by Robin Benway
He wrapped his fingers around hers, clenched and unclenched her hand until he felt like he could speak again. Grace was fine, he reminded himself. No one had gotten hurt. He hadn’t hurt anyone.
Maya was pressed against his other side, her hand on his shoulder. “You’re okay, Joaq,” she said quietly. “It’s fine. Just take a deep breath.”
He nodded, trying to get his heartbeat back under control, tried to put the tiger back in its cage. “When I was twelve,” he said before he could stop himself, and then he couldn’t start again. He had only told the story once before, to Ana and Mark and Linda, but that had been in Mark and Linda’s living room, where he was surrounded by people who—well, if not loved him, then definitely cared about him—and the room had been soft with sunlight and specks of dust dancing between the rays.
The sun poured through the trees of the park, and Maya and Grace waited for Joaquin to speak again.
“When I was twelve,” he said again, “this family adopted me. The Buchanans.” Just saying their name made his mouth feel funny, and he paused and waited until he could talk again. “They became my foster parents when I was ten, and they decided they wanted to adopt me.”
“Did you want them to adopt you?” Grace asked when he paused. He wouldn’t have thought that her hand could be so strong, but she was holding on to him, not letting go.
“I thought I did,” he said. “They had a couple of other foster kids who they had adopted, and they had an older daughter and a, um, a baby, later.” Joaquin could still see her, bowlegged with dark curls hanging like a halo around her head. It made him sick to even think about her.
“Were they nice to you?” Maya asked.
“They were fine,” he said. “I don’t know if they were nice. They weren’t not nice, though. Sometimes that’s enough. I had my own room, my own bed. We went shopping and they let me pick out sheets. That was a big deal.”
Joaquin’s heart still felt like it was vibrating in his chest, and he took another deep breath, Maya’s hand still warm on his shoulder. “Living with them was fine, the kids were nice, all of that. They had a baby”—Joaquin could hardly bring himself to say her name—“Natalie, and that was cool. I was like . . . I thought that it was the real thing, you know? I thought that this was my family.”
“What happened?” Grace asked, and Joaquin could hear a deeper kind of fear in her voice, different from when Adam had called her a slut.
Joaquin bit the inside of his cheek, waiting until he could say words again. “I just started . . . I don’t know, I just started having these tantrums. They called them meltdowns. I would just black out with this anger. It felt like my skin was exploding, you know? Like I couldn’t even breathe. And the closer we got to the adoption, the worse it got. I was starting fights with everyone except Natalie and I couldn’t even explain why. The Buchanans still went through with the adoption, though.”
Joaquin wondered if they regretted that, if they sat up late at night and reminisced about that time they’d made a terrible decision by bringing Joaquin into their home.
“I knew something was wrong, though,” he said now. “I couldn’t even call them Mom and Dad. Two years later and I only called them by their first names. It felt like . . .”
“Like what?” Grace asked softly.
Joaquin sagged a little, leaning against both girls. They were strong enough to hold him up, he realized. “Like once the adoption went through, then that was it,” he said. “It’d be final. I just thought that if our mom ever came back, if she actually, finally just came fucking back and showed up at the house and saw that I had a new mom, a new dad, that she . . . she’d think I replaced her. It’s stupid, I know, it’s so fucking stupid. I was such an idiot.”
“No, no,” Maya said, leaning into him. “It’s not stupid, it’s not stupid at all. You were a kid, right? That wasn’t your job to figure all that out.”
Joaquin laughed a little. “Well, I haven’t actually told you the bad part yet.”
The girls were quiet, waiting for him to speak again.
“So one day, about six months after the adoption went through, Natalie was almost two, and it was a Saturday afternoon, and I was having this epic meltdown.” Joaquin tried not to feel the carpet on his back, the way his hair tangled against it as he writhed on the floor, howling for something, for someone, that was always just out of reach. “No one could even touch me. I wouldn’t let anyone get close. And then the dad, Mr. Buchanan, he tried to pick me up and set me on my feet, right? Like, to stand up. And I just started throwing everything that I could get my hands on. We were in his office and there was a stapler on the desk. . . .”
