The Rom-Commers(32)

“Talk to them,” I said. “Just keep talking. Say I’m going for help. Say I’ll be right back. Say it’s all going to be okay.”

It wasn’t all going to be okay. That much was already clear.

“Don’t leave me,” Sylvie pleaded.

“I have to,” I said. “Be strong. And just keep talking.”

What else could I possibly do? I left.

I ran down the trail. Fully sprinted—no pack or supplies or water. I tripped on a root at some point but scrambled up to keep going—only discovering later I’d sprained my ankle and never even felt it.

I have no idea how long it took to make it to the trailhead—no sense of time—but when I found a lady with a working cell phone I was almost too out of breath to speak. “There was a rockfall,” I panted, pointing back up the trail. “My mom was climbing. My parents are hurt.” And then, as she was dialing for help, I heard myself say the only thing left that I knew for sure. “It’s bad. It’s bad. It’s bad.”



* * *



HERE’S A TRUTH that never changes: My mom didn’t survive the fall.

The rescue workers said she probably died on impact. By the time they arrived, she was already gone—and my dad was critical. A rescue team strapped my dad to a backboard and readied him for helicopter transport to the ER. Another team—a recovery team—stayed behind to collect my mother.

They sent Sylvie and me with my dad. Decisions had to be made.

Sylvie didn’t want to leave our mom. She screamed—feral with panic—and tried to go to her.

She was so enraged with me for that. For leaving our mom behind. Alone.

I asked her about it once, years later—if she was still mad.

“I was never mad at you,” she said, like I was crazy.

“Yes, you were,” I said. “You scratched me on the face.”

Sylvie frowned, like that didn’t sound like her. Then she said, “I don’t remember anything about that day.”

Maybe that’s a blessing. I wouldn’t wish those memories on her. The sound of my mother hitting that cliff base still woke me up in the night.

And then I always got up and went to check on my sleeping dad in the other room.

My kindhearted dad, who lived.



* * *



BEFORE THE ROCKFALL, my parents were both musicians. They played in the symphony together. My father was a cellist, and my mom played clarinet. At work, they were friendly and professional. At home, they teased each other and played duets all the time.

My dad survived that day, yes—but he never played cello again.

After almost ten years, and more physical and occupational therapy than any of us can fathom, there were two lasting effects he couldn’t overcome: the hemiplegia on his left side, which never resolved. He could use that side, but only with difficulty. He could walk, but only slowly and mostly with a walker. That whole side—including the fingers that used to work the frets on his cello—stayed tight and jerky and full of tremors.

But that wasn’t the condition that held us hostage. It was the Ménière’s disease that messed with his balance, and the sudden drop attacks that slammed him to the ground out of nowhere, that kept me on high alert.

When the drop attacks happened, he went down hard—sometimes hitting his head. But even just off days could put him out of commission. He had to lie on his bed all day holding on to the edges because he felt like he was on a tiny raft being tossed in a vast, stormy ocean. Some months were worse than others, and sometimes he went long stretches when he felt fine. But he never knew when it would hit, which was why he didn’t drive anymore, and he couldn’t live alone.

He needed someone looking out for him 24–7, and—until I boarded that plane and flew to LA—that someone was always me.

The plan, as you’ve already heard Logan complain about, was for me to take the first ten years, and for Sylvie to take the second—and then to figure it out from there. Sylvie was twelve when we lost our mom, and the only thing I cared about in those early years—or maybe even my reason to keep going—was to give her the best childhood I could, despite it all.

To be as mom-ish as I could in our mom’s stead.

I baked cookies. I drove her to parties. I took her for makeovers at the mall. I helped her fray her jeans. I supervised homework. I did laundry. I focused so hard on Sylvie and my dad that I almost forgot about myself. I just put my head down and kept going.

A relief, in a lot of ways.

I made my life about Sylvie’s life.

Maybe staying so busy was a lifeline out of my own grief. But I willingly made myself a supporting character in my own story.

Sylvie was the star—and I was the dependable sister who helped her shine.

I wanted to shine, too, in my way. I didn’t give up all my dreams. I kept writing, and kept studying stories, and kept fantasizing about some distant future where I would make it all happen. But I thought—and worried—much more about my Sylvie, and my dad, too, than I did about myself. And maybe, in a way, I started wanting my fantasies about the future to stay fantasies.

Right? Because if fantasies come true, they can’t be fantasies anymore.

And then what do you have to fantasize about?

All to say, I got very comfortable living like that.