My hands are still shaking from the phone call when I hang up and instantly find myself calling Ben.
"Hayden?" He answers, sounding confused.
"Yeah." I say, staring straight at my bedroom wall in front of me.
"What's wrong?" I hear commotion in the background, like Ben is moving around, then it's quiet on his end.
What's wrong? Such a loaded question as my mind is racing. It's spinning around images of my sister. I see her scared and strung out. I see her as I last saw her, barely even human laying in a hospital bed too weak to move without pain.
"It's Alice." I say, my voice catching on her name.
"Hayden," Ben's voice is urgent now. My mind also pulls forward his look of concern to the forefront. I see his brows pulled together and those big brown eyes and the way he looks down at me so intensely. "What happened?" He's slow and gentle with the question, like he's afraid to know the answer. Like he thinks he already knows what I've called to tell him.
I guess he's part of the club now.
The club of people who spend their lives sitting around just waiting for the call from the coroner's office to come in.
Waiting to be told she's not here anymore.
That she used up all of her chances to fret her life back.
That Alice is truly gone this time.
"It's not that." I say, not wanting to prolong his concern. He shouldn't have to worry about anything. He's got enough to handle.
I start to regret even calling him.
I'm not entirely sure why I did.
"I'm sorry." I say, feeling stupid now. This isn't his problem. The only thing I should be calling Ben about Alice for is for me to tell him the mother of his child is dead. "I shouldn't have bothered you."
"You're not bothering me." He says quickly, before I've even gotten it all out of my own mouth. "You're upset." He says. "Talk to me."
"She got arrested." I spit out.
"The station called you?"
"Yes." I nod though he can't see me. "They said they picked her up late last night. She was too messed up to call me herself. The man said they're holding her there and that...that someone needs to come get her."
"Do you want me to-."
"No." I cut him off. "No, you've got Elizabeth. I can't let you do that."
Even more so, I don't want him to.
The pang of jealousy I feel towards my own twin shocks and disgusts me.
They've already been as intimate as you can get with another person. They made an entire human together. Me being threatened by him going to pick her up shouldn't even matter but I hate myself to admit it was the first thought in my mind.
That I don't want Alice around him.
Partially for his and Elizabeth's well being, but the other part....
"Are you coming back?" Ben asks me, a slight hilt in the tone of his voice. "You can stay here. I don't mind."
"Ben." I sigh.
"Or if you want me to go, I swear I can." He says. "I've got someone who has been helping babysit a little when I need her to since Mom left."
"You've been leaning her with a babysitter?" I don't know why this surprises me. Of course he needs help. He's working full time and he's a single dad. The thought of Ben and Elizabeth just not being together had never even crossed my mind.
"Only when I really need her." He says, a little defensive. "Work has been really great with giving me time off and with giving me projects I can work on from home but I still have things I have to do. Until I can get her into a daycare around here, I haven't had much choice but to use a babysitter."
"Right." I say. "Yeah I know."
The line is quiet for a minute between us.
I don't know what to even say.
"What do you want to do, Hayden?" Ben finally asks me.
"I don't know." I admit. "I just got off of the phone with them. I haven't had time to process or come up with a plan yet. I just don't know."
"She's somewhere here in Texas?" He asks calmly.
"Yeah like an hour away from you." I tell him.
"Ok." He says. "So are you gonna go get her?"
I think about this for a long moment.
What do I even do if I do go get her? I pick her up from jail and then what? I bring her back here?
Do I even want her here?
I remember what it was like living with Alice when things went bad. I remember how I was always on edge. Always treading carefully on thin ice.
Always carefully making my way across the battle field, terrified to trigger the bomb that would explode all over all of us around.
Things here have been so peaceful.
I've got a life now. I have friends and a schedule and work. I don't know that I can handle taking her in.
I shutter to myself.
This is so similar to the situation I found myself in when I got the first call about Alice and her baby.
As much as a baby could have disrupted my whole life, as fragile as they are, and as much of myself I'd have to give up to give a baby a good home....
None of it compares to what it would be like to take in Alice. To bring her into my home. Around the people I love. To risk them becoming another casualty of the life of living with an addict.
My friends have led good lives. I could be envious of how seemingly easy they've both always had it, but I'm not.
I'm thankful they've lived without knowing this constant state of fight or flight that lives just beneath the surface of your skin no matter how far away or how long it's been since you have been in the situation that broke you.
I don't want to do it to them.
But I also can't do it to Ben.
I can't do it to Alice.
"I have to get her." I say finally. "Maybe I can talk her into going into a rehab or I don't know...something."
"Yeah maybe." Ben agrees. "Has she been before?"
I scoff to myself. "More times than I can count." I say solemnly.
"Oh." He replies quietly. "Well, you never know. Things might be different this time."
I pinch my eyes closed tightly.
I can hear that same sentiment from my parents. Every time they tried something new or found another doctor.
I can hear even Alice saying, "this is different this time. I really mean it. It is. It's not like the other times. I'm really ready now."
Every time she'd say it.
Every. Single. Time.
But it was never different.
It always ended the same way.
I think my hope in things being different from any of the others died in me a long time ago.
Eventually you stop believing the lies that fly from their lips. Eventually you just nod and agree, knowing you will soon find yourself back in the same position as before.
I don't even know if I will be able to convince her. If she's fallen down hard enough again to think she can do it. If she'll even consider what her life is now as something that needs fixing.
