BETH

CHAPTER NINE

I woke up to a dim winter dawn peeking around my dorm room curtains and opened one eye to look at the clock. It was still just seven-thirty in the morning! Apparently, even when I stayed up late and tried to sleep in, my body still wanted to wake up in time for swim practice. Except I didn’t have a practice today, which made it all seem unusually cruel.

I knew from experience that getting back to sleep was now unlikely, but I pulled the blankets up around my ears, closed my eyes again, and tried to think of something pleasant, peaceful…like the beach in Thailand, the warm sun, the gently lapping waves…the beach where my parents and my little brother were right now, and not me. They’d be swimming in that sparkling ocean water, and all I had to look forward to was an Olympic-sized pool in freezing cold Minnesota.

Sure, it had been my decision to stay home over Christmas—as if the swim coach would have let me make any other decision—but that didn’t mean I wasn’t jealous of the others. I’d really wanted to pack my bikini and hop on that plane with them, but I had important reasons not to, and they weren’t all about swimming. I needed them to know that I was really, truly independent now. I hoped Mom and Dad would get the message that I was okay on my own and they didn’t need to worry about me at all. That was important, because Dad had enough on his plate these days with his high-stress job and worrying about Mom.

When her MS symptoms had first started to become obvious, Dad had explained it all to me—what it meant, what we could expect in the days ahead, how we would have to change our lives—in a way that he didn’t with Sam. Sam was just a kid, after all. I was pretty sure he didn’t think about much except sports and video games, and his idea of planning ahead was trying to figure out what was for dinner. I sure hoped he was doing what I asked and helping out more with Mom, keeping an eye on her for me, letting Dad get a real break.

This was not helping me get back to sleep—and the phone started ringing. I rolled over, grabbed it, and mumbled some sort of hello.

“Beth?”

“Yeah…Tad…good morning. Isn’t this kind of early to be calling? Don’t tell me you can’t sleep either.”

“Sorry, I didn’t want to wake you, but I thought I’d better. Have you been watching TV?” he asked.

“It’s seventy-thirty in the morning, Tad. I was sleeping.”

“You have to turn it on. Something’s happened.”

I sat up, yawned, and rubbed my eyes. There was always something happening somewhere in the world, and since Tad was hoping to specialize in international law he was always concerned. It was one of the things I loved about him.