Serious Moonlight(101)

“Do I have any say in this? It’s my body.”

“And my bad genes. Are you really going to follow in Lily’s footsteps and ignore your health problems, hoping they go away until you end up dead in the ER?”

“She didn’t know she was pregnant that time!” I said, suddenly angry with him for bringing Mom into this.

“Tell her, Mona. She needs to see things for what they are, not some dreamy, romanticized version of it.”

I looked at Mona, confused. “What’s he talking about?”

She sighed heavily. “Your mom knew she was pregnant that second time.”

“What? No, she didn’t. She thought it was food poisoning. I know. I was there.” It was the strongest memory I had of her, that night when everything went wrong. I sometimes thought it weakened all my other memories, and I wished I’d been anywhere else but with her that night—at Ms. Patty’s apartment, in the diner, sleeping over at a friend’s house . . . anywhere but there. And that made me feel guilty.

“She’d known for several weeks. She’d told me,” Mona said, fake eyelashes from the night before starting to peel off, dark makeup smeared. “She refused to go to the doctor. She didn’t know who the father was, and she wasn’t planning on keeping it, but she suspected something was wrong because she kept . . .”

Mona blinked up at Grandpa, but he just waved at her to keep going. “I’ve heard it before. Tell her.”

“She kept spotting,” Mona said. “And she didn’t feel right. She was worried she was going to miscarry. We fought about it a lot. I was so mad that she wouldn’t do anything about it. Either take care of it or go to the doctor—that’s what I told her.”

“What?” I said, absolutely stunned. This didn’t match up with anything I remembered. “Why wouldn’t she go?”

Mona shook her head slowly. “If I had to guess, I’d say she was running out the clock. I think she hoped it would take care of itself—that she’d miscarry, and then she wouldn’t have to do anything. She’d be absolved from making a decision. You know how much I loved your mother—and still do. But she wasn’t perfect. Lily was brave when she had to be, but she had to be backed into a corner completely and run down the clock until the very last moment before she’d take action. And that time she waited too long.”

I stared at Mona, wiping away stray tears. “She could have lived?”

“We’ll never know,” Grandpa said, emotion brimming in his eyes. “Mona told me this a few months ago, after your grandma passed. I’ve thought about it a lot. I’m not sure I have any answers that will make either of us feel better, but I know one thing that gives me hope.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You have a chance to make different choices.”

I cried a little. Mona held me, and while her arms were around me, I thought about her pregnancy and how she was taking all these tests and following all her doctor’s directions, seeing lawyers, making plans with Leon . . . asking for help. Everything my mom didn’t do. Maybe my memories of her were nebulous because Mona was doing all the work. Maybe she was more of a mother to me than Lily Lindberg ever had been.

And maybe I forgave Mom for that.

“Okay,” I said firmly, done with crying and hurting. “Take me to the doctor.”

Grandpa stood up from leaning against the counter, hand on his walking cane, and gave me a pleased look. “Good, because I already called Dr. Koval. She’s meeting us at her office in thirty minutes.”

The three of us piled into Mona’s car and drove there together, and I told the doctor everything. About Grandpa’s diagnosis. About my symptoms and how they’d gotten progressively worse since my grandmother died, but especially since I started working at the Cascadia. Dr. Koval asked a million questions, made me fill out a written sleep test, and took a lot of blood. Then she called another doctor in the city for a favor.

That afternoon I called into the hotel to let them know that I had to take emergency leave for a few days. And the next night Grandpa, Aunt Mona, and I walked into the University of Washington’s sleep clinic. The technicians were all very kind, and they set me up for an overnight polysomnography test, in which they hooked me up to machines with wires and monitored my sleep. I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep in a lab, but I surprised myself.

The next morning I went straight into a multiple sleep latency test. For that they put me in room that looked like a bland dorm with IKEA furniture and a private bathroom. They made me take five naps and measured how often I entered REM sleep throughout the day. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I fell asleep, but the tech was always asking me what I dreamed, so I suppose I did.

Between a couple of the tests, I talked to Mona while Grandpa went to the lobby for coffee. “Hanging in there?” she asked, pulling a chair next to mine.

“All this napping is exhausting,” I said, smiling a little.

She smiled back, then said, “Are you mad at me?”

“Why would I be?”

“Because I’ve been a terrible gutsy gal. I kept secrets from you about your mom. I shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry.”

“Why did you?” I asked, suddenly self-conscious. “You could have told me. I understand if you thought I was too young to understand back then, but, you know, it’s been years.”