

  “Graphic design. She sent me the link to her website—not your average stuff. Creative.”

  “That makes sense, considering.”

  “Yeah. I tried to ask about Rebecca, but she ignored the question. Which is fair. Considering.” This old habit of parroting each other’s speech patterns was more pronounced when they were alone, which wasn’t nearly as often as it used to be. Maureen had a whole brood—her husband, Seth, ten years older, already had two school-age kids from his first marriage when they met, and then they’d had a couple more. Mo called herself the evil stepmother, but Seth’s sons adored her. The kids all got along great with Caroline’s but by numbers alone made for a raucous crew. An uninterrupted conversation was a luxury she and Mo rarely got to enjoy.

  And she was enjoying it, in spite of the strange subject at hand.

  “Any idea what she knows about your dad?”

  “None. She hasn’
t asked, which Walt thinks is weird. But I’m more relieved that she isn’t putting me on the spot. I told her I was corresponding independently of my family’s wishes, and I have never felt so awkward trying to word something. Every way I wrote it sounded awful. Which made it sink in that this is awful, what my parents are doing. In her shoes, I wouldn’t think much of them. I might not ask either.”

  “But she has to be curious.”

  “There are levels of curious. I mean, I’ve never not been curious about Keaton, but that’s not the same as really wanting to know.”

  “So you say. Any idea why she took the DNA test in the first place? I mean, was she looking for you, or did she stumble upon you?”

  “She hasn’t said. But … I’m not sure she’s in a great place right now. She separated from her husband and they have a two-year-old boy. Maybe the timing was right to look for some other connections.” Even this Sela had written in a roundabout way. My husband Doug and I had a severely preterm baby—Brody was born two years ago this fall—and our marriage didn’t survive the challenges. It’s not my favorite topic, but maybe one day if we get to know each other better I’ll fill you in on the sordid details.

  “Divorced with a toddler? Rough. Raised by a single mother, too.”

  “Yeah. Although I don’t know that Rebecca stayed single. Sela hasn’t mentioned any father figure, but … that seems kind of sad.” Unfair was what she wanted to say. Dad had hardly suffered. Regardless of how much Mom had been on to, she’d let him off the hook, right up until she couldn’t. And that had taken decades.

  Then again, what kind of woman would sleep with a friend’s husband—months after the wedding, no less? Rebecca had spent the rest of her life hiding their indiscretion, and now that it was finally in the open, she was no longer here to face it. Caroline wasn’t sure if that made her lucky or the opposite. How would Dad have reacted to Sela if Rebecca were still in the picture?

  If she were, though, maybe Sela wouldn’t have reached out. Caroline would be home right now, none the wiser. Not gossiping about her own parents, not looking up her one that got away, and not contemplating how much she wanted to know about the woman sharing half of her genes.

  “Think you’ll meet her in person?”

  It didn’t take much foresight to realize this would become the question. As Walt pointed out, there was a big difference between exchanging a few curious emails and fading back to neutral versus inviting this woman to be an in-the-flesh part of their family against her parents’ wishes. The implications were so layered Caroline wasn’t sure she could anticipate them all, which made an informed decision seem impossible.

  She was an event director. It was against her nature to go in without knowing the agenda.

  “It hasn’t come up yet. But … I haven’t ruled it out.”

  “Bet Hannah would flip.” Maureen had been calling Caroline’s mom by her first name since long before it was age-appropriate to do so. “Would you rather do it in Brevard? Keep things off your home turf?”

  “Maybe. Although—okay, back to my self-indulgent rambling, I’d worry about running into Keaton. Brevard is a really small town.”

  “No need to worry about that.” Caroline narrowed her eyes, and Maureen tapped her dormant phone. “The answers you refuse to admit you seek are at my fingertips.” Her last words on the subject of Keaton, Caroline remembered now, had been an expression of surprise.

  He looks good. He’s— Holy shit.

  Caroline moaned, squeezing her eyes shut. “Fine. Tell me what you were going to say after holy shit before I change my mind.”

  “I have to tell you. I don’t keep secrets from you. Look what happens when people do.”

  She opened one eye to glare at Mo, then closed it again. “Nothing else, only that. Tell me, and then back away from the profile.”

  “Uh-huh.” She sounded so damn sure Caroline would change her mind.

  “Mo!”

  “Fine. I can set your mind at ease about running into Keaton in Brevard. Because he’s living here. In Cincinnati.”

  Her eyes flew open. “What? Since when?”

  “Guess we’ll never know. I’m backing away from the profile.”

