“I don’t think that blame is going—” Grace’s mom started to say, and her hand was on Grace’s shoulder now, too. It was warm, though, too warm, and Grace already felt crowded enough with Peach continuing to grow inside her. She shook her off. She didn’t want anyone touching her, not even Max.
Especially not Max.
“Max has a future,” his dad said, while his mom sat silent. “He’s going to go to UCLA. This is not a part of his plan.”
Grace’s parents didn’t say anything. She had plans to apply to Berkeley next year, but they weren’t talking about going up for a campus tour anymore. (Also, Grace knew that Max had cheated on his AP French exam, but she didn’t say anything about that, either.)
“Grace has a future, too,” her dad said instead, speaking over Max’s dad. They looked like two hockey players about to start brawling on the ice. “And she and Max are both responsible—”
“I don’t know what she said to get my son in this situation, but if you think you’re getting any of my money . . .” Max’s dad trailed off. His nostrils were flaring. Max shared that same trait when he was angry. Sometimes Grace called him Puff the Magic Dragon, but only in her head, and only when she was really mad at him.
“It’s about the baby,” her mother interrupted. “And Grace and Max.”
“There’s no Max and Grace,” Max’s dad said. His mom didn’t say anything. It was creepy. Grace guessed that you really got to know a guy’s family once you got pregnant with their son’s baby. “Max is dating a good girl now.”
A good girl. The words hung in the air as Grace looked to Max, but he was looking down at the floor. “Max?” she said.
He wouldn’t look at her. Or at Peach.
Stephanie was the good girl, of course. Grace had no idea if she was a good person or not, but Max’s dad obviously equated “good girl” with “person whose womb is currently unoccupied.” So, if they were going by his definition, then yes, Stephanie was 99.99 percent a good person. Grace was 100 percent not.
And that, in a nutshell, is how Grace and her boyfriend broke up.
Max and Grace had dated for almost a year, which, if she thought about it, was about the same amount of time that it took Grace, later on, to grow Peach. But she couldn’t think about it that way, not at all. She couldn’t think about Peach without feeling a pain that sliced through her, splitting her open just like it did in the delivery room. Grace didn’t think it could be worse than that night, her mother gripping her hand, nurses urging her to push, but it was.
Janie used to call Max Movie Guy because he was pretty much the guy in the movies: football player, white straight teeth, friend to all . . . but a better friend to some. She didn’t realize it at the time, but Grace liked him just because he liked her, and that wasn’t a strong enough tree to hang on to when the storm came. She knew that now, of course, because both Max and Peach were gone and her hands were empty, scratched from clinging too tight to something that should never have been held in the first place.
“You’re fidgeting,” Grace’s mom said.
“I’m not fidgeting, you’re fidgeting,” she replied.
“You’re both fidgeting,” her dad said. “Stop it.”
“But you have lint on your—” her mom interrupted him, reaching for his shirt. He playfully batted her hand away.
“Fidgeting,” he said.
The three of them were standing on a stone front porch, huddled together even though there was plenty of room to spread out. Grace probably could have done a cartwheel without taking out either one of her parents. That’s how big the porch was.
And it wasn’t just any front porch. It was Maya’s front porch. Or, more accurately, Maya’s family’s front porch. A week after she and Grace had exchanged emails, Maya’s parents had invited her family to dinner, and they had accepted because, well, how exactly does one turn down that invitation?
Maya and Grace had talked a few times, starting with Maya’s response to Grace’s first email: Well, it’s about time. It had been short and to the point, which Grace was starting to realize was Maya’s usual mode of response. And she didn’t use emojis or smiley faces made of semicolons and parentheses, either. Grace was beginning to wonder if her sister was really a humorless robot, but she assumed that even robots knew how to send the winking emoji. Maybe Maya was just super serious about technology. Or maybe she was one of those people who collected typewriters and longed for a landline like they used thirty years ago.
Grace had a lot of questions for (and about) Maya, and she wasn’t sure how to ask any of them.
When they pulled up to the house, Grace’s dad whistled under his breath and her mom said, “Oh my God, I knew you should have worn a suit.”
“Dad hates wearing suits” is what Grace would have said if she hadn’t been busy staring at the house. It was a sort of stone mansion—only one turret short of being something out of a Disney movie.
And it was where Maya lived.
“I hate wearing suits,” her dad said. The three of them were still sitting in the car. Grace’s breath was fogging up the glass; that’s how close she was to the window. It took them another few minutes to make it to the epic front porch, and when her mom rang the bell, the sound of chimes that came from inside the house played “Ode to Joy.”
“Did we accidentally go to church instead?” Grace whispered.
“You okay?” her dad said, turning to her as the doorbell continued to sing out.
“Yeah, fine.”
“You sure?”
“Ask me again in an hour,” Grace whispered, just as the door was flung open and a smiling couple greeted them. They were both redheads. The man was wearing a suit.
Grace heard her mom swear very softly behind her.
“Well, you found the place!” the woman said. “Come in, come in!” She was A Lot, as Janie used to say. (And as she probably still said. Grace hadn’t talked to Janie in . . . a long time.)
“It’s so nice to meet you!” the woman said. “I’m Diane, this is Bob.”
They were both smiling at Grace like they wanted to eat her.
Grace smiled back.
She followed her parents into the house, which shone and gleamed and had the vague air of a mausoleum, thanks to all the marble. There was a double spiral staircase that wound up to a second-floor landing, also marble, and along the staircase, Grace could see a large portrait wall covered in professionally framed pictures.
There was not a dust ball in sight.
“Your home is so lovely,” said Grace’s mother, who read Architectural Digest the way—well, Grace had never met anyone who consumed anything the way her mom read Architectural Digest. Anyway, Grace’s mother was dying. Grace could see her mentally ripping out the carpet in their living room, adding a second wing, or quite possibly abandoning Grace’s father and her to live in this house instead. “This is just magnificent.”
Grace had never heard her mother use the word magnificent before.
Her dad took over. “Yes, thanks so much for having us over. Grace has really been looking forward to it.”