Page 39 of The Ripple Effect

She lost herself when my dad went to prison. I learned to trim the bad spots from half-price tomatoes and pluck the mushy tops from last week’s asparagus before tossing them into the Kraft Dinner, thinking it was what she wanted.

But Mom needed someone to need her like Dad did. And by the time she got herself together, I could make my own macaroni.

Sloane stares out the windshield at the layers of color unrolling in front of us: gray asphalt, green cedars, pale pearly clouds. “Do you ever hear from him?”

No need to ask who.

“No. Dad’s figured out I have nothing to offer him.”

She flinches at my phrasing. “Touché, sister mine.”

The silence stretches long enough that I think we may be done here, which is both a relief and, strangely, a burden.

I’m considering whether I can figure out Tobin’s antique radio when Sloane abruptly says, “My mom’s one rule about Gerry was that he had to make the first move. If he wanted to know his daughter, he had to do the work.” She looks straight ahead, face impassive, sun-bleached blue eyes flat.

“I was eighteen when he contacted me. You’re still kind of stupid at eighteen, you know? Like, I’d made myself an imaginary dad from all my friends’ dads. He’d laugh as loud as Zarah’s dad, he’d nap on the couch with me like Julia’s. I was a romantic, and I was on a teen drama, so I was sure he’d have a sympathetic backstory.

“He asked for money so fast, Stellar. He didn’t even wait for the second phone call.”

A painedoofescapes me. I planned to wait for that second call myself. Sloane would have seen right through me. I’m glad we’ve entered a series of the Oceans to Peaks Highway’s famous twists, and I have an excuse not to look away from the road.

“Yeah.” She nods. “He disappeared when I told him my money was held in trust until my twenty-fifth birthday. I’ve never had my heart broken like that, before or since. It took a lot of therapy to understand how very, very lucky I’d been.

“And then, four months before my twenty-fifth birthday, you called my agency. The day we talked, he reached out, too. My mom and stepdad thought he was dangling you as bait. My manager agreed. You don’t know how I regret what happened, Stellar. You were alone.”

I’m as over it as I’m ever going to be, but Sloane’s story gives me the numb, electric sensation of pushing on an old scar. “You were right to be cautious. I should’ve guessed he’d come for you.”

“And I should’ve come foryou.” Her voice throbs with regret.

I remember myself at twenty-four, newly graduated from med school, nowhere near as smart or tough as I imagined. I was afraid my dad would come back to haunt me, and afraid he wouldn’t, because then I’d never see my mom again.

That was when Dad landed in my inbox for the last time.I hear you’re a doctor now. So proud to be your father,he wrote.We need to put the past behind us. Family should help each other.

For days, I deleted his email, then recovered it from the trash. Eventually I sent him a screenshot of my six-figure student loan statement and thanked him for helping with my debt. I was angry; Iwantedto drive him away. I still cried when he didn’t answer.

I imagine Sloane at age twenty-four, not so different from me.

“I was okay.” I don’t know why my voice wavers. Iwasokay. August rent was paid, my job would cover food, and I’d learned the utilities wouldn’t get cut off after one missed bill. I contacted my university, told them my family was relocating to Australia, and arranged to move into my dorm a week early. It worked out.

Sloane shakes her head. “I know it’s weird, but I had you investigated. You weren’t okay. But by the time I figured it out, it was too late. You were so angry.”

“You didn’t owe me anything, Sloane.” Nothing like what I owe her now.

“I know,” she snaps. “Jesus, Stellar, is it always pay-to-play with you? I guess the only way I’m going to get anywhere is to be as blunt as you seem to enjoy being. So I’ll just say it: my mom’s sick.”

I’ve seen photos of Sloane’s mom on her daughter’s red carpets. Sloane looks like her: tall, regal, with killer legs and a sneak-attack smile. But she also looks like our dad: cheekbones, jaw, shoulders, ankles. He’s in her bones. Inourbones.

“Shit, I’m sorry. Is it bad?” I don’t know Sloane, but I know about the end of life. Empathy comes in a painful rush, another frozen limb reawakening.

“Chronic leukemia. She has a few years, give or take. But it made me think about family. You and I don’t have forever to forgive each other. And sooner or later we won’t have anyone who shares our fucked-up history, because I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t look like I’m having kids.”

I slow down as McHuge switches on his turn signal ahead of another narrow, overgrown logging road. “I don’t want kids either.”

“No, I want them. But I’m forty, and I already tried. Two years of mechanical duty fucking with my ex, six months of IVF. One morning I went to my egg-harvesting appointment and realized our marriage wasn’t worth another round of giant needles. Got home early and found him watching soccer in his underwear. He’d told me he had a casting call that couldn’t be moved. He didn’t evenlikesoccer.”

“What adick,” I say, before I remember I’m not that kind of friend to Sloane—not a trash-talking, ex-bashing friend. Not any kind of friend. “You probably shouldn’t tell me this.”

She tilts her head, hair falling across her pale electriceyes. There’s a streak of dust on her cheek from the hand she didn’t get quite clean on her shorts. “Telling you is thepoint, Stellar. Marriages come and go. Careers don’t last. Friends sell your secrets to the tabloids. Sisters… I think those might be forever.”

---