“Where’s the dad?” Joaquin asked. “Is it Adam?”
“God, no,” Grace said, sitting up a little bit more. “It was my boyfriend at the time, Max.” Grace closed her eyes briefly against the stab of pain, and Joaquin reached over and put his hand on her arm as Maya nuzzled her chin against her shoulder.
“Asshole,” Maya murmured.
“His loss,” Joaquin said.
“I needed him, you know?” Grace twisted the charms around and around, tangling the chain around her neck. “I needed him and he wasn’t there. He got crowned homecoming king the night she was born. He wasn’t even with me in the room.”
Maya muttered something under her breath that did not sound complimentary.
“What?”
“Nothing. Do you get to see her? I mean, if the parents are sending you updates . . .”
“We agreed to two visits a year, but I don’t know if I can do it,” Grace said. “I don’t know if I can see her again. I don’t know if that’s what she needs.”
“What about what you need, though?” Joaquin asked. His hand was still on Grace’s arm, as if he was afraid that she would suddenly sprout wings and fly out of the room.
Grace just shrugged. “It’s not about me.”
“This is why you need to find our mom,” Maya said softly. “That’s why you keep bringing it up.”
Grace bit her lip so she wouldn’t burst into tears again. She could tell that Maya and Joaquin were exchanging a glance over her head. It made her feel small when they did that, and she sort of liked it and sort of hated it.
“I’ve been trying,” she admitted. “But there’s nothing. The letters my parents sent through the lawyer got returned; they don’t have a working number. She’s a ghost.”
Maya shifted a little. “No. She’s not.”
“What?” Joaquin said. “What are you talking about?”
Maya looked at both of them, then started to climb off the bed. “C’mon,” she said. “Follow me.”
“Maya,” Grace said, and the sound of her own voice scared her. “What are you doing?”
“Come on,” Maya just said again. “Before Lauren and my dad get back.”
Joaquin helped Grace off the bed, then kept his arm around her shoulders as they followed Maya downstairs into what looked like an office. Grace had never seen her look so solemn before, and it scared her. “Maya,” she said again.
Maya just ushered them inside, then shut the door and locked it before going over to a file cabinet. “When we were little,” she said, “Lauren and I used to play Detectives. We’d hide around the house, pretend that we were finding clues, you know, stupid shit. But then, one time, we found this.” She opened the cabinet and pulled out a small black box with a combination lock on it.
Grace felt her heart move from her chest to her throat.
“I knew it was about me,” Maya said, setting it down on the desk. “So one night, after everyone was asleep, I came downstairs and worked on the combination until it opened.”
She was spinning the lock as if she had done so a million times before. Grace wondered if maybe she had.
“There we go,” she said as it popped open. Then she reached inside and pulled out a small stack of papers, spreading them out on the granite-topped desk.
Grace wondered why everything in Maya’s house felt so cold all the time.
The three of them leaned in close, heads together, sifting through the papers. Grace saw Maya’s birth certificate, her parents’ names carefully typed in, and a small set of baby footprints. There was some official-looking paperwork, and then Maya reached for an envelope with a red “Return to Sender” stamp on it. “Here,” she said, handing it to Grace.
Grace’s hands were shaking as she took it. At first, she couldn’t figure out why it was so important, and then she saw it.
The address.
“Your parents sent a letter to her house?” she gasped. Her hands were shaking so bad that she had to hand it to Joaquin.
Maya just nodded.
“How . . . when did you find this? How did they even get it?”
“I was ten,” Maya said. “And I don’t know. They don’t even know that I found it.”
“Did you ever look it up? Did you write her? Did you . . .” Grace forced herself to slow down. Next to her, Joaquin looked stricken, and he kept turning the envelope over and over, as if looking for another clue, as if he was playing Detectives, too.
“No,” Maya said. “I just put it back. I used to take it out every now and then and look at it, but I just couldn’t do it. I guess,” she added after a pause, “maybe I was waiting for you two.”
Grace reached over and put her hand on Joaquin’s, stilling his movements. “Joaq,” she said, “do you want to do this?”
“Well, you—”
“No, not me. You. Do you want to do this? It’s okay if you don’t.”
“Totally, Joaquin,” Maya said. “You have . . . we know . . . fuck, I don’t know what to say.”
“No, I want to,” Joaquin said. “I want her to see me.” His voice reminded Grace of the ocean, of sand being sucked back into the sea. “It’s easier with you two.”
“Okay,” Grace said. “You’re sure?”
Joaquin nodded. “I’m sure.”
“Then I’m sure, too,” Maya said.
“I’ll drive,” Joaquin replied. “Next weekend?”
“Damn straight,” Maya said.
Grace had never thought that it could feel so good just to breathe again.
MAYA
Maya was really good at keeping secrets.
That’s probably because she had so much practice at it.
She never told anyone about the envelope in the safe, at least not until Joaquin and Grace, and she didn’t tell anyone that she was going to drive three hours to see if her biological mom was still at the address on the envelope. That secret was making her feel like something was pushing under her skin, desperate to get out.
And that made her think, of course, of Grace.
Even though she had already said sorry, she had texted Grace at least once a day since then, apologizing for stealing her phone.
Did I tell you how sorry I am? Because I am.
My, it’s fine.
I’ll buy you frozen yogurt next time.
I actually hate frozen yogurt.
Gah! I am so bad at apologizing!!!!!!
Maya still had questions, of course. She wanted to know when the baby (she couldn’t call her Peach no matter how hard she tried) had been born, if it had hurt as much as everyone says it does, if Grace had been scared before and after. She wondered if Grace would feel bad forever, if that look on her face when she had first told them about the baby would ever truly go away.