“Do you want to listen to music?” I asked. She just shook her head, and so I kept driving in silence.
We didn’t speak again until about halfway into our trip, when she turned to look at me, her voice low. “I just feel so bad.”
“Franny”—I glanced at her quickly, trying to keep my eyes on the road—“what do you mean?”
“I lied to my mom,” she said, her voice cracking. “Just because I didn’t want to help her with some stupid baby shower. What a shitty thing to do to her.”
I didn’t say anything. I just listened.
She sighed. “I haven’t even told my mom about Anna,” she said with a sniffle, and I knew she was crying now. “And now I might not even get the chance.”
I reached out to rest my hand on her knee.
“This whole time, I’ve been obsessing over a dead dad and a sister I’ll probably never meet. And then I went and blew off the family I actually have.”
“I’m so sorry, Franny,” I said, giving her leg a gentle squeeze. “It sounds so hard. But I think both can hold space in your heart.”
I cringed a little at how cheesy I sounded, but I also believed it wholeheartedly.
“Do you want to text your friends?” I asked. “Let them know what’s going on?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t have the energy right now. I’ll do it when I get to the hospital.”
She was quiet again. Outside, the sky was black. It was almost ten now.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said with a slight press of her hand against mine. I shifted my hand, turning it so that it faced upright against her palm, and slid my fingers through hers.
“I am too,” I said. “And I’m here as long you need me to be.”
We stayed like that for the rest of the drive, hands connected. And I marveled that even in the middle of this very hard thing, being with Franny was the only place I wanted to be.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Franny
My mom used to say she knew I was really upset about something when I stopped talking. I wondered, as Connecticut rolled by in the darkness, if Hayes had figured this out tonight. I’d barely been able to find the words to match the grief, panic, and shame that were overpowering my thoughts.
I couldn’t even bring myself to let Lola and Cleo know what was going on. Every time I looked at my phone to text them that my mom was in the hospital, that my mom had been admitted for the night, and probably longer, I couldn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t think they could handle it; they would walk through fire if I asked them to, just to be there for me. But typing the words made it all too real.
Hayes’s voice cut through the darkness. “Hey, we’re here,” he announced. “Let me drop you off, and I’ll park and meet you inside.”
I nodded and opened the door, not looking back as I closed it.
When I got to the information desk, a woman with kind eyes directed me to the recovery unit. I texted Jim that I was on my way, and he met me in the lobby, greeting me with a quick hug as I got off the elevator.
“You didn’t have to come all the way here,” he said gruffly. His eyes were red and swollen, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.
“I know,” I said. “But it’s important for me to be here. Plus you need someone to get you coffee.”
Jim ruffled my hair after I said this, a gesture that I knew meant Thank you, I love you, I’m glad you’re here. He and my mom weren’t particularly big on expressing their feelings, and Jim especially spoke more through gestures and acts of kindness than he did through words. It had taken me years to learn this, to come to terms that I was the only one of the three of us who needed to verbalize…well, everything.
“How’s Mom?” I asked, trying to keep the tears at bay.
“Resting,” he said. “But she’s awake if you want to say a quick hello.”
I followed him down a long hallway, lit up in a dull-yellow light. The sound of hospital machines beeping and ringing around us blended together to form a depressing melody.
We shuffled into a nondescript room, where my mom sat propped up in a hospital bed, her shoulder-length gray-brown hair spread out against crisp white pillows. Her skin was sallow, and an IV stuck out of her arm.
“Francesca Marie,” she said. Her voice was hoarse but still, I could hear the disappointment. “What are you doing here? You’re sick.”
“Mom, you had a heart attack,” I said, guilt filling me head to toe. I dragged a gray plastic chair over to the side of her bed as Jim plopped into the armchair in the corner of the room. “Did you really think I wouldn’t come the second I heard?”