She tuned out her mom’s words but kept watching her. The way she touched each photo, a gentle smile on her face, a little laugh when she noted something funny about the person in his or her precancer life. She knew every detail about them—their hobbies, families, jobs. Where they went to school, what sport they played, what their dreams and hopes had been. Somehow that careful attention didn’t extend to remembering that Betsy didn’t like green beans. That at the age of twelve, Jenna still wanted the nightlight on in the hallway outside her bedroom. That the two girls in her own house needed a mother who paid attention to the small things.
Her mom wiped a tear away and sniffed, then strode back to her desk on the other side of the room. Betsy followed her. Her mom’s desk was empty of any personal items—no photos of her or Jenna, no calendars with puppies or exotic islands. “Why do you keep those photos up on the wall if they make you so sad?”
“They remind me why I’m doing all this.” She waved her arm around at the lab. “They inspire me to pour all I have into finding cures. Not for them—it’s too late for them—but for their families, friends, children. The ones they left behind.” She gazed back up at the wall. “They’re why I do everything.”
Her mom said plenty, but it was the unsaid words that cut the deepest. They left an empty pocket, a vacuum that sucked a hole in the center of Betsy’s chest. It was the first time she realized with utter clarity that her mom actually wished those kids had been hers. Maybe even instead of Betsy and Jenna. It was the way her constant tension slipped away for a moment, the way her smile became real, not forced and tight. She was a better mom to these poor dead kids than she was to her own fully alive children.
Betsy looked at her watch—a yellow-and-green Swatch her favorite babysitter had given her two years before. “Mom, we’ve got to go. It’s almost five.”
“Mmm?” Her mom kept her gaze on the paperwork on her desk.
“Jenna. Detention. It’s over in five minutes.”
Her mom looked up, her eyes hazy, faraway. “Detention,” she said, as if it were a foreign language. Which it kind of was. If it wasn’t related to cancer or her lab or grant money, it was an unknown concept. She straightened the papers on her desk and clipped them with a black binder clip, then gave Betsy a sad smile. “What would we do without you?”
ten
Jenna
Google told her the drive from Elinore would take six and a half hours, but she figured if she pushed it, she could make it in less than six. Singer Creek Nature Preserve. Halcyon Artist Retreat. Two weeks of solitude, a chance to stretch creative muscles that had once been brimming with promise.
It wasn’t the first time she’d tried to get away to chase her dreams. Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if her parents had said yes to the artist’s residency the summer after her freshman year of college. If they’d believed in her art, trusted that she had something to say through her camera, something she couldn’t find a way to say with words, or even a paintbrush or pencil. Could attending that summer program in Seattle have changed her whole life? Set her on a straight path toward creative fulfillment? Toward good decisions, respectable boyfriends, satisfying jobs? Maybe not. But maybe.
Instead, that spring night when she had driven back home to Birmingham from Tuscaloosa to talk to her parents about it, they’d glanced at each other and shared one of those quick looks that meant, “What in the world are we going to do about Jenna?” Part of her thought they might be happy she’d not only found something she was good at but was pursuing it. Pushing for it, asking for it.
“I think it’s great,” Betsy, who was home from Auburn for the weekend, had said when Jenna explained that the opportunity was offered to only a handful of students in her photography class and she was one of them. It was expensive, but it would offer her a furnished apartment for the summer, daily workshops with professional photographers, and priceless instruction from the famed but elusive Theodore Griffs.
“Photography as a hobby is great—something to do with your extra time.” Her mom set her fork down next to her plate. “But it’s just not something you can pursue as a regular, dependable job. It’s not something that will make you any money.”
“Who’s talking about money? Maybe she just wants to have fun with it,” Betsy said.
“Fun? Fun is taking photography as an elective. Using it as a creative outlet outside your regular classes. Maybe you could even set up a side business taking photos at birthday parties or events. That’d be fun. Going clear across the country to work with a man who looks like a serial killer is not my idea of fun.”
Nothing is your idea of fun, Jenna thought. And she regretted her decision to pull up the photographer on Google earlier to show her parents that he was a real, well-known—if a little scary-looking—photographer.
“So you’re going to let this guy’s looks scare you off? He’s a big deal—did you read what it said about him? Spending a summer learning from him could be huge for Jenna. Why can’t she go?” Betsy always stuck up for Jenna—it was part of the unspoken code of their sisterhood, as ingrained as their hair or eye color.
“Betsy, it’s fine.” Jenna wiped her mouth with her napkin and pushed back from the table. “You don’t have to—”
“No,
