Far From the Tree

  He just shook his head, then wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve.

  “Are you okay?” Maya asked him.

  “I think so,” he said, then cleared his throat. “Just . . . it’s a lot.”

  Next to them, Grace nodded. The photo of Peach was still looking up at her from her phone.

  “Okay,” Jessica said as she came back into the room. “God, I can’t believe it took me this long to think of this, but this is for you, Joaquin.” She held out a key and he took it from her. “It’s a safe deposit box. Melissa set it up after you were born, and then after she died, I continued to make the payments on it. She always said it was for you, Joaquin. I never opened it up—I don’t know what’s in there. I figured that it was your business, not mine.”

  Joaquin just blinked down at his palm, then back up at Jessica. “Melissa did this?” he asked.

  “Yes. For you. She just said that it was for you.”

  Maya felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

  “So,” Jessica said. “Are you hungry? Talk a little, eat a little?”

  Maya wasn’t sure if she could eat anything, but when she saw the look on Jessica’s face, she answered for all three of them.

  “I like talking and eating,” she said.

  And next to her, her brother and sister nodded.

  JOAQUIN

  Grace ended up driving them to the bank because Joaquin didn’t trust himself behind the wheel.

  His hands were shaking too badly.

  He had been okay at Jessica’s house, sitting in the same rooms where his mother had eaten dinner, watched TV, gone to sleep. They had sat in the backyard, had some sandwiches and potato chips; and Jessica was so nice. Her laugh sounded like Grace’s, high-pitched and free, and she had the same small dimple as Maya’s. A couple of times, she reached over and took his hand, simply holding on to it, and if Joaquin thought about it hard enough, it almost felt like he was holding his mother’s hand, that she was somewhere in the universe watching him.

  Joaquin wasn’t quite sure what to do with that information.

  They left Jessica’s house with hugs and promises to stay in contact, Jessica touching each of their faces as they got into Joaquin’s car, her number written on a piece of paper and tucked into Joaquin’s pocket next to the mysterious key.

  “If you want to get going home—” Joaquin said as Grace started to pull away from the curb.

  “No way,” Maya said from the backseat. (She hadn’t put up a single shotgun argument this time, which made Joaquin feel even weirder.) “You’re going to that bank.”

  Joaquin couldn’t argue with that.

  They rode in silence, then got out of the car and walked into the bank in a single-file line, Joaquin leading their pack. “Hi,” he said to the teller. “I, um, there’s a safe deposit box here? Jessica Taylor called and said . . .”

  “Name, please?”

  He swallowed hard, said his dad’s name, said his name. “Joaquin Gutierrez.”

  The woman looked him up in the computer. “And do you have your key?”

  Joaquin pulled it out of his pocket and tried to ignore his shaking hands. “Right here.”

  The woman started to lead him down the hall, but he stopped and beckoned to Grace and Maya, who had been settling themselves in the waiting area. “No,” he said. “The three of us together, no matter what, right?”

  They stood up and followed him down the hall. Joaquin reached back and took each of their hands.

  The room was small, not like all the times in movies when people went into huge, marble-covered rooms to retrieve their safe deposit boxes. The lighting was a little flickery, too, but Joaquin didn’t care. He and the banker turned their keys at the same time and the box slid out of the wall, long and thin, the same size as a piece of notebook paper.

  “You can view it in here,” she said, pointing them into an even smaller room, and then she shut the door behind them, leaving the three of them alone, the box on the table between them.

  Joaquin took a deep breath, then another. “Any bets on what’s in here?”

  “Cash,” Maya said.

  “Apple stock,” Grace said, playing along.

  “Sticker collection.”

  “A pony.”

  Joaquin started to laugh despite himself. “Weirdos,” he said. “Okay, here goes nothing.”

  He lifted the lid.

