The room that Becca showed him into was down a hallway, small but painted a cheerful yellow, early-afternoon sunlight coming in stripes across the hardwood floor. There was a crib, an overstuffed rocking chair in one corner, and a scuffed dresser with bright red drawer pulls. The room looked a bit unfinished, boxes still stacked in one corner, impossibly tiny baby outfits strewn across the chair. But nice.
Asa shoved his hands deep in his pockets, looking around. “I kind of can’t believe it,” he said, the reality fully hitting him. His sister was having a baby, an actual human person who would be part of his family forever. Somehow, it had felt a little theoretical before this moment—his own fault, for not making more of an effort to see her.
He opened his mouth to apologize, but Becca cut him off before he could say anything.
“I planned this shower so they wouldn’t come,” she said.
He didn’t need to ask who she meant, but he was still confused. “You didn’t want . . .”
“I wanted you to come,” she said. “And I knew you probably wouldn’t if they were here. So I purposely scheduled the shower for a Sunday morning, figuring they’d say they couldn’t make it, and then I could call you up and tell you that it was safe if you didn’t want to risk running into them.”
“But instead they canceled church.”
Becca picked up one of the outfits draped across the back of the rocking chair, using her belly as a shelf as she folded it into a neat square. And then she undid it and laid it the way it had been before, as if she wasn’t even conscious of what she was doing.
“Dad got someone to fill in for his sermon,” she said. “It’s not like he straight canceled.”
But he’d canceled church for himself. That was almost bigger than if he’d shut down the entire operation. The service had happened—in that same building Asa remembered from childhood, cream-painted stucco with brick accents at the corners, one end more traditional with a tall spire, the other more utilitarian, added on sometime in the nineties. His dad just hadn’t been there.
“Well,” he said, because he didn’t really know what to say. “Thanks for trying, I guess.”
Becca had picked up the pink onesie again, but threw it back on the chair with such force that it slid to the floor. “No,” she said, “that’s what I need to apologize for. I didn’t try. I couldn’t just call and tell them they weren’t invited, because I was inviting you. I took the chickenshit way out instead, and then tried to pressure you to come anyway. Just like I tried to pressure you into coming to my wedding, yelled at you when you wouldn’t. It was hard not having you there, I’m not going to lie, but I do understand why you stayed away. I just—”
He was surprised when his sister appeared to be wiping away tears. Growing up, she’d always been so tough. She’d pinch him when their parents weren’t looking, and then make fun of him if he cried. But she also didn’t stand for anyone else bothering him, had once grabbed a kid’s bicycle by the handlebars and forcibly turned him around when he rode by to call out insults. Asa didn’t know when exactly that had changed, when he’d started to feel like he was on his own.
But he didn’t want to be on his own anymore. His relationship with Becca wasn’t perfect, but if she said she wanted to try, then he was ready to try, too. The old hurts were still there, but maybe they could move forward through them.
“I needed you on my side, Bec,” he said. “I need you on my side. It was always us. Don’t you remember? I’m not asking you to cut them out, I’m not even asking you to try to change their minds. I just need you to support me, to stand up for me the way you did when we were kids, before it ever became about who I was with or how I identified. Do you think you can do that?”
“Yes,” she said, so quickly it was like she’d been offered a chance to win a prize on a radio show and she didn’t want to lose it. She was definitely crying now, the skin around her eyes blotchy and red. “I can, I will. I’m so sorry I didn’t do that before, I can’t even—”
He didn’t want to talk about the past anymore. “It’s okay,” he said, reaching out to envelop her in a hug. “It’s really okay. I’m glad I came. I’m going to be an uncle, you know.”
This time, when Becca picked up a onesie, she blew her nose right into it before tossing it into a hamper in the corner. “What?” she said, catching his look. “It’s going to be nonstop laundry around here anyway.”