We didn’t speak again until about halfway into our trip, when she turned to look at me, her voice low. “I just feel so bad.”

“Franny”—I glanced at her quickly, trying to keep my eyes on the road—“what do you mean?”

“I lied to my mom,” she said, her voice cracking. “Just because I didn’t want to help her with some stupid baby shower. What a shitty thing to do to her.”

I didn’t say anything. I just listened.

She sighed. “I haven’t even told my mom about Anna,” she said with a sniffle, and I knew she was crying now. “And now I might not even get the chance.”

I reached out to rest my hand on her knee.

“This whole time, I’ve been obsessing over a dead dad and a sister I’ll probably never meet. And then I went and blew off the family I actually have.”

“I’m so sorry, Franny,” I said, giving her leg a gentle squeeze. “It sounds so hard. But I think both can hold space in your heart.”

I cringed a little at how cheesy I sounded, but I also believed it wholeheartedly.

“Do you want to text your friends?” I asked. “Let them know what’s going on?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t have the energy right now. I’ll do it when I get to the hospital.”

She was quiet again. Outside, the sky was black. It was almost ten now.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said with a slight press of her hand against mine. I shifted my hand, turning it so that it faced upright against her palm, and slid my fingers through hers.

“I am too,” I said. “And I’m here as long you need me to be.”

We stayed like that for the rest of the drive, hands connected. And I marveled that even in the middle of this very hard thing, being with Franny was the only place I wanted to be.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five

Franny

My mom used to say she knew I was really upset about something when I stopped talking. I wondered, as Connecticut rolled by in the darkness, if Hayes had figured this out tonight. I’d barely been able to find the words to match the grief, panic, and shame that were overpowering my thoughts.

I couldn’t even bring myself to let Lola and Cleo know what was going on. Every time I looked at my phone to text them that my mom was in the hospital, that my mom had been admitted for the night, and probably longer, I couldn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t think they could handle it; they would walk through fire if I asked them to, just to be there for me. But typing the words made it all too real.