Joaquin paused. He could still feel the cool metal of the stapler in his hand, the heaviness of it as he picked it up. His hands were shaking again, and Grace just held his fingers even more tightly between hers.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“I threw it,” he said, and then there were tears on his cheeks, sliding down his throat, burning him all over. “I threw it,” he said again, clearing his throat. “I threw it at him, but it went out the door and Natalie . . . Natalie was coming around the corner right then.”
Joaquin dropped his head, closed his eyes, sick with shame. “It hit her in the head.” He gestured her up toward his temple. “Right here, and she just dropped. And Mr. Buchanan, he let out this . . . it was like a roar, like a lion, and he grabbed me and threw me backward, and I flew into the bookshelf. Broke my arm.” Joaquin could still hear the crack of bone, one white-hot pain replacing another, but nothing was as loud as the sound of Natalie falling to the floor.
Joaquin was crying steadily now. He hadn’t even cried when he told Mark and Linda and Ana the story. They had wept, but Joaquin had been unmoved, like it had happened to someone else. “I would have never hurt the baby,” he sobbed. “I loved Natalie. I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want to hurt anybody.”
Grace was holding him now, and Maya’s arm was around his shoulders, and Joaquin put his hand to his forehead and rested his elbows on his knees. “What happened after that?” Grace asked him.
“Emergency room,” he said. “They signed me back into foster care that night.”
“People can do that?” Maya asked. Joaquin was pretty sure that she was crying now, too.
“People do it all the time,” he said. “They said I was a danger to the other kids. And if you’re violent in a home, they put you on a psych hold for a few days, and then I went to this group home out in Pomona. I was ‘special needs,’ they said. I was too old, too violent.” He thought of his foster sister Eva’s words. “Too much and not enough. I think people were scared of me.”
Grace cleared her throat before speaking again. “And Natalie, was she . . . ?”
“She was fine, ultimately,” Joaquin said. “I asked my social worker as soon as she showed up at the hospital. It was a concussion, but . . .” Joaquin couldn’t even finish the sentence. “She’s fine,” he said again.
“But you broke your arm?”
“It was a clean break,” Joaquin said, like that made the story better. “The Buchanans weren’t allowed to have any more foster kids after that.”
“Good,” Maya spat out.
“I just sort of went from group home to group home,” Joaquin said. “After that, I couldn’t stay with just any foster family. They had to have special training to be able to handle kids like me. They got paid more, too, because of the danger, but yeah.”
“And Mark and Linda have that?” Grace asked.
“They got it after they met me,” Joaquin said. “When I was fifteen, almost sixteen, they came to this adoption fair thing at one of the group homes. They liked me, they said.” Joaquin still didn’t entirely believe them, but it was a nice thought, all the same.
“I think they love you, Joaquin,” Maya murmured.
“Is this why you won’t let them adopt you?” Grace suddenly asked. “Because you’re afraid they’ll give you back like t
he Buchanans did?”
Joaquin wiped his eyes, glancing over at her. “I don’t care about going back,” he said. “I just love them too much to hurt them—to hurt anyone—like that. Once was enough.”
Both of his sisters seemed to sag against him. “Oh, Joaquin,” Maya sighed.
“No,” he said, before she could start telling him how he felt, how he should feel. “You don’t understand, okay? You saw me with that asshole. It just came up out of me—it’s like I can’t contain it. I could have really hurt him.”
“But you didn’t,” Grace said. “You didn’t, Joaquin. You were defending me. He said something really terrible that he knew would hurt me, and you defended me. That’s not the same thing at all.
“And,” she continued before he could argue with her, “remember how I told you that I punched a guy at school?”
