“Well, I’m definitely not sad that she never met Grayson.”
“Yeah, but maybe if she had, she would have known that he wasn’t a good guy and you never would have ended up getting engaged to him.”
Saina sat up and noticed the old photograph tacked onto the wall eye level with the pillow. It was their mother on the tarmac in Las Vegas, stepping into the helicopter that would ferry her to her death. Strange that their father would have had this roll of film developed, a set of reminders of the last trip he took with his wife and of his own outrageous fortune. “Why do you think that?”
“Well, she was our mom! She would have known you so well, better, even, than any of us know you, and she would have met him and known instinctively that he wasn’t right. And she would have given you good advice.”
“Mom wasn’t really the advice-giving type.”
Grace flipped over. “I hate it when you say stuff like that! I don’t believe you.”
Frustrated, Saina said, “Grace, you didn’t ever know her.” As soon as she did, she hated herself for it. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know you wish so much that you did know her. I’m sorry you never got to, Gracie.” She nuzzled in close to her sister, who didn’t respond, didn’t move. “I’m going to go make you pancakes, okay?”
Saina started the pancake batter, cracking eggs into a big glass bowl already half full of sweet, grassy-smelling milk. It was satisfying to watch each one splash down and then surface, a saturated yellow in a field of creamy white. After half a dozen, plus a dash of vanilla, she beat them until the whole mixture was the color of fresh butter then stirred in careful handfuls of the dry ingredients.
As Saina mixed, Grace came downstairs and stood, watching her. Finally, she said, “Remember that time when we made Mickey Mouse pancakes?”
“You still remember that? How old were you? Like, seven?”
“It was the summer before you left for college. And then you started a fire, and we had to put it out with baking soda.”
“And then Ama came in and yelled at us and you cried and said that you didn’t want to eat baking soda.”
“I didn’t cry!”
“You did. It’s okay, you were only seven.”
“I was just a baby.”
“Want me to make you Mickey Mouse pancakes now, baby?”
Grace picked up a tiny, deeply red strawberry and ate it. Paused. And then said, “Will you?”
Saina poured the batter in a squeeze bottle and then held her hand over the cast-iron pan, waiting for the heat to rise before spearing a pat of butter on a knife and running it over the dark surface of the pan. She let it sizzle for a moment then drizzled in the outline of a face. It was all wrong for Mickey, though. Too round at the bottom and not long enough. But . . . Saina added a lopsided pair of glasses on the face, some tufts of hair and two ears, giving it time to brown before flipping it over, then sliding it onto a plate and putting in front of Grace, who was slicing the strawberries now.
“Who does this look like?”
Grace stared at it for a long moment. “Not Mickey.”
“No.”
“Um . . . Anchorman?”
“No! Does he even wear glasses? No, it’s someone you know.”
“In real life?” Grace considered. Shook her head. And then, “Is it Dad? It is!”
“Yes!”
“I can’t eat my father! Patricide!”
“Gastropatrimony.”
Grace broke off an ear. “Oh wait, my father’s delicious. We should save this for him, he’ll be so into it.”
“Will you go wake them up?”
Three minutes later, Grace came clattering back down, a fully dressed Barbra trailing behind her.
“Babs won’t tell me where Dad is!”
Not even a full day had passed, and Grace had already tossed aside the beatific calm that she’d brought to Helios. Ah, well, she was only sixteen. There would be other epiphanies. “What’s going on?”
“I only need to say the thing one time, not two,” said Barbra.
“Okay,” said Grace. “So what is it? Say it already, where is he?”
“Daddy went to return the car at the airport.”
“What? Why’d he go by himself? He should’ve waited for us to wake up—I could have gone with him. How’s he planning to get back? Should we go pick him up now?”
Her stepmother turned towards the window and looked out at the barn Saina was slowly converting into a studio. “He’s not coming back. He’s going to go to the airport.”
“Right. To return the car.” Why was Barbra being this obtuse? “And then he’s coming back?”
“And to get on an airplane.”
Instinctively, Grace and Saina grabbed for each other’s arms. “We just got here! Where’s he flying to?”
“Zhong guo.”
“Are you serious? Why is he going to China? That doesn’t make any sense! Why didn’t he tell us?”
Saina’s heart sank. Had the shock of losing everything made her father crazy? “Is it the land? Does he really think—”