“Why aren’t you with her? You clearly love her.”
Alice flinches away from the wordlove,but she knows she’s not fooling anyone. Even Sebastian would call bullshit on her, if he were paying attention and knew those words, and that kid is remarkably easy to fool. The new hot dog had the same number of bites missing as his old one and the dude was not at all suspicious. This is possibly a new low for Alice.
She swallows and remembers that she and Isabella have pledged to be honest with each other and love each other no matter what, so she might as well go ahead and admit that she’s a terrible person. “She’s sick, Bella. She has MS.”
“Oh,” Bella says, her face falling, and Alice feels it deep in her guts. “Shiitake.”
“Yeah.”
But Bella’s expression turns suddenly businesslike. “This has officially become an after-bedtime conversation,” she says, putting some cut-up blueberries in front of Hazel that the toddler immediately smacks across the table.
“Mo chiss!” Hazel demands, her hands balled into pudgy little fists, and Alice can’t help but agree with her. She could use a lot more cheese herself.
Alice would have preferred to talk about this with the distraction of Sebastian loudly telling a story to his hot dog. That would make it seem like less of a big deal—any conversation interrupted by trips to the potty and fake curse words can’t be that serious, right? Alice can’t have totally fucked up her life if it’s more pressing to pry cheese out of Hazel’s fat, clenched fingers. But stupid Isabella is out here ruining all of Alice’s plans to be avoidant. Alice considers bailing for a half second,but she came over to unload all of this on Bella, and she resigns herself to doing it on Bella’s terms. She wants to talk it through like a big girl, but she can’t help feeling, as Hazel wriggles off her lap and knocks the milk over again, like she’s in trouble.
After an eventful playtime, bath time, and bedtime, Isabella collapses onto the living room couch with two glasses of wine. Alice is wearing one of Bella’s shirts now because Sebastian splashed so much in the bath that she got soaking wet, and Hazel fell asleep on top of Alice halfway through her first book, her chubby thumb in her cute little mouth, so even this shirt has a big drool spot.
“So,” Isabella says. “Van has MS.”
Alice takes one of the glasses from her. “Yeah.”
Isabella looks like she’s trying to see through Alice, to x-ray her feelings. “I see how that could trigger some stuff for you,” she says, and Alice gets the impression she’s choosing her words carefully.
“That’s a nice way of putting it,” Alice mumbles, and Bella almost smiles.
“But are you, um…” Isabella bites her lip and takes a sip of her wine, and Alice’s chest is so tight that she can’t breathe easily. “Are you sure that’s enough of a reason to not be with her?”
Alice blinks a couple times. “I—yes? I mean, I can’t…Iknow it makes me the worst person in the world but I…” She’s talking too fast. The words are flying out of her mouth and her heart is racing and her tongue feels dry. She takes a gulp of wine, which helps with literally none of those problems. “I can’t watch someone else I love wither away and die, Bella. I just can’t.”
It’s the most true thing in her life. Watching her mom die was agony, sharp and blindingly painful. And then her daddied for her entire childhood and adolescence. The most formative eleven years of her life were buried under blood oxygen levels and white blood cell counts and a deep, hacking, wet cough she still hears in her nightmares. Losing her mom over that long, terrifying month would have scarred her for the rest of her life, but the way her dad died, slowly losing piece after piece of himself until there was nothing left but a skeleton covered with ashen gray skin wearing a gruesome approximation of her dad’s face—no. There’s no coming back from that.
It’s a miracle she survived the first time, the second. She absolutely cannot do that again.
“I don’t think there’s a lot of…withering…with MS,” Bella says, almost like she’s apologizing for having to push back against this most tender of spots. “One of Henry’s uncles has it, and he’s, like, mostly okay.”
Alice shrugs. “For now.”
“Yeah,” Bella says quickly, almost like she’s trying to pacify Alice. “For now. But…for a long time now. He’s in his sixties, and he uses a cane and one of his eyes doesn’t work great, but he’s not…you know.” She shrugs. “He’s not dying, Rue Rue.”
That should feel heartening, but Alice shakes her head, swallowing hard. “But there’s no guarantee Van would be like that,” she says. “Something bad could happen to her literally any day.” The furtive, middle-of-the-night googling has been clear on that.
Isabella doesn’t say anything right away, and Alice realizes this feels kind of like being in therapy with her third therapist, who would pause after Alice offhandedly said something super fucked up and quietly wait for Alice to hear it herself.
Finally, Isabella speaks. “Something bad could happen to me tomorrow,” she says, soft and gentle like Alice is a skittish animal. “I could be hit by a truck, instantly paraplegic. Wouldyou…” She hesitates for a second, and then she says, “Would you still love me?”
“Of course I would,” Alice says, almost snapping. “But that’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because it is!” Alice realizes she’s raised her voice, and she takes a few deep breaths to calm herself down. Just because she’s triggered right now doesn’t mean she needs to be, like, so loud about it. “Because you’re my cousin. My family.”
“What if it were Nolan?” Isabella asks quietly. “What if you got with him for real, and then in a couple years he ended up having another brain injury. Would you leave him?”
“I—” The idea of being with Nolan feels so foreign to her now, like trying to put on a jacket she’d loved in high school and now realizes is hideous and several sizes too small. “I don’t know.”
“Or if Van were healthy—no MS—and then fifteen years down the line she gets breast cancer and needs chemo? What then?”
“I don’t know,” Alice says again, loud enough that Isabella winces, probably worried that Alice is going to wake up the kids. Alice drops her voice, apologetic but still frustrated. “I just don’t know, okay?”
