Chapter 1
NOW
When I think about Delaney, I think about Dillan.
Three pounds, two ounces. The delivery nurse held her out to me in the palm of her hand, like a baby bird in its mother’s nest. And right on cue, my tiny fowl opened her eyes and mouth, changing my life forever.
She’s alive. Delaney is going to live, I’d thought.
But in those beady black eyes, those chirpy pink lips … I still saw the son who didn’t make it: Dillan.
There’s Delaney, but no Dillan.
A painful dichotomy of intense love and exceptional grief arose and gave birth to me that day.
“Only one twin survived.” The doctor was soft-spoken and honey blonde; I’ll never forget the contours of her face. And those words … her words would haunt me for the next fifteen years, probably longer. There was a name for my tragedy: twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. In layman’s terms, she had described it as one twin donating blood to the other. But the way she described it was almost morbid – one twin sucking up all the nutrients, sucking the life right out of its roommate …
My beautiful Delaney was headstrong and iron-willed, and it didn’t surprise me that she was the stronger of the two.
So, when I woke up to find my fifteen-year-old daughter standing over me, her eyes like shiny black marbles glowing in the moonlit shadows of my room, the first thing I thought about was Dillan.
Even now, Dillan is still one of my first thoughts each morning. I wonder what he would have looked like, as a teenager. Maybe just like Delaney, with black feathery hair and deep brown eyes. If you take away the lashes, and the girlish curve of her jaw … I can almost see what my son would have been …
“Mom!” Delaney hissed, tugging the blankets from my chest. It was the hiss that did it – a warning sign, that Delaney was about to scream, or in the very least, get angry and throw a few things.
“W-What is it, honey? What time is it?”
My eyes fought to stay open, my contact lenses that I wasn’t supposed to sleep in at night, sticking to the backs of my eyelids.
Delaney stood up straight, her skin so pasty and pale that it was almost translucent in the low-lit room. She had this funny look on her face.
I know that look.
Not anger, which was her go-to emotion these days … not sadness, which was probably the runner-up. No, not either of those.
Delaney is scared, I realized with a start, sitting up too fast, my head swimming as I reached for her.
“What’s wrong, Laney?”
But Delaney’s eyes refused to meet mine; they were trained on something else beside me …
“There’s a stranger in your bed.” Her words were like shivery little whispers in the dark.
My scalp prickled with fear and I leapt from the bed, nearly knocking her backwards. I stared at the shape of a man lying on the usually empty side of my bed.
He had long legs, so long they were hanging over the end of the bed. Hairy toes poked out from beneath the blankets.
I took a small step closer, holding my breath.
He was buried beneath the sheets, except for his gangly toes and a few blond pokes of hair pricking out from the top …
My brain tried to play catch up with what my eyes were seeing, but Delaney cut in, “Who the hell is he?” She took the words straight out of my mouth.
No longer was she that scared little girl I remembered from her youth – she had transitioned back into her usual mood: angry at times, and don’t-give-a-fuck mostly.
“I have no idea, Laney.”
It wasn’t a lie, not exactly. I had no recollection of inviting anyone over, but it wasn’t the first strange man I’d had in my bed this month …
“Nice, Mom. Real nice,” Delaney groaned.
My mind raced, thoughts trickling back to the last thing I remembered … I’d been online again, that stupid dating site. I hadn’t wanted a profile in the first place, but Pam and Jerry, my two friends from work, had set the whole thing up for me.
Did I invite one of the guys I met online to come over to the house last night? Was I drinking again? Is that why I can’t remember?
Suddenly, it was starting to make sense: I rarely drank alcohol, not until recently, and not since my early twenties. If I’d had a few beers last night, or even a little wine, then maybe … maybe I had blacked out completely.
But a quick scan of the room revealed no empty cans or bottles. No evidence that I’d been drinking at all.
How could I be so irresponsible? What the hell was I thinking, inviting a man over with my teenage daughter across the hall?
“Go back to bed. I’ll wake him up and ask him to leave.”
When Delaney didn’t budge, I raised my voice a few octaves: “You have school in the morning. Now, go!”
The hurt expression on her face came and went so quickly, I almost wondered if I’d imagined it. A flutter of guilt rose up. Delaney wasn’t a child anymore; I often had to remind myself of that. I shouldn’t scold her so harshly; rather, I should try to talk to her like an equal, I thought, regretfully.
“Screw you,” she huffed, then turned and marched out of the room. The door to my bedroom slammed bitterly behind her.
My eyes drifted back to the lumpy man. I’d been expecting him to wake up after Laney’s outburst, but he was still sleeping peacefully.
In the silence of my bedroom, I crept over to the window and sat down on my favorite reading bench that overlooked our suburban street. My head felt groggy and strange, and I waited for the details of last night to come into focus …
I pressed my head against the windowpane and sighed. It was almost morning, the dark mountain ridges in the distance tipped with dusty browns and burgundy reds.
How long has it been since I watched the sun rise?
When Delaney was young, she’d loved the outdoors. But I had still been with her father then, Michael. Most of my memories of her early years were corrupted by memories of fights with Michael and sleepless nights as I grieved over Dillan.
Here’s the thing: when you bring a baby home from the hospital, you’re supposed to be happy. “It’s a miracle that even one of the twins survived,” the doctor had told me. “At least you have Delaney,” my friends had told me.
But having a beautiful baby girl didn’t make me any less sad about the son I’d lost, the room with blue borders I’d never use, the drawers of blankets and the onesies I’d picked out specifically for him … They were all still waiting for me when I came back home from the hospital. Some things couldn’t be forgotten, even if I did love Delaney with all my heart.
Michael left us when Delaney was five. Unfortunately, he didn’t go far.
Less than two miles from here, he lived with his new wife, Samantha, and baby sons, Braxton and Brock, in a Victorian mansion they had restored. Delaney had a room there – she loved that room – and she visited them every weekend.
Apparently, Michael’s not verbally abusive with his new family, and he gave up drinking years ago … How convenient for them.
The drinking and the dating – I’d only started that recently, with the nudging insistence of my two best friends. It seemed good for me – healthy, even – but incidents like this couldn’t happen.
Meeting up with strange men, bringing them to my home … not a good example for Delaney. And probably not safe either.