Far from the Tree(74)

“No, no, it’s not . . . I’m sorry, Joaquin.” She lifted her sunglasses long enough to wipe at her eyes, laughing through her tears. “I’m just really, really proud of you, that’s all.”

Joaquin eyed her suspiciously.

“I really am okay,” she said, then readjusted her sunglasses. “I just want you to think about something.”

“Okay,” Joaquin said. He would have offered to train circus seals if it meant Ana would stop crying.

“I know you don’t believe it now, I know you might not ever believe it, but Mark and Linda are like those training wheels, too. What you described? That’s what parents do. They catch you before you fall. That’s what family is.”

Joaquin thought of Mark and Linda sitting next to him after a nightmare, easing the darkness away.

“Okay,” he said instead. He hoped that one day he would have the words to tell everyone how he felt inside, but okay would have to do for now.

“Okay,” Ana agreed. “I’m starving. Do you like frozen yogurt?”

“Okay,” Joaquin said again, then grinned and dodged away before Ana could punch his shoulder.

There was a strange car in the driveway when Joaquin turned the corner onto Mark and Linda’s street. He stopped skateboarding immediately, kicking the back of his board so he could pick it up by the front wheels.

It wasn’t his social worker’s car, but maybe she’d gotten a new one? Or maybe Joaquin had gotten a new social worker? Either way, he knew that it was there to take him away. He had seen many strange cars in familiar driveways over the years, all of them with backseats big enough for a boy and a trash bag filled with whatever stuff he could manage to grab.

Either way, Joaquin wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t expected Mark and Linda to keep him, not after they’d offered him a chance to be adopted and he’d turned it down. Who would want a kid that ungrateful? After all, Joaquin basically had taken food, money, and clothes from them for almost three years. He would want a return on his investment, too.

He reminded himself to grab his blue ribbon from the fourth grade art fair. It was always the first thing he packed.

“Oh, shoot!” Linda screamed when Joaquin started to walk in the back door, and he froze, skateboard still in hand. “Mark! Oh, shoot!”

“Sorry?” Joaquin said.

“Oh, not you, honey. No, no, come in. We just thought you’d be home later! Oh, shoot!”

Joaquin stayed in the doorway anyway. Linda was holding a huge red bow in her hands, her glasses pushed up on her head, leaning around the front stairs. “Mark, he’s home! I told you!” Then she turned back to Joaquin. “Honey, come in, come in, it’s fine. You’re fine.” She beckoned him in the door.

Mark came jogging down the stairs, a little out of breath. “What are you doing here, early bird?” he asked Joaquin, but he was smiling. “Linda wanted to do a big presentation. She got the special bow and everything.”

Linda just sighed in exasperation.

Joaquin was still in the doorway. “What?” he finally said. Was he supposed to put that bow on his trash bag? “Is it a surprise going-away party?”

Both Linda and Mark froze in place. “A what?” Mark asked.

“Well, there’s a car?” Joaquin said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “In the driveway?”

Linda’s face was quickly morphing from exasperated to horrified. “You think we’re sending you away?”

If this was a guessing game, Joaquin was definitely going to lose. “Um.”

Mark and Linda looked at each other, and then Linda walked over and pulled Joaquin into the house, the screen door slamming behind him. “Joaquin,” Linda said, “that car is for you.”

Joaquin just blinked at her. “What?”

She put her hands on his shoulders, holding him in place.

“Sit down, kiddo,” Mark said, pulling out a chair.

Joaquin sat down with a thud, his heart starting to race. It all felt like a trick, like an elaborate stunt that would leave him humiliated and embarrassed, and yet, at the same time, he didn’t think Mark or Linda would do that to him.

“You got a car. For me?” he asked.

“Yes,” Linda said, then put the enormous bow on his lap. “You were supposed to be home fifteen minutes later. We were going to put a bow on it like in the car commercials.”

“We were sort of hoping that we’d make a viral YouTube video,” Mark teased, sitting down across from him. “You’ve just cost us millions of dollars in advertising revenue, early bird.”

Joaquin just touched the bow. It was red and soft in his hands.

“We were going to wait until your eighteenth birthday,” Linda explained, her hand still steady on his shoulder. “But now with Grace and Maya in the picture, we want you to be able to see them whenever you want. You shouldn’t have to depend on us for a ride.”

“We think that it’s really important for you to see your sisters,” Mark added. He spoke softly, like he was talking to a frightened animal. “You okay, buddy? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Joaquin nodded. “I’m fine,” he said. “I just didn’t . . . I thought it was the social worker.”

“Oh, Joaquin,” Linda said, rubbing the back of his neck. She wasn’t a big woman, but her hands always felt so strong, like they could hold things up instead of tearing them apart. “We’re not letting you go anywhere.”