“There you are,” Mia said.
“Mom. What are you doing here?” Pearl glanced over her shoulder, in the universal reaction of all teenagers confronted by their parents in a public place.
“Do you have anything important in your locker?” Mia unzipped Pearl’s bag and peeked inside. “Your wallet? Any papers? Okay, let’s go.” She turned back toward the car, and Pearl jerked herself free.
“Mom. I can’t. I have a biology quiz next period. And I’m meeting—I’m meeting somebody after school. I’ll just see you at home, okay?”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Mia, and Pearl noticed the wrinkle between her mother’s eyebrows that meant she was deeply worried. “I mean we have to go. Today.”
“What?” Pearl glanced around. The oval lay quiet and green before them. Everyone was inside, in class, except for a few students clustered—just off school grounds—at the nearby traffic triangle, smoking. Everything seemed so normal. “I don’t want to leave.”
“I know, my darling. But we have to.”
Every time before, when her mother had decided to leave, Pearl had felt at most a twinge of regret—always over the minor things: a boy she’d admired from afar, a certain park bench or quiet corner or library book she hated to leave behind. Mostly, however, she had felt relief: that she could slide out of this life and begin anew, like a snake shedding its skin. This time all that welled up inside her was a mixture of grief and rage.
“You promised we would stay,” she said, her voice thickening. “Mom. I have friends here. I have—” She looked around, as if one of the Richardson children might appear. But Lexie was off in the Social Room finishing her lunch. Moody was back in English class discussing Othello. And Trip—Trip would be waiting for her after school on the other side of the oval. When she didn’t appear, he would drive away. She had a wild thought: if she could only run to the Richardson house, she would be safe. Mrs. Richardson would help her, she was sure. The Richardsons would take her in. The Richardsons would never let her go. “Please. Mom. Please. Please don’t make us go.”
“I don’t want to. But we have to.” Mia held out her hand. Pearl, for a moment, imagined herself transforming into a tree. Rooting herself so deeply on that spot that nothing could displace her.
“Pearl, my darling,” her mother said. “I’m so sorry. It’s time to go.” She took Mia’s hand, and Pearl, uprooted, came free and followed her mother back to the car.
When they got back to the house on Winslow, a few belongings were already packed: the couch had been stripped of its blanket and disassembled into a stack of pillows; the various prints Mia had tacked to the wall had been boxed. Mia was a fast packer, good at squeezing an improbably large number of things into a tight space. In their year in Shaker, however, they’d acquired more things than they’d ever had before, and this time many more things would need to be left behind.
“I thought I’d be finished by now,” Mia admitted, setting her keys down on the table. “But I had to finish something. Fold up your clothes. Whatever will fit in your duffel bag.”
“You promised,” Pearl said. In the safe cocoon of their home—their real home, as she’d begun to think of it—the tears began to flow, along with a choking rush of fury. “You said we were staying put. You said this was it.”
Mia stopped and put an arm around Pearl. “I know I did,” she said. “I promised. And I’m sorry. Something’s happened—”
“I’m not going.” Pearl kicked her shoes onto the floor and stomped into the living room. Mia heard the door to her room slam. Sighing, she picked up Pearl’s sneakers by the heels and went down the hallway. Pearl had flopped on her bed, math book spread in front of her, jerking a notebook from her bookbag. A furious charade.
“It’s time.”
“I have to do my homework.”
“We have to pack.” Mia gently closed the textbook. “And then we have to leave.”
Pearl snatched the textbook from her mother’s hands and threw it across the room, where it left a black smudge on the wall. Next went her notebook, her ballpoint, her history book, a stack of note cards, until her bookbag lay crumpled on the floor like a shed skin and everything that had been inside it had scattered. Mia sat quietly beside her, waiting. Pearl was no longer crying. Her tears had been replaced by a cold, blank face and a set jaw.
“I thought we could stay, too,” Mia said at last.
“Why?” Pearl pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them and glared at her mother. “I’m not going until you tell me why.”
“That’s fair.” Mia sighed. She sat down beside Pearl on the bed and smoothed the bedspread beneath them. It was afternoon. It was sunny. Outside, a mourning dove cooed, the low hum of a lawn mower rose, a passing cloud cast them into shadow for a moment, then drifted away. As if it were simply an ordinary day. “I’ve been thinking about how to tell you for a long time. Longer than you can imagine.”
Pearl had gone very still now, her eyes fixed on her mother, waiting patiently, aware she was about to learn something very important. Mia thought of Joseph Ryan, sitting across the table from her that night at dinner, waiting to learn her answer.
“Let me tell you first,” she said, taking a deep breath, “about your Uncle Warren.”
When Mia had finished, Pearl sat quietly, tracing the lines of quilting that spiraled across the bedspread. She had told Pearl the outline of everything, though they both knew all the details would be a long time in coming. They would trickle out in dribs and drabs, memories surfacing suddenly, prompted by the merest thread, the way memories often do. For years afterward, Mia would spot a yellow house as they drove by, or a battered repair truck, or see two children climbing up a hillside, and would say, “Did I ever tell you—” and Pearl would snap to attention, ready to gather another small glittering shard of her history. Everything, she had come to understand, was something like infinity. They might never come close, but they could approach a point where, for all intents and purposes, she knew all that she needed to know. It would simply take time, and patience. For now, she knew enough.
“Why are you telling me this?” she had asked her mother. “I mean, why are you telling me this now?”