Far from the Tree(60)

“I think you’re the only person I’ve actually told about Peach,” Grace admitted. “Everyone else either already knew or saw me when I was pregnant.”

“And did I judge?” Rafe asked, his voice innocent. “No, ma’am, I did not.”

“Everyone else did.”

“Grace.” The joking tone fell away from Rafe’s voice, and he set down his fries on his tray. “You don’t have to tell anyone. But it’d just be a shame if you had all these people willing to support you, and you never let them.”

“But what if they’re not?”

Rafe smiled at her. “What if they are?”

After she got home that night, Grace sat down in front of her computer. Her hair still smelled like french fries from the restaurant, and she tied it back as she opened her search engine.

She waited almost a full minute before typing in her first search term.

MELISSA TAYLOR.

It was way too broad, of course, and pulled up a million sources, all of which Grace immediately knew were not her Melissa Taylor. She tried MELISSA TAYLOR BIRTH MOTHER, but even that was too big, too vast, and Grace suddenly felt again like Alice in Alice in Wonderland, when Alice became too small and fell inside a bottle that was washed out to sea, carried away on a current that she couldn’t control, too small to see past the waves in front of her, too insignificant to make a difference.

She closed her computer and sat back in her chair.

“Grace!” her dad called from downstairs. “Can you come down here, please?”

Grace knew that that wasn’t a good tone. It wasn’t as bad as the tone had been when she’d told her parents that she was pregnant, but she was pretty sure that it would never sound that bad again. Everything after that would be an improvement.

“Yeah?” she called instead.

“Downstairs!” her mom replied.

Two parents. It was times like this that Grace wished she had grown up with a sibling, someone to balance the scales a bit. It seemed a lot easier to be in trouble when you could point to someone else and say, “Wait till you hear what they did, though.” Grace thought it would be nice to not always be the only person in the house who kept screwing up.

She went downstairs, poking her head into the kitchen. “Yeah?”

“We need to talk,” her mom said. “Elaine from down the street called and said that she saw you with a boy at the shopping center?”

Grace frowned. “I didn’t realize that Elaine from down the street was running a police state.”

Grace’s dad raised an eyebrow at her. (Grace couldn’t help but think that Rafe was a much better eyebrow raiser, but she decided it wise to keep that information to herself.)

“It was Rafe,” she said instead. “He works at Whisked Away.”

Grace’s mom crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you dating him?”

“No,” Grace said. “We’re friends, that’s all.”

Grace’s parents exchanged a glance, and she once again wished for a partner in crime. Even a dog would have sufficed at that point.

“We really don’t think you should be dating right now,” her dad said. “You need some time to focus on yourself.”

“Well, good, because I’m not dating anyone,” she said. “Like I said, Rafe’s my friend.”

“Grace,” her dad said, “you have to understand. We just want to protect you. You’ve had a rough couple of months and—”

Grace could feel her temper starting to rise along the back of her spine, forcing her stand up straighter. “No, wait. Let me guess. Elaine from down the street called you because she’s worried that I’m slutting it up all over town again!” Grace’s face felt too hot, her pulse too fast. “Right?”

“Language,” her mother said.

“Oh, let’s just say what Elaine and everyone else is thinking!” Grace exploded. “I got pregnant, I had a baby, and now I can’t even look at a guy without everyone thinking I’m about to pop out three more rug rats!”

“Grace,” her dad said again. “We’re worried about you, that’s all. We—”

“Because if memory serves,” Grace continued, ignoring her dad, “the whole point of me giving up P— Milly was so that I could live my life, right? ‘Oh, Grace, you have your whole life ahead of you!’ How many times did I hear that come out of your mouths? And now everyone reminds me that I had a baby, I can’t go to school, I can’t make friends with a boy—”

“You can make friends—” her mom started to say, but Grace kept going. She felt like someone had released a steam trigger on the top of her head.

“Okay, let’s say he’s not a friend, then,” Grace said. “Let’s say that Rafe is a boy that I do like. Do I not get to date? Do I not get to kiss a boy ever again? Did I blow my big chance at falling in love and starting a family because I made one mistake?”

“Grace,” her mom said, and Grace could hear the wobble in her voice. “You did not—”

“Well, good!” Grace shouted. “Because if I can’t move forward and like someone and make friends and, God forbid, fall in love again, then I don’t understand why I gave up my baby in the first place! Unless it was only to make everything okay for you!”