“Mom!” Lauren kept screaming, and Maya followed the sound of her voice down the hall and into her parents’ bathroom. Lauren was on the floor next to their mom. She was crumpled like a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest, and there was blood coming from her head, staining the marble floor that was freezing cold under Maya’s bare feet.
“I just found her in here!” Lauren cried. “We need to call Dad!”
Maya grabbed for Lauren’s phone, which was still in her hand. “We need to call nine-one-one!” she said. “Jesus Christ, Lauren, what’s Dad going to do from New Orleans?”
It took her three tries to type in 911 because her hand was shaking so bad.
At her feet, her mom was moaning. Lauren had a towel pressed against her head, trying to mop up the blood. The 911 dispatcher promised to stay on the phone with her until the paramedics arrived, and Maya put the phone on speaker and set it down on the countertop.
“Maya?” her mom moaned.
“I’m right here,” Maya said, but she didn’t crouch down. She didn’t want to get too close to her mother. She didn’t want to break her. Instead, she just dug her own phone out of her back pocket and started to call Claire, getting halfway through the motions before remembering with a cold shock that Maya was the last person Claire would want to hear from at the moment.
“Shit,” she whispered to herself. Lauren was stroking their mom’s hair, holding the towel to the underside of her temple, and Maya forced herself to think straight, to not cry, to figure out this problem.
She called someone else instead. At first, she was afraid that she wouldn’t answer, but she suddenly picked up on the fourth ring. “Hello? Maya?”
“Grace?” Maya said, and then she started to cry.
JOAQUIN
Joaquin was pretty used to receiving random texts from Grace. Hey, how was your day? he would get sometimes after school, or a Did you see that new movie? last weekend. He wasn’t sure if it was because she was genuinely curious or because she just wanted to check the boxes when it came to bonding with him, but it was nice either way. He usually sent back a pretty standard answer—good, how about you or nope, did not—because he didn’t always know what to say. Grace was basically a stranger, after all. Blood relative or not, they had only met twice before with their other blood relative/stranger. It wasn’t exactly the warmest of fuzzy situations. (Joaquin once had had a younger foster sister who used to say that all the time. The phrase had stuck with him, even if he thought it made him sound like an idiot.)
All that changed on Sunday.
It started with—what else?—a text from Grace, and Joaquin rolled over in bed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes so he could read it. Hey, it said, and already he could tell that this text was different. I know we’re supposed to meet for coffee today, but could you come over to Maya’s instead?
That was weird.
sure okay. why?
Long story. Can you come over this morning?
Joaquin thought for a minute, then rolled back over onto his side, closing one eye so he could see the screen. okay, he wrote back. see you at ten?
Cool. Thanks, Joaq.
He stayed in bed for another minute or two, then went to the foot of the stairs. “Hey, Linda?” he yelled.
“Yeah?”
“Can I borrow the car?”
Linda came to the foot of the stairs. “Mark and I thought we’d go to the store while you were meeting Maya and Grace.”
“Grace just texted me,” he said, holding up his phone. “She wants to meet at Maya’s house.” Then he paused before adding, “I think something’s wrong.”
An hour later, Joaquin swung Mark’s car into Maya’s very, very spacious driveway. Grace’s car was already parked there. Joaquin suspected that they could have also parked a sixteen-wheeler and there still would have been room to play basketball.
“Shit,” he said softly to himself, looking up at the house through the windshield. He had suspected that his youngest sister’s family had money, and looking up at the tall front doors, the high windows that framed the front of the house, and the bougainvillea that climbed up one side of the brick wall, he realized that he had been right.
Grace opened the front door before Joaquin could even use the huge brass door knocker that was shaped like a trophy. “Hi,” she said.
She looked terrible.
“You look . . .”
“I look awful, I know.” Grace stood back, waving him into the house. “I don’t even live here, but I’m inviting you in anyway. Welcome to Maya’s home.”
Joaquin stepped onto the marble floors. There was a pile of shoes to the side, so he toed off his sneakers, glad that he had worn clean socks, at least. “Why are you here?” he asked her. “Where’s Maya?”
Grace jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “She’s outside with Lauren. Her sister,” she added when Joaquin raised an eyebrow, not recognizing the name. “She’s the one who was born right after they adopted Maya.”
“Oh, right, right,” he said, but his eyes had already traveled to the massive staircase, and the huge number of family photos that lined the wall next to it. It was like watching a timeline of Maya’s life, from baby pictures to school photos set against a fake forest background. There were vacation snapshots, candids, and posed portraits, and Joaquin could find Maya in every single one within seconds. She was the short brunette in a sea of tall redheads, and for the first time, Joaquin was sort of glad that he didn’t have a ton of baby photos. He didn’t need the constant reminder that he was different from everyone else.
Grace stood next to him, following his gaze. “I know, right?” she said after a minute. “Imagine walking past this every single day. It freaked me out the first time I saw it, too.”
“Do you think they even know that it’s weird?” Joaquin asked her, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned closer to look at one of the baby pictures, an infant Lauren propped up in toddler Maya’s lap. Maya didn’t look thrilled. Joaquin realized that she still made that same face whenever she was annoyed.
Grace just shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they just wanted her to think that she was one of them, regardless of how she looked.”
Joaquin huffed out a laugh before he could stop himself. That was one of the first things that Mrs. Buchanan had said to him when he first moved into their home. “We don’t see skin color,” she had said, leaning down to put a hand on his then-bony shoulder and smiling so wide that Joaquin could see her back teeth. “We’re all the same on the inside.”
He had thought that was pretty funny. Everyone else seemed to be able to see skin color just fine.
“Trust me,” he said to Grace. “Maya knows she doesn’t look like them.”
“Well, that’s the least of her problems right now.” Grace sighed. “C’mon, they’re out by the pool.”
Of course there’s a pool, Joaquin thought as he followed her outside. Maya and a red-haired girl who Joaquin guessed was Lauren were sitting across from each other by the pool. Lauren was tucked under the shade of an umbrella, but Maya was sprawled out on the cement by the pool, sunglasses over her face and her feet in the water. She sat up when she heard them come outside. “Hi,” she said, waving to Joaquin. “Welcome to the latest episode of Real Housewives.”