Only, she didn’t. She was adamant. “Why would you do that to Dad?” she had asked me. “What if he came to you and said he had another daughter he wanted to meet? How would you feel about that?”
She always knew how to get to me, to appeal to my emotions, of which I had many. “He seemed OK with it,” I had said, a little hurt.
“Well of course he seemed OK with it. He didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” Then she had crossed her arms and sighed. “Fine. If you want to crush our daddy by trying to have someone take his place, then fine by me. But that’s on you, Sloane.”
I remember how the tears stung my eyes, and I vowed right then and there that I would never hurt my dad by finding out who my real father was. After he died, I considered it, but then I didn’t want my mom to feel like I was trying to replace him. So I went on about my life—and watched a lot of Lifetime movies where the daughter gets a disease and has to search out her biological parents. I didn’t want a disease. But I had to be prepared.
“I’ve never been able to argue with you,” I said now. “Not even about finding out who our sperm donor was.”
Caroline scrunched her nose. “I’m sorry.”
I put my hand over my chest and made a face like I was having a heart attack.
“Ha. Ha,” she said. “My apologies are not that rare. But it wasn’t right of me to talk you out of finding out who our sperm donor was. If it was something you felt like you needed to know, I should have gotten on board.”
I smiled. “Of all the bitchy things you ever said to me, the one about replacing Daddy might take the cake.”
“That’s really saying something.” She paused and looked down at her hands, the massive apology diamond James had bought her catching my eye. “But Dad wasn’t the reason why I didn’t want to meet our sperm donor.”
“Were you scared?”
“Maybe a little. But I was most worried about Emerson. It would be like you and I had this whole family that she wasn’t a part of. I didn’t want her to feel left out.”
I squeezed her hand. “Caroline, that may be the most selfless thing you’ve ever done.”
She swallowed and nodded regally. “I know,” she said very seriously, and we both burst out laughing.
“If you want to know now,” she said, “I’m OK with that. I could handle it.”
I smiled and raised my eyebrows. “Do you want to know?”
“No, but I will if you want to.”
I shook my head. “Nah. I’m fine. I don’t need to open that door. My life is complicated enough.” I paused. “Plus, I mean, I know she’s twenty-six, but I kind of feel like it would be worse for Emerson now than it would have been when we were kids. I mean, it’s like we get this replacement father, and hers is still dead.”
Caroline shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Mooooommmmmmmeeeeeee,” I heard AJ call from down the hall.
“Good timing,” Caroline said.
We stood up, and I hugged her again. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
She smiled. “I love you.”
“I know,” I said, before turning and rushing out the door to hear what the second “Moooooommmmmmeeeeee, I need you!” was all about.
I realized then that I felt almost strangely relieved I would never have to talk about my sperm donor again. I could spend the rest of my life content in the knowledge that my father was my father, and that was all that mattered. In some ways, it was as big a relief as knowing that my final balance was zero.
IT WAS NO BIG secret Caroline hated doctors’ offices. She hated the germs, the people, the general smell. I swear I didn’t think we would get her through her hospital tour when she had Preston.
Needless to say, she wasn’t the first one volunteering to go to the doctor with Emerson. I, on the other hand, wanted to go, but we weren’t sure what excuse we could use to leave together without Mom wanting to come along. Plus, once Mark saw those bruises on his beloved Emerson, there was no way he was going to miss her appointment.
Mom had taken Grammy to lunch, Taylor was napping, and AJ and I were playing what felt like our hundredth game of Candy Land when Mark’s car appeared in the front driveway.
I grabbed AJ’s hand and Taylor’s monitor and flew down the stairs at top toddler speed to the guesthouse, where we’d all decided to meet after Emerson’s doctor’s appointment. A somber-looking Emerson was leaning against a protective-looking Mark.
“So?” Caroline asked breathlessly.
“So, it’s not great,” Emerson said.
Mark interrupted her. “But we don’t know that for sure yet.”
She shrugged. “OK. True. But he said from my initial blood work and the pattern of my bruising that it looked like it was aplastic anemia.”
The part of me that was sure she was going to say “leukemia” or “cancer” was relieved, but the part of me that wasn’t sure what these scary medical words meant was terrified.
But Caroline knew what they meant. “Do they know why you aren’t producing new red blood cells? I mean, could it be a virus? Autoimmune disease?”
“Back up a minute here,” I said, looking at Caroline in disbelief. “One, how do you know so much about aplastic anemia? Two, what even is that?”
Caroline bit her lip. “Well, when I saw her arm, I did a lot of Googling. It’s like anemia, but on steroids. Basically, your body quits making new red blood cells, which is a problem because, you know, oxygen.”
“So is it treatable?”
Mark interjected. “They aren’t even positive that’s what it is yet.”
“Yeah, right. We got it, Mark,” Caroline said.
He was annoying me too. This was our little sister. He was the brand-new boyfriend. Well, I mean, brand-new if you didn’t count the three