  At first, he thought it was just a bunch of postcards, photographs of people he had never met in places he had never been, and then Grace let out a strangled gasp as Joaquin’s eyes focused on one postcard of a woman holding a laughing, curly-haired baby boy. She was laughing, too, and their eyes were the same, and Joaquin realized that they weren’t postcards at all, that it was a photo of him and his mother, and the entire box was full of them.

  The tears started before he could stop them, his hands digging into the photos and turning them faceup. There was one of him as a newborn in the hospital, red and wrinkled like a raisin, and another of him sitting in a playpen, grinning up at the camera.

  Joaquin felt the emotions rush up and over him again and again with each new picture, each one a heartbreak and a joy. His mom looked just like Grace and Maya, bright-eyed and cheerful, and it wasn’t until he realized that his tears were splashing down onto the photos that he tried to wipe his face. Next to him, Grace was quietly sobbing against Maya’s shoulder blade, and Maya had her forehead pressed against Joaquin’s shoulder, and he reached out and gathered them to him, their past spread out on the table like an invitation to something more, something better, something true.

  “Look,” Maya whispered, reaching down for a photo. “Look.”

  Joaquin took the picture from her, holding it up. His mom was holding him on her hip, pointing toward the camera, an obvious bump in her stomach. “It’s Grace,” he said, smiling.

  Grace leaned forward to look at it. “Wow,” she said.

  Joaquin started to sift through the photos again, looking at the baby in each of them, looking at himself. It was easy to forgive a baby who looked like that, all wide-eyed and apple-cheeked. Joaquin had to keep reminding himself that it was him, that someone had once loved him enough to save his pictures for nearly eighteen years. They weren’t on a wall or in an album, but they had been kept safe.

  Someone had thought that he was worth saving.

  There was one that didn’t have a baby in it, though, a professional one taken at what looked like a high school dance, and he realized that he was looking at a picture of his mom and dad at the prom. They were both the same height, dressed in cheap-looking formal wear, but his dad’s eyes were focused on his mom, gazing at her with the exact same adoration that Jessica had described. On the back, someone had written “Melissa hearts Joaquin xoxo.”

  Joaquin felt something crack open in his chest, and at the same time, another fissure started to seal itself back up. He felt like he was flying apart and coming together at the same time, and he sank down in a chair as his sisters sat on either side of him, the three of them quietly sorting through their past.

  It was the greatest gift anyone had ever given to him.

  When they finally left, it was closing time, and they had to borrow a paper bag from the teller at the front desk to transport all the photos. “Do you want to keep the box?” she asked Joaquin.

  “No,” he said. “I’ve got everything I need.”

  Grace drove home, too, Joaquin curled up in the front seat with the bag of photographs between them. A couple of times, he peeked inside the bag, just to make sure they were still there.

  His younger self gazed back up at him every time.

  “Good day,” Maya murmured, leaning forward from the backseat and resting her head on Grace’s shoulder, her arm stretching out to wrap around Joaquin. Grace just hummed in response, the setting sunlight and wind hitting the girls’ hair so that it swirled like a dark flame around their faces, and Joaquin thought that they were beautiful, like their mother.

&n
bsp; Joaquin reached up to hold Maya’s wrist in his hand, their skin and blood the same, and they drove home, the three of them together, just like they had promised.

  By the time they exited the freeway, though, Joaquin started to worry. The fight with Mark and Linda felt like it had been a million years ago, not just that morning, and he wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Maybe they’d let him come home long enough to get his stuff? Or was it their stuff now? Joaquin hadn’t paid for any of it, after all. He had no actual claim to it. Maybe he should just find a phone and call Allison and tell her that he needed a new placement. Maybe he could crash at Grace’s or Maya’s house, just for a night or two until he knew where he was going.

  He was so busy thinking about it that he didn’t even notice Mark and Linda standing in Grace’s driveway, their car parked out front, their faces full of worry.

  “What?” he said once he saw them. “Wait, what? What are they doing here?”

  Maya didn’t even bother to look apologetic. “We called your phone,” she said. “When you went to use the bathroom at Jessica’s. They answered and we told them that you were with us. They were really worried about you.”