Joaquin waited for her to continue, and when she didn’t, the realization dawned on him. “That was him?”
Grace nodded, her face grim.
“Wow. Okay.” Joaquin felt a tiny bit less terrible about wanting to murder Adam.
“Then that guy is an even bigger idiot than I thought!” Maya said. “When do I get to punch him?”
Joaquin smiled at that, and Maya hugged him, pressing her face against his arm. “You’re not a bad person, Joaq,” she whispered. “You’re not.”
“I threw a metal stapler at a baby,” he replied. He had thought that by saying it out loud, he would diminish how terrible it was, like ripping off a Band-Aid, but it was the completely opposite feeling, the words cutting his mouth as he said them.
“You threw a stapler because you were scared,” Grace corrected him. “The baby happened to be there. It was an accident. They shouldn’t have hurt you, too.”
“You were a just a kid yourself,” Maya added.
Joaquin had to close his eyes at that, felt like he was going underwater, his sisters the only thing buoying him.
His sisters. Holy shit.
“Is it okay that I said that?” Joaquin asked, glancing over at Grace.
She frowned. “Said what?”
“You know. I called you my sister.”
The edges of Grace’s mouth trembled even as she started to smile. “That’s fine,” she said. “That’s what I am, right?”
On his other side, Maya rested her head on his shoulder. “Me, too,” she said quietly.
When he could talk again, Joaquin swiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his T-shirt. If Linda had been there, she probably would have handed him a packet of tissues.
“So—I’m a monster,” he said. He was trying to keep it light, trying to bring them back up after almost drowning in the tide, but it felt forced. He didn’t even believe his own tone.
“I think anyone who’s been in that much pain must have a pretty big heart.” Grace’s voice was thoughtful. “And no matter what, Maya and I won’t give you back.”
“Nope,” Maya added. “This was a final sale. No returns, no backsies.”
Joaquin smiled a little. “But what if—”
“Nope!” Grace said. “You heard Maya.”
“But maybe—”
“No!” both girls cried this time, and Joaquin laughed, clear and sharp in the cooling air, the sound echoing back in his ears and filling him up.
GRACE
Grace nervously bounced her leg in the waiting room of the therapist’s office. There was a half-done puzzle on the table in front of her, but she had no interest in fitting the rest of the pieces together. She just wanted to get this over with and get the hell out of there.
Next to her, Grace’s mom leaned over and gently pressed down on Grace’s knee with her hand.
Grace started bouncing her other leg instead.
She had been dreading this appointment for the better part of a week. She knew she was going to have to talk about Peach, talk about her biological mom, her siblings—basically everything that had blown up in her life over the past few months was about to be fair game to a stranger, and all Grace wanted to do was circle the wagons and head back home to the safety of her bedroom and her loneliness. Her only consolation was that at least her parents looked as ill at ease as she felt.
Grace wished that Rafe were there with her. If nothing else, at least he could make her laugh.
By the time they got into the office, Grace thought she might throw up. How does Joaquin do this every week? she wondered, and then she thought of the last time she’d seen Joaquin and felt sad all over again. After he had told her and Maya everything, Grace had started to drive herself home, then pulled the car over halfway there so she could cry. More than anything, she wished she had known Joaquin back then, wished she had known him her whole life so that he would have been a little less lost. She thought of Alice again, tossed in the bottle and riding through the storm on the ocean.
The therapist’s name was Michael, and he seemed nice enough. His tie was in a perfect Windsor knot, which Grace had only seen in pictures on the internet, and that made her trust him a little bit more.
Just a little bit.
“So, Grace,” Michael said as soon as they were seated, “your parents told me some things about you when they first called to make this appointment. Sounds like you’ve had quite a year.”
Grace raised an eyebrow. “I shoved a baby out of me, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Grace’s mother covered her eyes with her hands and groaned.
“What?” Grace said, annoyed. “You were there, Mom. That’s basically what happened.”
