The Loose Ends List(20)

“Little sister, come sit with us.” She pats the step next to her. “Gracie and I are guessing what colors we’ll see tonight.”

“Paige, why didn’t you tell me about you?”

Her smile never changes. “What do you want me to say?”

“I feel like you should have told me.”

“Why? So you could feel sorry for me and treat me like a fragile little paper puppet?”

“What’s a fragile little paper puppet?”

“Ha-ha. Maddie. What do you want to know?” She kisses Gracie’s head.

“I don’t know, like, what? How?”

“Who? Why?” she says. “All the newspaper reporter questions?”

“Ba.” Grace reaches toward her bottle. Paige sticks it in her mouth and cradles Grace in her arms.

“I had a bad seizure in the middle of the night, and they found a tumor deep inside my head. I refused treatment because I was pregnant.” She moves her lips from side to side like she’s trying to stifle a cry.

“Could they have treated it?”

“No, not really. I started chemo right after Gracie was born, which broke my heart because I wasn’t able to breastfeed her.” She looks at me. “You would not believe how bitchy other women can be. They judged me mercilessly for not breastfeeding.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Yeah, it is. So anyway, the tumor keeps growing, and the symptoms are getting worse. I heard about the Wishwell from a cancer friend at Cleveland Clinic. And here we are.”

“I’m sorry, Paige.”

“Can’t we just be sorority sisters and not get all deep and depressed?”

“I don’t know the right thing to say right now.” I give her a weak smile. “Like a month ago, my big drama was cleaning my friend’s puke off my minivan floor.”

“So then don’t say anything. Just be normal. I give you permission to completely ignore reality.” She pats my leg. “It’ll be good practice for college.”

The Beethoven or Bach song fills the deck as deep purples and a narrow shock of orange spread low across the sky.

“Fine, Paige. I’ll completely ignore reality. But only because I’m your pledge and I have to do as I’m told.”

I force a smile, wanting so badly to completely ignore reality.

Baby Grace pushes her bottle away, leans over, and plants her slimy mouth on my kneecap. She sucks my stubbly knee as Paige and I send Dad to get frozen yogurts with sprinkles. He marches toward the yogurt stand, his conductor’s arms flailing to the climax of Beethoven (or Bach).



I skip the pizza party under the stars and curl up in a ball on our balcony.

“What’s wrong?” Janie squeezes onto my lounge chair.

I tell her about Paige.

“I want to be her friend and just be normal. But it’s so, so sad.” I think of Paige laughing with baby Grace, dancing with Lane, tossing jelly beans off the balcony. “She’s just like us.”

“We have to be what she needs us to be right now, Maddie. However much it sucks for us, imagine how Paige is feeling.” I turn over, and she spoons me. We stay like that for a long time, two cousins getting way too big to share a lounge chair, listening to the surf smash against the ship. At some point I must fall asleep, because I wake with a wicked cramp in my neck. Janie’s singing in the shower, and there’s a worry doll on my pillow.

Janie hated her parents’ divorce more than most people hate divorces. She was in middle school at the time and went ballistic. She did shots and stole Aunt Rose’s back pain pills. She slept with three guys in one weekend and texted pictures of herself smoking weed to Aunt Mary. Nobody knew what to do, so Gram took us to Aunt Rose’s Charleston house. Gram hoped Janie would sip iced tea, read Faulkner, and heal. But she didn’t. She crashed on the daybed in the den and barely got up for a month.

When she finally agreed to take a shower, Brit and I brushed her hair, doused her with perfume, and half carried her to a Mexican restaurant. The kind Guatemalan lady who delivered our homemade tortillas gave Janie a tiny patchwork bag of worry dolls. There were seven or eight of them, each the size of a pinkie toe. The lady told Janie to put them under her pillow and tell them her worries, and everything would be just fine.

Janie is not the type to listen to random restaurant workers, and she’s definitely not the type to talk to miniature dolls. But I guess she was desperate, because every night she would take out the dolls, carefully line them up under her pillow, and close her eyes tight. I swear those dolls saved my cousin.

“Thank you for my worry doll. I have lots to tell her,” I say when Janie gets out of the shower.

“You’re welcome.” She stops toweling off her hair and looks at me with a very serious expression. “Her name is Esperanza.”



I’m still awake at two AM, so I decide to go for a run. It’s cool on the track, and the sky is thick with stars.

Uncle Billy comes full speed around the bend and nearly takes me down.

“Mads, why are you still up?” he pants.

“Couldn’t sleep. Why are you still up? Don’t you go to bed at nine?”

“Nah, my circadian rhythms are way off.” He gulps from his water bottle. “Come on, you promised you’d train with me for the marathon one of these days.”