Sophia pulled out of my embrace and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her flannel pajamas. “I do want to stay here. Status quo and all that, you know?” I nodded. “It’s comfortable for me, but I can be a big girl about it. They would have found a reason to get rid of me eventually.”
People like Sophia and I had to grow up fast. We knew things about people that most adults hadn’t even figured out. The thing was that I knew Mrs. Keller was closer to Sophia than either one of them realized. I stood from the bed, wiped my eyes, and squared my shoulders. “Stay here, Soph. I’m gonna go downstairs for a bit.”
I found Mr. Keller sitting on the sofa in the living room, reading a book. “Hello, Mr. Keller.”
“Hello.” He looked up over his bifocals.
“I need to use the phone to call my social worker and my family friend Jackson Fisher, who I’ve known my whole life.” My voice was unemotional, pragmatic.
“Go ahead,” he said, and went right back to reading his book.
I walked into the kitchen and dialed Paula first. As the phone rang, I watched the boys as they ate pie and shoved each other. Mrs. Keller was nowhere to be seen or heard. I wondered if she was hiding from me and Sophia. The coward.
“Hello?”
“Paula, I need to talk to you.”
“Listen, before you say anything, I actually have some good news. I know things went terribly wrong today, but I have some information that I think will change everything.
For a minute, I forgot about the awful predicament I was in. “What? Tell me.”
“Do you know of your aunt Becky?”
“I don’t have an aunt Becky. I don’t have an aunt anyone.”
“Actually, you do have an aunt Becky. Everything has been checked out. She’s your father’s half sister, ten years his junior.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” To my knowledge, no one from CPS could find my mother, and I had no other living relatives, as far as I knew.
“It’s true.”
“Did my father know about her?”
“He’s the one who gave us her information. We contacted her in San Francisco, where she lives, and asked her if she would take over guardianship.”
“What?!” I shouted. The boys went silent, all three of them staring at me as I leaned against the counter. “I’ll have to move to San Francisco?”
“Yes.”
“No, I can’t. I can’t leave Jackson. What’s going to happen to Sophia? Why didn’t my father tell me I had an aunt? I don’t even know her. I’ll never fit in there. This is going to ruin my life!”
“Slow down.”
I started feeling woozy. Mr. Keller came into the kitchen and braced me by the elbow. I swayed. Quietly, he said, “Come on, sit on the couch.”
When I sat, he left the room. “They’re kicking me out because I spent a few hours with Jackson?”
Paula’s voice became low and soothing. “I know you’ve been through a lot. Please hear me out. Sophia is going to a new foster home nearby. It’s a decent place, but they don’t take teenagers, and anyway, believe it or not, your aunt Becky sounds like a very intelligent and warm person. She has no children of her own, and get this . . . She’s a creative writing professor at Berkeley.”
“None of this information is helping. Why didn’t my father ever tell me about my aunt?”
“Well, because your aunt is . . . how do I put this? Well, she’s the product of an affair that your grandfather had, and they had to keep it all hush-hush to avoid a scandal. But apparently your father knew about her. I don’t know if they were ever truly in contact, but he wrote to her from prison, and being a very kind and generous person, she’s agreed to let you come and live with her and her partner, Trina.”
My mouth was open in disbelief. I couldn’t even process what she was telling me. I was going to live with my lesbian aunt in California? No fucking way. I wasn’t going to leave Ohio—I didn’t care if the president himself gave me a room at the White House.
“How much time do I have to disappear?”
She chuckled. “Don’t worry, I have a feeling you’ll be very happy in this new arrangement. I’ll be there tomorrow at ten a.m. to pick you up.”
We said our good-byes, and then I stormed up the stairs to the second floor and barged through the door of Mrs. Keller’s bedroom, where I found her sitting on the edge of the bed, crying.
“How could you do this? I don’t care anymore about me, but how could you do this to Sophia? She’s been here for seven years. My god, you’re like parents to her. What is wrong with you?” She hung her head silently as I continued. “Listen, please. She did nothing wrong. For all she knew, Jax and I were studying. And who cares if she told a little white lie anyway? Please, you’ll fuck up that little girl if you send her away. She’s so good. She’s so innocent.”
Mrs. Keller looked up, her eyes swollen and bloodshot. “I have to. She has to learn that her behavior has consequences.”
“But your consequences are too extreme. I know you love her. Please don’t send her away.”