The House in the Pines(24)

Cristina could have gotten high right before she and Frank walked into the diner. That would explain how she’d seemed okay walking in, perfectly upright, only for the drugs to hit her when she sat down. Maya could picture this. She knew how easy it was to lose track of how many pills you had taken or what all you’d added to the cocktail. She wondered if this was ultimately what she shared with the dead woman, something other than dark hair and eyes: the tendency to get very high sometimes, as if trying to rise above the world on a bed of clouds.

It made sense that the person who’d painted such cold, uninviting landscapes had wanted to escape her own head sometimes. The more Maya thought about it, the more she related to her, and the more she questioned her own experience. Maybe all Frank was guilty of was choosing women who wanted out of the world sometimes. She snuck in through the kitchen as quietly as she’d left, carrying her chicken wings in one hand.

But her mom was already awake. She sat at the kitchen table doing a sudoku puzzle in her pajamas. Her phone was on the table. Maya’s was too—she’d left it here for a reason.

She held up her foam box. “I was craving wings.”

“You should have asked for a ride.”

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

“What if you’d had a seizure while driving?”

“It’s not that serious, Mom. I have insomnia.” Maya felt herself slipping back in time, her voice taking on the drama of a teenager’s. This happened every time she came home. She hung her coat from a peg by the door, set her mom’s car keys on the table.

“I’m telling you,” her mom said. “Benzo withdrawal makes people paranoid. Confused. A lot of the benzo clients at work end up on antipsychotics.”

“You see all that baking bread?”

Her mom frowned. “I work in the kitchen. You hear everything. Point is, I don’t think you should be driving.”

Maya sighed. She didn’t feel like eating but felt like she should try. She’d spent more on the wings than she should have and left Barb a big tip. She put the wings on a plate and then in the microwave and waited by the counter for them to heat. She could feel her mom watching her and imagined her in EMT mode, eyes narrowed, checking off symptoms in her head.

But when the microwave dinged, and she turned around, Maya saw that her mom wasn’t angry or suspicious. She just wanted her daughter to be okay. This was all she’d ever wanted, which was what had made the years since Aubrey’s death so difficult for both of them. The light over the table highlighted all the new wrinkles on Brenda’s face.

“What is it, Muffin?”

Maya’s eyes burned.

“Is it Dan?”

It was so many things. The room blurred with tears.

Brenda had loved Dan from the moment she met him because it was obvious that he made her daughter happy. The problem was that Brenda hadn’t seen him since, a fact she’d brought up before in a guilt-inducing way.

“I’m worried I really screwed things up,” Maya said.

Growing up, she’d talked to her mom about everything, but a lot of her behavior in recent years—the drinking, the drugs—had called for secretiveness. The change was so slow that she hadn’t noticed, but now, telling her mom about how she had lied to Dan and vomited in front of his parents, she felt unburdened in a way she hadn’t for many years.

Brenda was disappointed but didn’t blame her daughter. The Klonopin had been Dr. Barry’s idea after all. The uneaten wings grew cool again on Maya’s plate as they talked.

“What should I do?” she asked.

Brenda weighed her words with care. She reached for her daughter’s hand across the table. Squeezed. “I think you need to tell him.”

Maya sighed, knowing she was right. “I’m afraid he’ll never trust me again.”

“I’m sure he will, even if it takes him awhile.”

But her mom didn’t know Dan like Maya did. “He’s literally the most honest person I’ve ever met,” she said. “I don’t know if he’ll be able to see past this.”

“He will,” her mom said.

Maya had dated plenty of guys but never felt close enough to any to fall in love. After Frank, she’d been afraid to let anyone in. She had needed to be drunk or high or both to let down her guard, and those mental states had been their own kind of armor. But then she met Dan, and nothing about him was guarded. He wore his heart on his face and spoke with no filter, and she loved him for it. It had taken her a year to realize how deeply she’d fallen, and it felt less like lightning than like the desire for him to be there when she woke, every morning, forever, even if it meant that he would see her too, lying there, looking back at him. Maybe it was just that Dan was the first person she had ever fallen in love with who made Maya so determined for him to also be the last. “I don’t know,” she said to her mom. “I really hope so.”



* * *



— The dark was easier on her eyes, so she lay in bed, though she knew she wouldn’t sleep. She was covered in blankets, as her mom turned the heat down at night. The new mattress shaped itself to her body. She turned onto her side, propped herself up on an elbow, and checked her phone to see if Dan had texted.

He hadn’t.

She reminded herself that he was cramming for finals. Good luck tomorrow! she texted him, followed by three hearts.