Far from the Tree(12)

“So what’s it like being an only child, Grace?” Lauren asked her. “Is it amazing? It sounds amazing.”

Maya’s mom cleared her throat and took a long swallow of wine.

“Um.” Grace looked at her plate for a second, then back at Lauren. “It’s . . . quiet?”

Every adult at the table laughed, and Grace smiled.

“It’s okay, I guess. I don’t know, it’s fine.”

Maya looked at her but spoke to her parents. “Can Grace and I be excused?” she asked. “We have, like, fifteen years of bonding to catch up on.”

“Sure, I suppose so,” her mom said. “Take your food with you, though? You don’t eat enough.”

“You know that’s a line straight out of the How to Give Your Daughter an Eating Disorder manual, right?” Maya said, but she was already pushing back her chair, grabbing her plate, and motioning to Grace to follow her.

Grace glanced at her mom, the roller-coaster train climbing farther up the track. “It’s fine, go ahead,” her mom said, and she left her plate and scampered up the stairs behind Maya, slipping a little on the marble.

The portrait wall Grace had seen when they’d first entered the house was more striking up close, and she found herself walking more slowly as she looked at the photos. They were candids and professional portraits from over the years, from Maya and Lauren as babies up until what looked like the most recent shot, taken last Christmas. Maya stood out in every single photo, the one brunette in a family of redheads, her smile getting less and less full over the years.

The minute they were in Maya’s room, Maya shut the door and let out a huge sigh. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, that was brutal,” she said, untwisting her hair out of the bun. Grace realized that it was way longer than her hair, and she wondered if maybe she should grow hers back out, too.

“Oh, it’s—yeah, it’s cool.” Grace looked around the room, at the blue ribbons won for . . . something sporty, probably. “Your parents seem nice.”

Maya shot her a look in the mirror. “You know those ribbons are just participation awards, right?”

“Oh,” Grace said.

Maya pulled her hair over her shoulder, then tossed it back again. “I told my parents, like, a million times, don’t do a fancy dinner, let’s just get pizza or something, don’t make it weird. And what do they do? They make it weird.”

“It’s not that weird.”

“My dad is wearing a suit, Grace.”

“Okay, that’s a little weird,” she admitted.

Maya’s room, as opposed to the rest of the house, looked like there had been an explosion at a color factory. One wall was dark blue, another pale yellow, and then two white ones. Posters were up all over the walls, mostly of bands, plus dozens of Polaroids that had been stuck to the wall with bright blue tape. “Did you take these?” Grace asked, leaning in to look at one of Maya with her arms around a girl, kissing her on the cheek as the girl smiled with her eyes closed.

Maya glanced over at her. “Yeah,” she said. “That’s my girlfriend, Claire.”

“She’s cute,” Grace said. “She looks like Tinkerbell.”

Maya paused. “You know I mean girlfriend, right? Not, like, girl, period. Friend, period.”

Grace nodded. “No, I got it.” She suspected this was a test for Maya to see whether or not her newly discovered biological relative was a homophobic nightmare. “Girlfriend. One word. How long have you dated?”

“Almost six months,” Maya said, and for the first time, she looked almost relaxed, not like a lab rat in a cage, waiting to see what would happen next. “She’s amazing. We met at Catholic school.”

“You’re Catholic?”

“Nope.” Maya flopped down on the bed and pressed her thumb against Claire’s face in the photo, scrunching up her nose. “It’s just the best private school around, so my parents sent Lauren and me there anyway. We’re basically sinning our way through religious school. It’s great.”

Grace sat down on the edge of the bed, still looking at Maya’s Polaroids. There were overexposed shots of roses, hands pressed together in prayer, more selfies of Maya and Claire together. “So do you and Lauren, like, hate each other?”

“You mean the Redheaded Golden Child?”

Grace guessed she had her answer.

Maya rolled over so that she was looking at Grace upside down. “So, no siblings for you, huh?”

“Nope,” Grace said. Maya’s duvet was soft against her leg, the worn material reminding Grace of all the days and nights she had spent in her own bed after Peach, huddled up in her own sheets and blankets like they could protect her.

“Why do you look sad?” Maya cocked her head at her. From that angle, she sort of looked like a parakeet.

“Um, just because . . . it was sort of a bummer growing up an only child,” Grace said, covering.

Maya groaned and flopped down on the other side of the bed. “Do you want my sister?” she asked. “A two-for-one deal?”

“That’s the second time you’ve offered her. Is she that terrible?” Grace asked. For all the photos on the bedroom wall, she realized that there wasn’t a single shot of Maya’s family.