Page 44 of Years in the Making

“It looks like you’re staying for more than three days,” Zoe says as she pushes me down the aisle.

“God, why are you so pushy today?” I glare back at her and manage to dodge more physical encouragement.

“I just want to get off this damn plane,” she says, pushing me once more for good measure.

The two flight attendants standing near the exit smile sadly at us as we pass, and I feel my stomach drop. They had to do a lot of gentle coaxing to get Dad to stow the ashes away during take-off. He’d insisted on holding the little gray box for the entire flight. “She’s scared of flying.” he’d told the attendant quietly. I don’t think he was embarrassed to say it. I think he genuinely believed he’d embarrass Mom. Hard to embarrass a dead person, though. Every time I had a thought like that, I felt a new bubble of fury float to the surface.

“What the hell did you give me?” I ask Will angrily as we wait at the car rental booth.

“Something to help you sleep. It worked, didn’t it?”

“Will, what was it?”

“Ambien or something like it.”

I stop dead in my tracks. “What the hell, Will? I took two.”

“Right, so definitely not Ambien.” He shrugs. “Relax, they’re leftover pills a friend had after flying back from Europe. She got them in Latvia—no, wait.” He looks skyward as he thinks. “Maybe it was Lithuania. Definitely not Luxembourg, I’d remember the x in there. It was some L country in Europe. Anyway, she told me they’d help me sleep.”

“And you didn’t think to find out what it was?”

“Teddy, if there is anyone who needs to just throw a couple of pills back and not ask questions, it’s you.” He pats me on theback and follows our father and Zoe as they head towards where our car is.

An hour later I’m standing in between my siblings listening to my uncle tell a story about Mom falling out of a moving car after their father took a corner too sharply. Apparently my uncle didn’t say anything right away because he was in shock. It’s the first time I feel inclined to laugh in days, the visual too funny to ignore. Within minutes we’re all trying to catch our breath and wiping tears of laughter from our eyes. It’s what my dad says next that has every ounce of joy leaving my body.

“When the doctor gave her five more years…”

I miss what he says next because I keep repeatingfive more yearsto myself.

“We knew it was coming…”

Knew what was coming? What the fuck is he talking about?

I look at the rest of my family as they nod along, not one of them looks surprised by what Dad just said.

“I’m sorry,” I interrupt. “What are you talking about? What did we know was coming?”

“The aneurysm they couldn’t get to after her first aneurysm ruptured,” my aunt says like she’s reminding me of a fact I have just forgotten.

“He didn’t know,” Zoe says quietly, avoiding looking at me. “Mom didn’t want us to tell him. I only knew because I overheard Dad telling Will, and then he swore us to secrecy.”

For the first time in my life, I get the saying “seeing red.” It looks like the world around me has a red filter on it. They knew. They all knew. Everyone except me was in on this monumental secret.

The same thing happens. All the noises above me grow louder. Birds, insects, voices rise like a tidal wave before crashing into silence. They all knew.

I whirl around to face them. “So, what, you’ve all been preparing for this for what? Ten fucking years?” I’m angry and embarrassed and completely confused as to why my family, why my mother, didn’t want me of all people not to know. Is this why they always seemed more paranoid than me? My memories race through every cold, cough, and fever.

“She didn’t want you or Zoe to know,” Dad says, almost pleadingly.

He reaches for me but I step back, the last thing I want is to be touched right now. “But you ended up telling her.” I jab a finger in Zoe’s direction. “Why didn’t you just tell me too?” I look over at my twin trying not to let the feeling of betrayal show too much on my face. Judging by her expression, I fail.

“You were always so hopeful that she’d end up getting better in the beginning. And then you were the only one who didn’t act like there was a deadline.”

I think of how much time over the last couple of months I could have been spending with Mom, but I was off with Nellie or playing baseball or working. Zoe and Will never switched around their schedules to avoid time with her while I’d been doing it since school ended. They didn’t do it because they knew time was running out, and instead of letting me know, they let me carry on, wasting the most precious time in the world.

There’s that question people ask: if you knew you were going to die soon, would you want to know, or would you rather be surprised? I can’t answer that for myself, but I sure as hell can for the person I love—loved—most in the world. Hell yes, I’d want to know. I should have known.

Run,a voice in the back of my mind I don’t recognize whispers.

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