There was no picture of Melissa, or fingerprints, or note or memento, just a signed court document. The name was common enough that Grace suspected she could Google it for hours and not find anything, but it seemed like maybe Melissa had never wanted to be found. “We did send a letter to her through the lawyer,” Grace’s mother said, passing her a thin envelope. “Right after you were born, us telling her how grateful we were, but it was returned.” She didn’t need to add that last part. Grace could see the red “Return to Sender” stamp slashing across the white paper.
And right when she started to feel a new, different (though no worse) despair, that there wasn’t a woman who had wanted her, who had craved her the way Grace craved Peach, who had writhed and ached and wanted to know anything about her, Grace’s parents said something that immediately closed the black hole that was threatening to swallow her up.
“Grace,” her father said gently, like his voice could hit a trip wire and destroy them all, “you have siblings.”
After Grace was done throwing up in the downstairs guest bathroom, she got herself a glass of water and came back to the table. The look of anxiety on her mother’s face made her twitch.
They laid out the story in careful and obviously rehearsed words: Joaquin was her brother. He had been one year old when Grace was born, and had gone into foster care a few days after her parents brought her home. “They asked us if we wanted to foster,” Grace’s mother explained, and even now, sixteen years later, Grace could see the lines of regret that Joaquin had etched on her face. “But you were a newborn and we—we weren’t prepared for that, for two babies. And your grandmother had just been diagnosed . . .”
Grace knew that part of the story. Her grandmother, Gloria Grace, the woman who Grace shared her name with, had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer a month before Grace had been born, and died right after Grace’s first birthday. “The best year and the worst year,” Grace’s mother described it, when she talked about it at all. Grace knew not to ask too many questions.
“Joaquin,” Grace said now, rolling the word over in her mouth. She realized that she had never known a Joaquin before, that she had never said the name before.
“We were told that he was placed with a foster family that was on track to adopt him,” her father told her. “But that’s all we know about him. We tried to keep track of him, but it’s a . . . complicated system.”
Grace nodded, taking it all in. If her life had been a movie, this was where the reflective, orchestral music would swell. “You said siblings? Plural?”
Her mother nodded. “Right after Gloria Grace”—no one ever called her anything except that—“died, we got a phone call from the same lawyer who helped us get you. There was another baby, a girl, but we couldn’t . . .” She looked to Grace’s father again, someone to help her bridge the gap between words. “We couldn’t, Grace,” her mother said, her voice wavering before she cleared her throat. “She was adopted by a family about twenty minutes away. We have their information. We agreed that whenever one of you wanted to contact the other, we would let them know.”
They slid an email address across the table to her. “Her name is Maya,” her father said. “She’s fifteen. We talked to her parents last night and they talked to her. If you’d like to email her, she’s waiting to hear from you.”
That night, Grace sat in front of her laptop, the cursor blinking at her as she tried to figure out what to write to Maya.
Dear Maya, I’m your sister and
Nope. Way too familiar.
Hi Maya, my parents just told me about you and wow!
Grace wanted to punch herself in the face after reading that sentence.
Hey, Maya, what’s up? I always wanted a sister and now I have one
Grace was going to have to hire a ghostwriter.
Finally, after almost thirty minutes of typing, deleting, and typing again, she came up with something that seemed reasonable.
Hi Maya,
My name is Grace and I recently found out that you and I have the same biological mom. My mom and dad told me about you today, and I have to admit that I’m kind of in shock, but excited, too. They said that you knew about me already, so I hope you’re not too surprised to get this email. I also don’t know if your parents told you about Joaquin. He might be our brother. It’d be nice if we could try and find him together?
My parents also said you live thirty minutes away, so maybe we could meet for coffee or something? If you’d like to get to know me, I’d like to get to know you. No pressure, though. I know this has the potential to be super weird.
Hope to hear from you soon,
Grace
She read it three times and then hit “send.”
All she could do was wait.
MAYA
When Maya was a little girl, her favorite movie was the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland. She loved the idea of falling down a rabbit hole, of plummeting into something that she wasn’t expecting, and of course, the idea that a small white rabbit could wear a tiny waistcoat and glasses.
But her absolute favorite scene was the part when Alice grew too big to fit inside the White Rabbit’s house. Her legs and arms went out the windows, shattering the glass, and her head crashed through the roof, while people yelled and screamed all around her. Maya loved that part. She used to make her parents rewind it over and over again, laughing herself sick at the idea that a roof could go and resettle itself.
Now, when her parents would fight and the walls on her house felt too small and she wished she could smash the glass windows and escape, the idea of a house blowing apart didn’t seem so funny.
Maya didn’t really remember a time when her parents weren’t fighting. When she and her sister, Lauren, were younger, it was done behind closed doors, muffled voices and tight smiles the next morning at breakfast. Over the years, though, the quiet words became raised. Then came the shouting, and finally screaming.
The screaming was the worst, shrill and high-pitched, the kind of noise that made you want to cover your ears and scream right back.
Or run and hide.
Maya and Lauren chose the latter. Maya was thirteen months older than Lauren, so she felt responsible. She would jump for the remote and turn up the TV volume until it was too hard to tell what was louder, who wanted to win the noise battle more. “Would you turn down that TV?” her dad had yelled more than once, and it felt so unfair. They had only turned it up because he was too loud in the first place.
Maya and Lauren were fifteen and fourteen now.
The fights were louder than ever.
The fights were all the time.
You’re always working! You’re always working and you don’t—
For you! For the girls! For our family! Jesus Christ, you want everything and yet when I try to give it to you—
Maya was old enough to understand that a lot of those angry words had to do with the wine: a glass before dinner, two or three during dinner, and a fifth sloshed into the glass when Maya’s dad was away on business. Maya never saw empty bottles lying in the recycling bin, and the pantry shelves always seemed to be stocked with unopened bottles, and she wondered who her mom was hiding the evidence from: her daughters, her husband, or herself.