  Joaquin was so shocked that he couldn’t even get out of the car. He had left many houses many times, but no one had ever come looking for him. Not even, he suddenly realized, his mother.

  He stayed in the car for so long that Mark had to walk over and open the door. “Hey, bud,” he said. “Heard you had an adventure.”

  Joaquin had thought he had cried enough for a lifetime, but seeing Mark standing there was too much. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Mark.”

  But then Mark was reaching into the car and undoing his seat belt and pulling Joaquin to his feet, and then Linda was there, too, wrapping her arms around both of them, and Mark held him steady and said, “It’s okay, it’s okay, we’re not angry,” and Joaquin hung on to them so tight that his arms ached and he thought that this must be what forgiveness felt like, pain and hurt and relief all balled up together, pressing against his heart so that it might burst.

  “Dad,” he whispered. “Mom.”

  Joaquin’s parents just held him tighter.

  And they never let him go.

  LANDING

  MAYA

  The inside of the rehab center feels chilly after she’s been out in the late-February sun of Palm Springs. Maya feels her eyes relax once she steps inside, the bright blue sky no longer bearing down on her, and it’s so quiet in the front lobby that she can hear her own footsteps as she walks up to the front desk.

  “I’m Maya,” she says. “I’m here to see my mother, Diane?”

  Maya’s dad dropped her off out front, after she had sworn numerous times that she didn’t need him to come in with her, and drove to a nearby Starbucks to wait for her. “Just text me if you need me,” he told her at least fifteen times. “I can be there in five minutes, no problem.”

  Lauren stayed home. She’s already been to visit their mother three other times, but Maya hasn’t been ready. She still isn’t sure if she’s ready, even after months of family therapy and one-on-one therapy and talks with Claire and Joaquin and Grace—but it’s her mother. There’s no way to avoid seeing her ever again.

  The man at the front desk leads Maya down a linoleum-tiled hallway and into what looks like a rec room. There’s a pool table and foosball table, as well as several couches and, tellingly, boxes of Kleenex.

  Her mom’s sitting in a chair over in the far corner of the room, and her face lights up when she sees Maya. She’s gained weight, Maya thinks with a start. Her cheeks have filled out a little bit, and her hair looks darker and longer. She looks, Maya realizes, healthy. It’s been a long time since her mom has looked that way.

  “Sweetie,” her mom says. She stands and reaches out for her, but Maya takes a step back. She’s not ready for a hug yet. It’s been three months, but she’s still angry, still resentful. Her therapist said that it would take time, and Maya decided to believe her.

  “You’re so tall!” her mom says instead, clasping Maya’s hands in hers. “Did you grow? You look so big to me, Mysie.”

  “Mom, seriously? You’re making it sound like it’s been years since you saw me.”

  Her mom’s face doesn’t change, though. “I can’t believe you’re almost sixteen.”

  “Believe it,” Maya says, blushing.

  “Lauren told me a few things,” her mom says. “You and Claire are back together?”

  Maya nods. “Three months now. I really love her, Mom.”

  “Well, I think that’s wonderful, honey. I’m so happy for you. And for Claire, too, of course.”

  “Do you want to sit?” Maya asks her. “There’s, like, a thousand couches in here.”

  They choose a couch near the back of the room, sitting next to each other. The silence is awkward, and they both know it. It’s been a long time since they’ve talked to each other, even before rehab.

  “So I want you to know—” her mom starts to say.

  “So you should know—” Maya begins, and then they’re laughing. “You first,” she says. “Go ahead.”

  “Okay. Well, then, I just wanted you to know . . .” Her mom’s voice breaks a little, and she glances down briefly at her lap before looking Maya right in the eye. “I want you to know that I am very, very sorry for all the things that I’ve put you and our family through. You and Lauren, you were my secret keepers, and I want you to know that it’s not going to be like that anymore. I’ve done a lot of work in here, I’ve made a lot of changes, and I’m ready to come home and make things right.”

