The House in the Pines(46)

Why?

Her mom looks up as Maya walks in the front door. She’s on the couch, feet on the coffee table, painting her toenails yellow. A nature documentary plays on TV. “What is it?” she asks.

“Nothing.” Maya doesn’t want to hear again about how Frank won’t matter once she gets to BU. She goes to her room.

Her mom knocks gently on the door. “Hey.” She peeks her head in. “Is this about Frank?”

Maya starts to cry. She’s never been good at keeping things inside. She tells her mom that she caught Aubrey with Frank at Dunkin’ Donuts.

“This is Aubrey you’re talking about,” her mom says. “Since when do the two of you fight over some guy?”

The words burn because Maya knows they’re true.

“You’ve known him—what? Two weeks?”

“So?” Maya asks even as she sees her mom’s point. “So what?”

“Do you think you might be a little too into him? When’s the last time you looked at your father’s book?”

Maya can’t argue, so she doesn’t, and her mom gives up and goes back to the living room and her nature documentary.

It’s a good thing she doesn’t know, Maya thinks, about her potential deferral at BU, as she would hate for her mom to share her awful uncertainty about the future. She has never been one of those teenagers who can’t wait to get away from her family. Maybe it’s because hers feels so small: her mom is often at odds with her parents, who continue to find reasons to be disappointed in her even now that they’ve forgiven her for having Maya. It’s always been her and her mom against the world. These last few nights living at home would have been emotional under any circumstance, but instead of trying to cherish this time that she spends preparing and eating dinner with her mom, Maya thinks only of Frank. She hardly tastes the fresh basil in the eggplant stir-fry, or the coconut milk in the rice.

Instead she replays the smile she caught Frank giving Aubrey, like he was her getaway driver in some romantic heist. Maya used to think that smile was just for her; now she doesn’t know what to think. Frank had been so vulnerable with her the night before last, telling her painful things about his childhood, and had seemed so sincere when he confessed his feelings for her. I spend all this time with you because there’s no one else I’d rather be with. She’d memorized the words as soon as they left his mouth. But had he meant them?

You don’t get it, do you? Aubrey had said, and she was right. Maya doesn’t have a clue. But after dwelling on it all throughout dinner with her mom in the garden at sunset, Maya decides she needs an answer. Because if Frank thinks he can kiss her and discard her for her (prettier) friend, he’s going to have to tell her to her face. Maya won’t leave town without knowing. If the library were going to be open tomorrow, she’d wait until then, but since it will be closed, she’ll just have to go over to Frank’s house and ask him.

She knows generally where that is (at the edge of the forest) and can probably find the exact address in the phone book. The only problem is getting there. It’s too far to bike. She’ll have to borrow her mom’s car—but will her mom lend it to her knowing her plans?

“Did you feel that?” her mom asks.

“Feel what?”

A raindrop on her cheek. Maya looks up at the sky. It’s lightly cloudy. “Should we go in?”

They wait. No more drops. They have brought out a folding table and a pitcher of limeade and cups. “I think we’re fine,” says her mom.

Maya has an idea. “Hey, could I drop you off at work tonight and borrow the car?”

Her mom looks over at her.

“You know,” Maya says, “since it seems like it could rain. I was thinking I might go over to Aubrey’s tonight.”

“Sure,” her mom says, unsuspecting.

Another raindrop lands on Maya’s shoulder. She feels her face getting hot.



* * *



— The weather holds as Maya drives out past Onota Lake, where the houses grow farther apart and the trees closer together. There are hardly any lights along these narrow roads. She found Frank’s father’s address in the phone book, then matched it to the phone number Frank had given her—the phone number to the landline no one answers.

She almost misses the turn onto Cascade Street. Running along the edge of the state forest, it looks more like a paved trail than a street. Trees grow thick along both sides. Maya feels nervous. Frank has never told her what is wrong with his dad. He’s used words like malignant and terminal but never named the illness, and she has never pressed him on it. Because who is she to make him talk about something painful?

Now she wishes that she knew more about what she was walking into. Here on this dark, wooded road, she feels less fired up than she did back home. She thinks back to the troubles Frank alluded to, the fights that had driven him into the forest as a child. There is so much Maya doesn’t know about him, so much he’s glossed over.

She is thinking about turning around when the mailbox appears on her right. She can see the number on it; the house itself is invisible from the road, set back at the end of a long driveway. Anyone who would choose to live out here must value their privacy—showing up like this could be seen as an intrusion.

And yet she has come all this way. And Frank has always felt free to drop in on her.