Far From the Tree

by Robin Benway

  GRACE

  So over here,” Rafe said, loudly enough for his coworkers to hear, “we have our finest assortment of slicer-dicers. They slice and dice. It’s not just a clever name. And over here— Are they gone?”

  Grace peeked around the corner. “Um . . . yes. All clear.”

  “Whew.” Rafe’s shoulders visibly sagged. “Pretending to work is way more exhausting than actually working.”

  “Funny that,” Grace said, patting one of the oven mitts in the shape of a chicken. “These are cute.”

  “To some people,” Rafe replied, then slipped his apron over his head. “Thanks for coming to visit me after work, by the way.”

  “Well, thanks for texting me,” Grace said. “It was nice to have a reason to blow the dust off my phone.”

  “Oh, go on, I know your mom texts you all the time,” Rafe said with a wink. He was one of the few people Grace had ever met who could actually wink, instead of doing something that looked like a halfhearted blink. She liked that about him. “Where do you want to eat? The same dark booth at the sandwich place around the corner, I assume?”

  Grace nodded. She wasn’t ashamed of Rafe, of course. She was only ashamed of herself.

  “Well, good, because day-old sandwiches taste way better when you eat them in semidarkness.” Rafe folded up his apron, then gestured toward the Employees Only door. “Let me go clock out and then the night is ours.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively at her, and Grace punched him in the shoulder in response. “I love a woman with a violent streak,” he said, then disappeared before she could really clock him.

  “So it turns out that Maya’s mom is an alcoholic,” Grace said as they walked, positioning herself between Rafe and the wall just to keep anyone from catching a glimpse of her.

  “Wow,” Rafe said. “Did she tell you all of this?”

  “Her mom fell and hit her head, so she called me. My parents and I ended up at the emergency room with them.” Grace could see Maya’s pale face, her eyes blown wide open from shock, the way she had clung to Lauren’s arm even after Grace and her parents had arrived. “Her mom went to rehab the next day. Pretty scary stuff.”

  “Indeed,” Rafe said. “So let me guess. You’re worried that Peach’s parents are now going to get divorced and become alcoholics?”

  He was kidding, though, and Grace knocked her hip against his without thinking. “No,” she chided him. She thought again of the letter, of the photo of Peach wearing the sailor outfit. “They actually sent me a letter last week. I know Peach is in good hands.”

  Rafe raised an eyebrow at her. Grace had never met anyone whose eyebrows were so expressive. She wondered if it was maybe just a muscle twitch. “Really?” he said. “Like a thank-you letter?”

  “Kind of. They were just telling me how much they appreciated what I had given them, how much they loved Peach. They sent a photo, too. She was wearing a sailor outfit.”

  “That sounds cool of them.”

  “Yeah, they said they would send letters and photos for the first year.” Grace could hear the measured calmness in her own voice. “It made me start thinking about maybe finding my mom. Our mom.”

  “Do Maya and Joaquin want to find her, too?” he asked.

  “God, no,” Grace said. “They basically said that she abandoned them, so why should they look for her? Especially Joaquin, what with the foster care and everything.”

  Rafe was still stuck in the same place, staring at her. “They said that to you?” He gaped. “Even though they know about Peach?”

  Grace suddenly wished that she had never brought up the subject in the first place. “Well . . . they don’t actually know about Peach. I haven’t told them yet. I might not tell them at all.”

  Rafe closed his eyes, dragging his hand over his face and letting out a low groan. “Okay,” he said, opening his eyes again, and then took Grace’s arm and turned her around. “Cancel sandwiches. This conversation needs french fries.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Grace said, but she let herself be led past the fountain anyway.

  “Trust me,” Rafe said. “It is.”

  “So how long do you think you can keep your biological daughter—who, by the way, you have nicknamed after a fruit—a secret from your biological siblings? Asking for a friend.”

  Grace rolled her eyes, then dipped her fry in her side of mayonnaise.

  “That’s disgusting, by the way,” Rafe said, gesturing to her french fry with one of his own. “Mayonnaise, it’s the devil’s condiment.”

  “More for me, then,” Grace said. She popped it into her mouth and winked at him. She wasn’t as good a winker as Rafe was, but it was a nice effort. “Maya and Joaquin like it, too, just so you know.”

  “Must be a recessive gene,” Rafe replied, then pulled the ketchup bottle closer to his plate.

  “I like the name Peach,” Grace said, ignoring his question.

  “You’re ignoring my question,” he pointed out.

  “Everyone likes peaches,” Grace continued. “They’re universally beloved. And she’ll be the same.”

  Rafe opened his mouth, then closed it again. “There’s no way to argue that point without insulting your biological child, so I’m not going to try. Well played, by the way.”

  Grace shrugged.

  “So you’re not going to tell them?”

  “You think it’s a bad idea?”

  “I think it’s a terrible idea. Secrets always get out.”

  “But it doesn’t even affect them.”

  “She’s their niece.”

  “Not anymore. She has a new family.”

  “Okay, forget about Peach then. What about you? They could be supporting you and you’re not even letting them in.”

  Grace laughed and signaled the waitress for more mayonnaise. (“Disgusting,” Rafe said under his breath.) “Well, seeing as how they think our mom is basically a demon for giving all of us up, I’d rather not get their opinion on how I did the same thing to Peach.”

  “I’m sorry. Why Peach again?” Rafe asked.

  “That’s how big she was when I found out I was pregnant with her. When you’re pregnant, they always describe the size of the baby in utero in relation to food. Bean, lime, peach, grapefruit. . . . Peach is what stuck.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “I just think that if you tell Maya and Joaquin, they’ll be a lot more understanding. None of you knows why your mom—”

  “Bio mom,” Grace interrupted.

