of red zinfandel. It was cheap—Maya could tell by the label—which for some reason upset her even more. If her mom was going to hide wine in the closet, she could have had at least bought the good stuff, rather than this convenience-store shit.
“Hey,” someone said, and Maya whirled around so fast that she almost dropped the bottle. Lauren stood in the doorway, tugging on her lower lip. Maya hated when she did that. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Maya said, which was easily the dumbest thing she could have said, considering that she was standing in her parents’ bedroom, going through her mom’s closet without permission, and holding a bottle of half-drunk wine. “It’s nothing,” she amended. Somewhat better.
“Why are you holding wine?” Lauren asked. “Are you drinking?”
They were only thirteen months apart, but Lauren was younger. Maya knew that in her bones, the way she knew that Grace and Joaquin were older than she. It didn’t matter if they were related by blood or not: Maya was responsible for her little sister. She had to protect her.
“Get out,” she said to her. “Get out, Lauren, I’m serious.”
“But why are you—”
“Get out,” Maya said, gesturing with the wine bottle (bad idea) toward the door. “This isn’t about you, for once in your life.”
Maya would remember the look on Lauren’s face for a long, long time after that. Three a.m. would get a whole lot lonelier the next time she saw it against the backs of her eyelids.
“Is that . . . is that Mom’s?” Lauren asked.
Maya tightened her grip on the bottle and said nothing.
“Did you find it in her closet?” Lauren pressed on—and then dropped a bomb. “Because I found a bottle in the garage.”
Maya felt so stupid, standing there listening to her, holding the evidence while trying to hide it at the same time. Lauren finished, “It was in an old shopping bag. I think she drank most of it yesterday.”
The two sisters stood across from each other for a long few seconds before Lauren finally walked into the room. “There’s another bottle downstairs in that old Crock-Pot,” she said.
Maya sank down onto the bed because she wasn’t sure if her knees were going to support her. “How long have you known that she . . . ?”
“A month, I guess? Maybe longer? I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Lauren shrugged. “Because I knew you were meeting Grace and Joaquin, and—I don’t know—I didn’t want to burden you. You’ve got a lot going on.”
Lauren sat next to her, their shoulders slumped together. “You should have told me,” Maya said after a minute.
“Why?” Lauren asked, and Maya didn’t have an answer to that.
“Do you think Dad knows?” Maya asked.
“No,” Lauren replied. “Dad travels. He’s not looking in Mom’s boots during his free time.”
“Do you think she’s driving?” she asked. “You know, after?” She shook the bottle in her hand. Maya wasn’t used to asking Lauren questions like this. Usually she was the sister who knew everything, the one who was in charge, who made up the rules for the games and decided who won or lost.
“I don’t know,” Lauren said. “I don’t think so. She picked me up from school yesterday and she seemed okay.”
Mom could drink at lunch, though, Maya thought. Two glasses of wine with a salad and some bread from the bowl. That would be pretty easy to hide.
She was still holding the bottle of zinfandel and she carefully set it down on the floor, like it could suddenly shatter and stain the carpet with all of their secrets.
“Should we put it back?”
“Give it to me,” Lauren said instead, and Maya handed it over. When Lauren went downstairs and didn’t come back, Maya followed her and found her standing in the kitchen, one hand holding the cork and the other hand dumping the bottle down the drain.
“What are you—” Maya started to say.
“What’s she going to do?” Lauren said. “Get angry at us for dumping out her contraband? She’s not going to do that. She can’t. Because then she’d have to admit what she’s been doing.”
Maya watched her for a long minute, then went upstairs and brought back the second bottle. Lauren opened it and they dumped it out, watching it swirl down the sink before turning on the faucet and rinsing it all away.
When their parents finally made their big announcement, it really wasn’t that much of a surprise. Maya later thought that it was more like ripping off a huge bandage—inevitable, but you still