Michael, to his credit, seemed pretty unfazed. Grace liked him a little bit more. “And your parents mentioned that you put the baby up for adoption, correct?”
Grace nodded. “With Daniel and Catalina, yeah. They’re really good parents.”
“And you’re okay with that decision?”
Grace shrugged. “I mean, it’s a done deal, right? It’s not like I could get her back if I wanted to.”
“So you would like to have her back?”
“That’s not . . .” Grace took a deep breath, forced herself to keep her hands in her lap. “I miss P— Milly very much. Of course I do. I carried her for almost ten months. But she’s in a much better home, a better family for her. I did the right thing. My parents agree.”
“Your mom also mentioned that you recently spent time with a boy, and when they tried to discuss that with you, you got a little upset.”
“She tried to tear the roof off the house,” Grace’s dad clarified, but he sounded like he was trying to make a joke.
Grace wasn’t laughing.
“I got mad,” she said, shooting a look at her dad, “because Elaine from down the street called them to tell them that I had lunch with a boy, like it was a freaking crime or something.”
“Grace,” her mom said, “we weren’t upset. We’re just worried about you. You seem so . . . you’re not yourself, sweetheart.”
“Of course I’m not myself!” Grace cried. “I had a baby and then gave her away! I don’t even recognize who I am anymore! You act like I’m just going to go back to high school and go to dances and prom and everything, but none of that has happened. I can’t even go to the mall without people whispering about me, calling me a slut! You want a daughter back who doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Sweetheart, we know how much Max hurt you,” her dad started to say, but Grace turned in her seat, her hand out.
“Do not say his name,” she said. “Do not even say it. I hate him.”
“We just don’t want you to get hurt the same way again,” her mom said. “We just think you need more time to heal.”
“You don’t get it!” Grace cried. “I’m not going to heal from this! You keep acting like I’m going to explode at any moment, and if you don’t say anything long enough, that I’ll forget about my baby”—the word got caught in her throat and she had to almost spit it out to get it out of her—“and it’ll all be fine! That’s what you always do! You pretend like something didn�
�t happen, and then eventually, it’s like no one remembers that it did happen. You did the same thing with me!”
The silence after Grace’s outburst felt especially loud. “What do you mean, Grace?” Michael asked. Grace had almost forgotten that the therapist was even in the room. She wondered if he was regretting agreeing to meet with them in the first place.
“It’s like . . .” She tried to find the words that would sum up her feelings. “Like they said that if I ever wanted to know about my adoption, that all I had to do was ask them. But why was that my responsibility? Why did I have to be the one who asked? Why couldn’t they be the ones to tell me about it?”
Grace’s mom had tears in her eyes. “We just didn’t want to give you too much information.”
“No!” Grace cried. “You thought that if I knew about my biological mom, I would try to find her, and that scared the shit out of you.”
“Why do you keep those photos of Milly hidden?” her mom suddenly asked her.
“What?” Grace said. “How did you see those?”
“In your desk drawer,” she said. “I was putting back some of your pens that I found in my car and I saw them.” Her mom’s eyes filled with tears as she added, “Why are you hiding them from us? I know you miss your daughter, Gracie, but we miss our granddaughter and our daughter. We only wish you’d talk to us.”
Grace’s dad was nodding his head.
Grace felt the tears slip down her cheeks and she quickly slapped them away. “Why is it always on me to talk to you?” she asked. “Why can’t you talk to me?”
“Because we don’t want you to be sad,” her dad said, sounding every bit as sad as he didn’t want Grace to feel. “We didn’t want you to think that you weren’t wanted, and we saw what you were like when you came home from the hospital after having her. We don’t want to do anything that would make you feel that bad again.” He glanced at Grace’s mom before adding, “We’ve made a lot of mistakes, I think. But we love you more than anything. And God, Grace, we’re trying to make it better, but we don’t know how to fix you.”
