“I know you would have,” I said. “That’s exactly the problem, Vanessa.”
And for the first time in my entire life, I hung up the phone on my older sister without feeling like I owed her an apology.
Chapter 5: Not Alone
The baby came in early spring, almost a year to the day after Jack’s diagnosis.
A boy.
I named him Jack.
Grace was in the waiting room the entire time, pacing, and she was the second person on this earth to hold him, after me.
When she took him into her arms, she cried the way you cry when a circle that was broken forty years ago finally, quietly closes.
“Hello,” she whispered down to him. “I’m your aunt Grace. You are not alone. You were never, ever going to be alone.”
Here is what my life looks like now, two years on.
Grace moved.
She sold her practice two states away and opened a smaller one twenty minutes from my house, because, she said, the paperwork can be done anywhere, but the family cannot.