  Caroline ground the heels of her boots into the gravel beneath her chair, furious—not at Maureen but at herself, for still caring.

  “You know what,” Mo said. “You’re not the one looking him up. I used to know him too. You just happen to be sitting close enough to see.” She wasn’t teasing anymore. Still, Caroline didn’t want to get by on a technicality. She was the last member of her family with a clean record.

  Well. Cleanish.

  Maureen slid her Adirondack closer until the arms touched, and Caroline stared at her lap, ashamed but not enough to protest as Mo set her phone between them and began scrolling.

  “A year or two, looks like,” Mo said, then stopped short. “Oh. He got hurt. Bad.”

  Caroline couldn’t stop her eyes from snapping to the screen. It showed a photo of a bare masculine leg stretched on a hospital bed, with screws holding something beneath the skin in place. She winced. “On his bike?”

  “Yeah. Guess that was the end of his involvement with Brevard’s team.” She clicked on the About tab. “He’s assistant athletic director at NKU now—sounds like more of a desk job.” Not Cincinnati proper, then, but Northern Kentucky University, right across the river. “No relationship status.”

  “Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one.”

  “It would be a loss if he didn’t, wouldn’t it? Keaton’s a good guy.”

  She’d thought so, right up until the end, when even in her shock she’d struggled to reclassify him as a jerk, someone who’d so abruptly hurt her. How, she’d asked herself countless times, did he never once reach out to see how I was? Not the morning after he ran out and left her sobbing, or the night after he unpacked in Brevard without her, or the next week, or month, or even year. Her disbelief had ebbed over time but never quite disappeared. She’d tried to convince herself he’d obviously not loved her the way she’d thought, but it never felt true. Meeting Keaton had been the sweetest revelation: She’d looked at him looking back at her and thought, Ohhhhhhhhh. I’m in one of those stories.

  But it hadn’t been the story she’d thought it was.

  Only … maybe it had. Maybe Keaton had been waiting all these years for Caroline to reach out. Maybe she was, in his eyes and unbeknownst to her, the jerk.

  It depended on exactly what Mom had told him. And since she was adamant about not revealing those details, there was only one other person who could.

  “Is it weird that I feel like I might owe him an apology? For whatever Mom said? She didn’t just mess up my plans. She messed up his. It’s possible that all these years, he’s been thinking something about me that isn’t true.”

  “Only one way to know.” Maureen waggled the phone again. “Whatever Hannah did or said, it was pretty messed up for her to intervene at all, even if it was a caught-in-the-moment thing. Let alone without telling you.”

  Caroline raised an eyebrow. “You’re supposed to tell me to leave it alone. That it’s too late to set the record straight.”

  “You’ve already told yourself that. It clearly isn’t working.”

  “That’s why you’re supposed to say it.”

  Mo laughed. “I’m not trying to stir up trouble, looking up Keaton. But I can understand why you’d want closure. For both of you.”

  Caroline stared into the fire. What had started as a blazing lean-to had shifted so that one sturdy log supported all the rest. She watched as it burned from beneath, turning to white ash. If it gave out, the whole pile would go.

  “If it makes you feel better,” Mo said more gently, “I wouldn’t go there if you and Walt weren’t so solid. I agree with Hannah that you’re better off, only because—well, we’ll never know, right? You’re doing well, so we can assume this is how it was supposed to be. If you believe in that meant to be junk.” They both laughed, know
ing full well how many decades of heart-to-hearts they’d devoted to that junk specifically. “It’s understandable, though, to want to know what happened. You said yourself it’s driving you crazy, so why not get his side? Best-case scenario, you find out it had nothing to do with Hannah and feel better. Clear this out of your head so you can focus on Sela, and where you want to go with that.”

  Caroline had to admit Mo had a point.

  “Do you know the last words he said to me? Take care. The kind of thing you say after having a pleasant chat with a stranger waiting for your number to be called at the DMV. Not after a year of the most intense love of your life.”

  Mo raised an eyebrow. “Of your life, huh?”

  Walt was many wonderful things. The sort of husband who could order for Caroline almost anywhere if she was running late and rarely gifted her anything that wasn’t her style. Who could—and, importantly, would—recognize her limits and take over before she cracked. He was the person she most wanted to share any moment with—good, bad, or in between. Walt made her laugh, held her when she cried, made most things subtly, gracefully, better.

  He did not, however, approach relationships the way a racer pounds the pedals—exhilarated, determined, simultaneously in control and free. No moment but this. Nobody but us.

  She’d had intense, once. Walt was not it.