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.”
Grace tried desperately not to think of the hospital, of that drive home that felt like it was tearing something out of her body, the farther away she got from Peach. “I want to find my biological mom,” she said. “I want her to know that I’m okay. And I want you to be okay with that.”
“We are,” Grace’s mom said. “We will be. Whatever you need, Gracie. We’re always going to be there for you, no matter what.”
Grace remembered how tight her mom’s grip had been on her hand during her contractions, how she had never left Grace’s side, how her dad had watched Netflix for hours with her without saying a word. The older she got, the more human her parents seemed, and that was one of the scariest things in the world. She missed being little, when they were the all-knowing gods of her world, but at the same time, seeing them as human made it easier to see herself that way, too.
“Grace, have you talked to any other girls who have been through this?” Michael asked. “A support group, maybe?”
Grace shook her head. Talking to strangers about Peach seemed impossible, almost like a betrayal.
“There are a lot of girls who are in the same situation you’re in,” Michael said, but his tone was gentle. “Is that something we can maybe explore, at least?”
Grace nodded.
“I think we’re going to make some really good progress in this room,” Michael said with a grin, and Grace sat back in her seat and closed her eyes.
Progress, she thought, sounded exhausting.
“So let me get this straight,” Rafe said. “Elaine from down the street tattled on me?”
“And me,” Grace said, sipping at the last of her milkshake.
“Elaine from down the street needs a hobby,” Rafe muttered.
Rafe had texted her the afternoon after the therapist’s appointment. Got running shoes?
What? Grace had responded.
Let’s go for a run. Meet you in thirty minutes behind the park?
No thanks, Grace started to reply, then looked at the letters and deleted them. OK, she sent instead. You’re on.
Rafe was the kind of running partner that she liked: quiet. Her shoes still fit, and while she wasn’t in the best shape of her life to be sprinting up a hill, the stitch in her side and the wheeze in her lungs made Grace feel like her old self, like she still had one thing that was the same even after so many changes. The weather was cool, the autumn air finally feeling like autumn instead of just an extra-long summer, and when she and Rafe made it to the top of the hill, Grace turned to him and smiled. “Not bad,” she said.
“Kill me,” Rafe had wheezed in response, his hands on his knees.
Grace had just laughed.
Afterward, they sat side by side on the roof of Rafe’s car. Grace felt both cleaner and heavier, like someone who had done half their chores but saved the worst ones for last.
Sitting with Rafe on the edge of a parking lot, though, made all of it seem a little less heavy, at least.
“You know why Elaine from down the street called your parents, right?” Rafe said, and there was an edge in his voice that Grace had never heard before.
“Because she thinks I’m trying to get impregnated by every boy north of the equator?”
Rafe laughed a little. “Ha. Maybe. But c’mon, Grace. You’re a white girl and I’m Mexican. Do the math.”
“You think so?”
“I mean, I’m not one hundred percent sure, but definitely ninety-nine percent sure.”
“You know that I don’t care about that shit, right?” Grace said. “Fuck Elaine from down the street if that’s