  Maya nods as her eyes well up. She’s fairly certain that there isn’t a family in the world that cries as much as hers. “I know,” she says. “It’s okay.”

  “No, sweetie, it’s not.” Her mom leans forward and puts her hands on Maya’s shoulders. “It’s not okay, but we’re going to try and make it better, Dad and me. I want you and Lauren to have that. I don’t want”—her mom’s voice wavers again—“I don’t want you to look back and remember me like I used to be. I want you to be proud of me.”

  Maya nods again, too overwhelmed to speak at first. “I am proud of you, Mom,” she finally says. “You’ve worked so hard, you really have.”

  “Okay, enough about me,” she says, laughing as she pats her cheeks dry with her hands. “What were you going to say?”

  Maya takes a breath, steadies her nerves. She wants to get it right because there won’t be a second chance to say it.

  “I haven’t talked to Dad about this at all,” Maya says. “Or Lauren. I wanted to tell you first. But a couple of months ago, I went with Joaquin and Grace to visit our birth mother.”

  The color drains from her mom’s face as her hand comes up to cover her mouth.

  Maya forges ahead anyway.

  “I found an envelope a long time ago in your safe, so we went to the address that was on it,” she said. “And she—Melissa—she died a long time ago. A car accident.”

  “Oh, sweetie.” Maya’s mom is holding her hands so tight that Maya can feel her wedding ring branding itself into her skin. “Oh, sweetie, oh no.”

  “No, no, it’s okay,” Maya says quickly. “I’m not— I mean, yes, I’m sad about it, but she has a sister, Jessica, and she’s really nice. And there are pictures. And I just . . .” Maya can feel her mouth quivering. She hates it. It makes her feel like everything, including her own body, is out of her control.

  “I just wanted to tell you first,” she says, and now her voice is quivering, too. “Because you’re my mom, okay? You are. You’re my mom. And I love Melissa because she had me, but I love you because you raised me, and I just wanted you to know that even though I’m still really mad at you, you can screw up a million times and I’ll still love you, no matter what. Just like you love me, no matter what. Right?”

  Her mom is crying silently now, rivers of tears running down her face as she nods. “Yes, sweetie,” she says.

  ?
??So . . . when are you coming home?” Maya asks, hanging on tight to her mom’s hand, like she could levitate and float away.

  “Soon,” her mom whispers back. “I’ll be home soon, I promise.”

  “Home with us,” Maya murmurs, and then smiles a little to herself. “Where you belong.”

  JOAQUIN

  The adoption party ends up becoming a combination adoption–eighteenth birthday party.

  Joaquin doesn’t mind one bit.

  At the courthouse this morning, it was just the three of them, plus a photographer who Linda hired for the day. Joaquin wore a new suit that made him feel like an adult, and a tie that matched Mark’s. Linda wore a dress in the same colors as the ties, and the three of them looked at themselves in the mirror before leaving the house.

  “We,” Joaquin declared, “look like huge dorks.”

  Mark just laughed. “Too bad for you, kiddo,” he said. “Because in an hour, you’re going to be related to us. There’s no turning back now.”

  Joaquin thought that sounded like a pretty fair deal.

  Linda cried during the brief ceremony, and Mark got teary but later swore it was allergies. Joaquin still wasn’t sure it would actually happen, that a lightning bolt wouldn’t strike the courthouse, but the skies were blue and nothing went wrong and then the judge was saying, “Congratulations, young man,” and the photographer took all their pictures together, and Joaquin’s face hurt for the rest of the afternoon because he was smiling so much.

  The backyard is pretty busy and the party’s in full swing by the time the sun sets. Mark and Joaquin strung up lights all throughout the trees yesterday (and only ended up needing two Band-Aids in the process), so the backyard looks almost magical. The bougainvillea and morning glories are in full bloom, too, along with the jasmine that makes everything smell as good as it looks. Joaquin and Linda planted those plants together a month ago. (They only needed one Band-Aid after that project.)