"You know," Ben finally says when I've been quiet for too long. "I was actually going to call you later today anyway."
This pulls me slightly away from my haunted memories.
"Why?" I ask, unsure if I want to know at all.
"You know this weekend is Christmas." He says, like he is actually letting me in on some information I might not already know. "And so I was actually going to ask if you wanted to come spend it with me and Elizabeth."
I'm taken aback for a second.
"There?" I ask, tugging a blanket up over my legs.
"Well yeah." He says. "I've been thinking about it and I decided I didn't want to travel with Elizabeth being so little still. The crowds and the airports and all of that. So I decided to stay home this year. Mom will be coming the day after Christmas since she's hosting the rest of our family at her place. But for the actual holiday it'll just be me and Lizzy."
"Oh, wow." I mutter in response.
I don't mention that I'd had a similar conversation with Emma about me staying home this Christmas instead of going with her to visit her family in New York like we usually would.
She was disappointed and did her best to talk me out of it, but I'd explained how my heart just wasn't in it this year to go and be around all of those people. They're people who I love, but spending another holiday with a family that's not really mine just made my sadness feel worse.
She'd agreed and I'd made plans to enjoy the apartment to myself.
I was going to pick up some extra work at the funeral home. I was going to watch the snow fall outside of our big living room windows while I had Christmas movies playing in the background.
I was going to try to relax and find some sort of holiday tradition of my own here by myself.
But that was all before the call from Texas.
All before Alice, once again, changed my plans.
"I mean it's not pressure or anything." He stammers quickly. "I just thought you know, maybe you'd want to come by and see Elizabeth. I get it if you already made plans this is super last second." He pauses. "But also," he says. "If you're going to have to come to town anyway. At least stop by for a visit."
I mull it over in my head.
Christmas.
It's not really been that big of a thing for me since my parents died. My aunt tried to do up the first year after the passed. She wanted it to feel like it always did, but neither of our hearts were in it. We'd ended up spending Christmas Eve crying as we looked through old pictures and all of mom's favorite Christmas decorations hung up all around my aunt's tiny living room.
Christmas morning neither of us came out of our rooms.
Silently, that night we packed all of the Christmas stuff back up and put it all back into storage and I haven't touched any of it since.
I started doing the holidays with Emma's family after my aunt passed too.
It's just something I go through the motions of now. I don't get the old holiday spirit anymore like I did when I was with my family.
But Ben is a little bit right.
I do miss Elizabeth so much it hurts.
I've hated not being able to be around her. I get my daily pictures and updates but nothing is the same as actually getting to see her and smell her and hold her tiny sleeping body against mine.
Plus, I do need to go to Texas anyway.
The thought of why I'm having to go there just brings up more and more memories of being little and all of the Christmases spent with Alice.
How we'd be waking up our parents the second the sun started to creep through the windows.
How we'd run down the stair to find all of the gifts with our names on them and spend the entire day moving from one toy to the next.
We'd shared everything back then.
There were never Alice or Hayden gifts.
Each wrapped gift from Santa had both of our names on them.
Everything we had was ours.
The sad thing is I don't even remember when our last Christmas together actually was.
All of the ones after she was diagnosed and then gone, just blur together like one.
I hate that I can't pull the last good year from my memory.
But I guess it makes sense that I can't.
I had no reason to take special hold of that day in my heart. Because at the time, I had no idea it would be the last.
Just like I can hardly remember the last one with just my parents and me.
I didn't know that was our last time either.
I think I learned after their deaths to actually take in every single small part of every insignificant day that passed in my life and the people I shared them with because I'd learned the hard way that you never know when it's the last time I'll get the chance to experience what might seem like mundane things until you don't have those people around anymore.
Just like now.
I don't know if I'll get another chance to spend time with Elizabeth or Ben.
In this terrible scary world we live in, anything could happen at any given second and my opportunity is gone.
Just like I may never get another chance at another Christmas with Alice.
"I'll come by to visit after I get her settled somewhere." I say finally and I hear Ben let out a small breath on the other end of the line.
"Good." He says. "I'm sure Lizzy is gonna love that."
"She's a baby." I give a small laugh. "She won't know if I'm there or not."
"Don't sell my girl short." He tells me, an obvious smile in his voice. "She's very mature for her age. Very observant."
"I'm sure she is." I can't help but smile back even with all of the turmoil going on inside of me. Even though my stomach is in knots over everything, I can't deny that they make me happy.
Elizabeth and Ben.
I'd be lying if I said I'm not actually excited at the prospect of being able to go and visit them again.
"You take care of whatever you need to." Ben tells me. "Keep me posted. Let me know you make it safe and what you end up doing, and you know where we will be when you're done."
"I can do that." I agree.
"Hey, Hayden?"
"Yeah, Ben?"
"I'm glad you're coming." He tells me, and my body feels light. He's glad he's going to see me. Just like I'm glad I'm going to see him.
"So am I." I admit. "I'll keep you posted." I tell him and he says goodbye and I set my phone aside.
I know I need to get my plane ticket figured out and let work know I'll be leaving again, but I just want to soak up the few seconds of excitement before all of the less exciting reasons I'm making this trip settle back into my bones.
The moment is gone too quickly.
Because as much as I want to be happy about the potential of this trip....
Ben is just another thing my sister and I have shared.
Not just Alice.
Not just Hayden.
But us.