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