“I can’t,” she says wistfully. “I can’t leave Priscilla and my mom to take up the slack while I go have a vacation. That would be wrong.”

“You guys are going to have to take breaks every now and then. You can’t keep going like this forever, or you’ll get burned out. I’m worried about you.”

“Thank you,” she says.

I take a frustrated breath. “You don’t need to thank me for worrying about you.”

“I know. But it means a lot to me that you do,” she says. “My cousin Faith, the health guru, might come one of these weekends. She’s really good friends with Priscilla, and the two of them would make a party of it, taking care of my dad and gossiping the whole time. I wouldn’t need to be here. But no one can count on Faith. She’s like the wind. She blows in when she blows in. Anyway, I’m tired of talking about me. How are you? How’s your company? I realized the other day that I don’t know anything about it. Priscilla asked if you sell T-shirts out of your trunk, and I couldn’t tell her yes or no.”

I throw my head back into my pillow as I groan inwardly. “No, I don’t sell T-shirts out of my trunk. Here, this is us.” I text her links to our website and one of our social media pages, and when she makes an impressed oooooh sound, I relax somewhat.

“These clothes are adorable,” she says, and then she gasps. “I want that rainbow dress in adult size. And one of those T. rex–in–a–tutu T-shirts.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but I’m pretty sure the biggest size we have for that rainbow dress is youth large.”

“Darn,” she says, but she laughs, too.

“Michael’s in charge of design, but those T. rex–in–a–tutu shirts were my idea. They sell really well, actually. Turns out little kids just love T. rexes.”

“Of course they do. I love T. rexes. It was such a good idea,” she says. I can hear in her voice that she means it, and I want to reach through the phone and kiss her until she’s dizzy. “Quan, there’s an octopus in a tutu!”

“That’s a new addition,” I say, and I can’t stop myself from grinning up at the dark ceiling.

“It looks like the same kind of octopus as in the documentary …”

“Yeah, I made sure it was the same kind. Octopus vulgaris.”

She sighs dreamily like I gifted her chocolates and roses and a trip to the opera, and my heart goes mushy. Those words from before fill my mouth, pushing to get out, wanting to be heard, but I hold them back. I can’t say them yet.

“Looks like my company is getting acquired,” I say. “We’ve started contract negotiations.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” she asks.

“Good. There won’t be too many changes in how we run things, but they’ll help us reach a scale that we couldn’t on our own. I won’t be losing my job or anything.”

“That’s great. Who’s the acquiring company? Have I heard of them?” she asks.

“I think you’ve heard of them. They’re Louis Vuitton.” Tell that to your sister, I think, but I don’t say it.

“What?” Anna squeals. “Just wait until I tell Priscilla. My mom’s going to flip out.”

“Well, make sure to tell them it’s not final yet. And I don’t get discounts on their purses and stuff.” My sister almost cried when I told her there’d be no discounts on her favorite designer handbags, but I figure it’s good to be up front and set realistic expectations.

“Okay. I’ll make sure they know it’s not a done deal, and tell them not to hope for purse discounts. But I’m happy for you, and really, congratulations,” she says, her words rich and warm and heartfelt. She’s proud of me, proud that I’m hers, and it makes my heart feel like it’s growing too big for my chest. “Are things really busy as you work on making this happen?”

“Thanks. Yeah, work has been nonstop meetings and phone calls and paperwork, but it’s super exciting. I’ve felt bad, though, because things are going well for me, and you’re …”

“Don’t feel bad. I don’t want other people to go through what I am. I like knowing that things are going well for someone,” she says.

“I wish things were better for you.”

“I know you do.”

We continue talking for a few more minutes, though we don’t say much. Mostly, we’re listening to the sound of the other’s voice, drawing comfort from it.

We eventually say our good nights, and I stare up into the darkness for a long while before I fall asleep. I can’t stop thinking about the fact that her ex isn’t technically her ex. They’d need to break up first for that to happen. I know she’d never cheat on me. I trust her. But somehow, my girlfriend has two boyfriends, and I’m not okay with that.

TWENTY-SIX

Anna

WEEKS PASS. WEEK AFTER WEEK AFTER WEEK, UNTIL IT’S BEEN two months since my dad landed in the hospital. He starts moaning at some point, a slow, rhythmic moan that goes on for hours. It’s always the same. I must have inherited my perfect pitch from him, because his moans never vary from a perfect E-flat.

No one can figure out why he’s doing it, but the doctor tells us not to worry. He’s not in pain—of the physical kind. Priscilla, ever skeptical of expertise that isn’t her own, becomes fixated on the idea that he’s constipated and insists on giving him milk of magnesia. It turns out my dad is extremely sensitive to milk of magnesia, and we go through an entire bag of diapers—and a lot of gagging and nausea, on my part, which makes Priscilla glare at me—before his body settles down.

He moans the entire time. And continues afterward.

E-flat, E-flat, E-flat, E-flat, E-flat.

Priscilla and my mom grow frantic with worry. Because modern medicine isn’t helping, they have an acupuncturist come to the house and treat him. They push herbal remedies into his feeding tube, put CBD oil under his tongue. They even pay a naturopathic doctor to give him vitamin C intravenously. It’s obscenely expensive, but it doesn’t work. Nothing works.

If anything, his moaning gets more vigorous.

I want to tell them to stop, that he’s moaning because he doesn’t want to live this way, and all their ministrations are torturing him. But I don’t. I know it won’t do any good. I’m not here to talk. I’m here to watch over my dad, to make sure he’s never alone in his room, to see to his needs.

The sound of his moans gets to me, though, the constant reminder of why he’s moaning, and it’s not like I can put headphones on and ignore him. If he coughs or chokes, I need to know. I have no choice but to endure it. When my shift is over each day, I sit in the kitchen, close enough that I can hear if Priscilla needs my help, but far enough that his moans are muted.

It’s not a true break. I know I’ll be called upon at any moment, but at least I’m not directly absorbing his emotional pain into myself. Also, it doesn’t smell like soiled diapers and Salonpas pain-relieving patches here.

I’m catching up on the hundreds of unread text messages on my phone—Rose performed on live Canadian TV and just signed a contract with Sony, the twelve-year-old prodigy is going to be in a Netflix movie, Suzie’s violin cover of a popular rap song was chosen as the theme song for a new medical drama (ironic because she hates both rap music and medical dramas), Quan spoke with the head of acquisitions at LVMH and it was “rad,” Jennifer is checking up on me, saying she’s worried about me—when my cousin Faith walks into the kitchen with a duffel bag and a rolled-up yoga mat in her arms. Her hair is frazzled like it always is, and she’s wearing her regular uniform of leggings and a baggy shirt over a fancy workout bra that crisscrosses in the back like a spiderweb, the kind that I can’t wear because I get lost in the straps.