“She’d known for several weeks. She’d told me,” Mona said, fake eyelashes from the night before starting to peel off, dark makeup smeared. “She refused to go to the doctor. She didn’t know who the father was, and she wasn’t planning on keeping it, but she suspected something was wrong because she kept...”
Mona blinked up at Grandpa, but he just waved at her to keep going. “I’ve heard it before. Tell her.”
“She kept spotting,” Mona said. “And she didn’t feel right. She was worried she was going to miscarry. We fought about it a lot. I was so mad that she wouldn’t do anything about it. Either take care of it or go to the doctor—that’s what I told her.”
“What?” I said, absolutely stunned. This didn’t match up with anything I remembered. “Why wouldn’t she go?”
Mona shook her head slowly. “If I had to guess, I’d say she was running out the clock. I think she hoped it would take care of itself—that she’d miscarry, and then she wouldn’t have to do anything. She’d be absolved from making a decision. You know how much I loved your mother—and still do. But she wasn’t perfect. Lily was brave when she had to be, but she had to be backed into a cornercompletelyand run down the clock until the very last moment before she’d take action. And that time she waited too long.”
I stared at Mona, wiping away stray tears. “She could have lived?”
“We’ll never know,” Grandpa said, emotion brimming in his eyes. “Mona told me this a few months ago, after your grandma passed. I’ve thought about it a lot. I’m not sure I have any answers that will make either of us feel better, but I know one thing that gives me hope.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You have a chance to make different choices.”
I cried a little. Mona held me, and while her arms were around me, I thought about her pregnancy and how she was taking all these tests and following all her doctor’s directions, seeing lawyers, making plans with Leon... asking for help. Everything my mom didn’t do. Maybe my memories of her were nebulous because Mona was doing all the work. Maybe she was more of a mother to me than Lily Lindberg ever had been.
And maybe I forgave Mom for that.
“Okay,” I said firmly, done with crying and hurting. “Take me to the doctor.”
Grandpa stood up from leaning against the counter, hand on his walking cane, and gave me a pleased look. “Good, because I already called Dr. Koval. She’s meeting us at her office in thirty minutes.”
The three of us piled into Mona’s car and drove there together, and I told the doctor everything. About Grandpa’s diagnosis. About my symptoms and how they’d gotten progressively worse since my grandmother died, but especially since I started working at the Cascadia. Dr. Koval asked a million questions, made me fill out a written sleep test, and took a lot of blood. Then she called another doctor in the city for a favor.
That afternoon I called into the hotel to let them know that I had to take emergency leave for a few days. And the next night Grandpa, Aunt Mona, and I walked into the University of Washington’s sleep clinic. The technicians were all very kind, and they set me up for an overnight polysomnography test, in which they hooked me up to machines with wires and monitored my sleep. I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep in a lab, but I surprised myself.
The next morning I went straight into a multiple sleep latency test. For that they put me in room that looked like a bland dorm with IKEA furniture and a private bathroom. They made me take five naps and measured how often I entered REM sleep throughout the day. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I fell asleep, but the tech was always asking me what I dreamed, so I suppose I did.
Between a couple of the tests, I talked to Mona while Grandpa went to the lobby for coffee. “Hanging in there?” she asked, pulling a chair next to mine.
“All this napping is exhausting,” I said, smiling a little.
She smiled back, then said, “Are you mad at me?”
“Why would I be?”
“Because I’ve been a terrible gutsy gal. I kept secrets from you about your mom. I shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry.”
“Why did you?” I asked, suddenly self-conscious. “You could have told me. I understand if you thought I was too young to understand back then, but, you know, it’s been years.”
It took her a long time to answer. “I used to think it was because I didn’t want you to remember Lily in a bad light. Because she made some bad decisions—or didn’t make any decisions at all, I suppose. Which was frustrating. But she was also sweet and wonderful and funny, and people never remember the good things. They remember the bad stuff.”
“I already remembered some of the bad stuff.”
“Not about her, about me,” Mona said. “What if I had told somebody about Lily’s pregnancy? What if I’d called Hugo and urged him to talk to Lily? What if I’d pushed her harder to see a doctor?”
“That’s absurd,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”
“I know that now. But I was worried you wouldn’t. And that you’d shut me out for either making a mistake or keeping that mistake from you all these years. Maybe it sounds stupid, but I think I’ve been afraid you might do what Lily did and just walk away one day.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Darling, I sure hope not. But between your mom and your grandma’s deaths, and everything else that’s happened, I sometimes look at you and see the same coping mechanism I saw in Lily—a girl who protects herself by keeping people at a distance.”
As I glanced at the sleep clinic technicians through a glass window, I thought about Daniel and our fight. He said he didn’t tell me that he knew Darke was his father because he was afraid I’d run away from him. Was this who I was? Someone who ran away when the going got tough? Who pushed people away?