  “What?”

  “My bio mom. I have a mom. She’s back at my house probably wondering why I’m not texting her back.”

  “Got it. None of you knows why your bio mom did what she did, but Maya and Joaquin would probably understand why you did it. You should tell them.”

  “Maybe it’s none of their business.”

  “Well, using that logic, then no one would tell anyone anything about anything.”

  “So if you got pregnant, you’d tell your sister?”

  Rafe smirked. “If I got pregnant, I’d have a pretty hard time keeping it a secret from anyone, much less my older sister.”

  “You know what I mean,” Grace said, shooting him a look.

  “I know, I know, I’m just kidding. But yeah, I’d tell my sister. I tell her everything. And you can’t just assume how they’ll react. That’s not fair to them.”

  Grace looked at him over their shared trays of french fries and hamburgers. “I just met them, you know? I don’t want them to hate me before they even get a chance to know me.”

  “Does it count as knowing you if they don’t know one of the most important things that’s happened to you?”

  Grace didn’t have an answer for that.

  “So you tell your sister everything?” she asked instead. “Really?” Grace tried to imagine having someone like that in her life.

  “Everything,” Rafe said, stealing some of Grace’s fries, pulling them away before she could swat at his hand. “Such an only child,” he chided he
r. “Not even willing to share.”

  Grace smiled despite herself. “And she doesn’t judge you or anything?”

  “Are you kidding? She judges the hell out of me sometimes. But she’s still my sister. She’ll still talk to me for an hour about something even if she thinks I’m being stupid about it. Maybe that’s why she talks to me for so long, now that I’m thinking about it.”

  “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!”

  She didn’t even realize she was crying until she went to move her hair off her face and realized that her cheeks were wet. Her parents looked shell-shocked, stricken. Grace suspected they would have looked less horrified if she had slapped them.

  “I think we need to meet with a counselor,” Grace’s dad said after almost fifteen seconds of near silence, Grace’s breath the only sound in the room. She felt wild, feral, like she had when Peach had forced her way out of her. She felt, Grace suddenly realized, alive.

  “Fine,” she said. “Make an appointment. Because I have a lot to say and I’m tired of not saying it. And,” she added, “you can tell Elaine from down the street that what I do is none of her damn business. I mean, that’s what you would have told her last year, right?”

  Grace didn’t bother to wait for a response. Instead, she turned and ran back upstairs, locking herself in the bathroom and turning on the faucet as hard as it would go. She waited until she was sure no one could hear her before she started to cry.

  MAYA

  Maya kept trying to think of a word that would describe how it felt to have their dad back in their house full-time while her mom was in rehab. She tried to come up with something, but at the end of the day, all she had was one word.

  Weird.

  It was weird to see her dad making breakfast in the morning, eggs that looked too slimy to eat but both Maya and Lauren choked them down anyway. By the end of the day, all of them were too tired to figure out dinner, which led to pizza boxes on the coffee table while the three of them sprawled out, gnawing on the crusts while watching reruns of House Hunters.

  Their mom went to rehab straight from the hospital, her head bandaged, her hands shaking. Maya thought she looked like a frightened child, what with her big eyes and small bones, and Maya hugged her good-bye and couldn’t decide if she wanted her mom to come home soon or stay away forever.

  The counselor at the hospital said that it was better if she didn’t come home in between the hospital and rehab, that she might see her house and suddenly decide not to go, conclude that she could just drink less at home and not need any sort of counseling. “Yeah, no,” Maya had said when the counselor said that. This was after Grace and Joaquin had come over the morning after the accident, when the three of them had sat side by side and put their feet in the water and smoked a joint that, Maya later realized, was one of the only items she had left from Claire.

>   The rehab was in a place that, according to the pamphlets, looked more like a spa vacation. But their dad assured them that it was “a wonderful facility” that “will finally give your mom the help she needs. That’s great, right?” Maya and Lauren had sat next to each other on the couch in the hospital lobby and nodded. What else could they do?

  Their dad had been horrified to hear about the wine bottles hidden around the house, the empties stashed at the bottom of the recycling bin in the backyard. He had sat between Lauren and Maya on their living room couch while Maya explained everything in a monotone that didn’t even sound like her own voice. “How long has this been going on?” he asked.

  “A while?” Lauren finally offered, and their dad had let out a long, low sigh before lowering his head into his hands. Maya wasn’t sure if she was supposed to comfort him, so she didn’t do anything.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “We’re making some changes around here.”

  And now it was the three of them rattling around in the house that suddenly felt too big. Maya had never realized how much space their mom had taken up. One afternoon, she found herself automatically going upstairs to suss out the latest stash of wine bottles, and only realized upon opening the closet that that wasn’t a problem anymore.

  Their dad wanted Maya and Lauren to start going to therapy, too. “Why?” Maya had asked. “We’re not the ones with the drinking problem.” Privately, she thought that was yet another result of her mother’s selfishness: she was the one with the drinking problem, so why did Maya need to waste a hour of her week in therapy?

  “Dad’s being weird,” Lauren said one night. They were doing homework in Maya’s bedroom, Lauren sprawled on the floor while Maya sat cross-legged on her bed. Neither one of them thought about using the desk, and even if they had wanted to, Maya’s laundry was spread all over it. Laundry felt like a luxury at this point, something that people with fewer worries and more time did for themselves.

  “Dad’s weird because he’s afraid we’re going to be cripplingly and emotionally damaged,” Maya replied, her pen between her teeth as she flipped back and forth between her physics textbook and her lab book. “Plus, dads are weird in general.”