“No, he didn’t cheat on me.”
“But you’re not together?”
“He hasn’t told you anything?”
She shook her head. “I could tell, but he didn’t seem to want to talk about it. And then with Betsy and Joey home, and more home nursing people here, we really haven’t had a lot of chances.”
I told her the story. I felt kind of shitty doing it—it wasn’t my place to tell her Stick had knocked up somebody. But it just seemed…right that Caro know. She’d been such an instrumental part of Stick and me even being together.
“And so you’re wondering if you’ll be able to accept Stick’s baby like I tried to do with you?”
“No. I mean, it won’t come to that. He ended it. I won’t have the opportunity to even see if I could…be a part of his life with the baby.”
“Do you want to be?”
Yes.“I don’t know,” I said. “It probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway.”
She looked at me for a long time, then leaned back against the headboard and closed her eyes. “You don’t believe that. And neither do I,” she said quietly.
I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. After a moment, I realized she’d fallen asleep. I sat quietly in the chair, watching the woman whom I, at times in my life, hated and loved, admired and feared, but always respected. Even when I thought she might be manipulating me, I respected her.
Because, at the end of the day, her motives were all about doing what she thought was right for her kids and the man she loved. My father.
I looked for Stick when I left, but didn’t see him, and his car still wasn’t in the front of the house.
When I got back to the dorm room, I sat for a long time and thought about Caro and the life she led. But mostly I thought about Stick, and whether I could be as big a person as Caro had been. If I could accept his child with another woman because I loved its father.
It didn’t matter, though, because Stick wasn’t giving me the chance to try.
Lily entered the room. “How’d it go?” she asked as she dropped her backpack on her desk, not really looking at me.
“It…it…” And then I lost it. Started crying. And I meancrying. Like, ugly hiccupping shit.
She was at my side in an instant, sitting next to me on my bed, putting her arms around me, rubbing her hand up and down my back. “It’s okay. I know you thought of her…kind of like a mother. It’s okay.”
I remembered, not so long ago, that I had thought I would never cry about a boy in front of Lily like she’d done when Lucas and she had broken up. I knew Lily thought I was crying about Caro, and part of me was. But most of the tears were about Stick.
I let Lily comfort me, not even embarrassed that she saw me being so emotional.
For some odd reason, I thought about my mother. And the fact that I had one thing she never had—a best friend.
* * *
Three days later,I got the call from Grayson that Caro had passed that morning. In a weird twist of fate, I received a letter from her that afternoon that she’d sent two days earlier. She must have written it right after my visit.
It was on her monogrammed notecards; the handwriting was shaky, but definitely Caro’s. It was only two lines.
His name is Patrick Dooley.
And he loves you.
Chapter32
Jane
Later that dayI called my mother and told her that Caro had died. I also told her I had done an interview with Caro and my father before her death and that I would be involved in his campaign during the summer. She already knew that my father was running for office, of course, so them involving me wasn’t a big shock for her.
I didn’t tell her about spending nearly every afternoon for the past two months at the Strattons’. There didn’t seem to be any point now, and I honestly didn’t know what that information would do to her. The news of Caro’s death confused her enough as it was. I could tell she was torn between wanting to call my father and giving him space. Probably trying to strategically play her cards. I was guessing she’d long seen Caro as the only obstacle between her and getting my father back.
