Then her fingers fly across the screen and she stares at it, openmouthed. She blinks. Smiles.
“What?” I say.
Her expression turns uneasy. Guilty.
“Don’t be mad,” she says.
“And the day was going so well,” Nate mutters.
I take off my sunglasses. Stare her down. “What did you do, Mae?”
Count your fingers. Count your fingers.
How bad can it be?
“When you were in detox over Thanksgiving, I emailed Rebecca Chen.”
The sunshine and happy of the day falls away so suddenly it’s like tumbling into a well.
“Why the hell would you do that?” I say.
“I wanted to know about the baby,” she says softly. “Our brother or sister. It’s not their fault.”
“That kid’s not our—”
I stop. Realize. They are. That baby my dad and Rebecca have—technically, they’re related to me.
I shove my glasses back on. “Stay out of it, Mae. Just. Leave that whore alone.”
My sister’s tropical-sea eyes turn as dark as the Atlantic. “I’m sure there are people in my bio family who wanted to forget me just as easily.”
“Mae. Jesus. I wasn’t saying—”
She steps closer to me. “It’s not her fault.”
“What the hell do you mean? It totally is her fault.”
Pot, kettle—I know. I fell in love with Drew while still with Micah. So maybe I understand Dad more than I want to. But I didn’t break up a family.
I see the look on Micah’s face, though, when he thought Mae had betrayed him in that orchard, brought him there just to hurt him. He’d been like her big brother. And how sorry he was, how sad. I believe him, a little, that the grief had made him do something so crazy. But I chose Drew. So maybe I broke up a family, too.
Mae holds up her phone. “No. It’s not her fault.”
And.
There.
Curled up in a little pile of blankets, is a baby girl. Rosy, puffy cheeks. A little pink bow around her tiny head. Bitty hands covered in mittens. Her eyes are open—bright green, just like Dad’s. Just like mine. She has his nose. That same all-knowing expression.
“What … what’s her name?” I hear myself whisper.
“Pearl,” Mae says. “After the Three Sisters.”
“Orion’s Belt.” Nate lays a hand on my arm. “A constellation. Also known as the Three Sisters. The Arabic name translates to ‘string of pearls.’” He sighs. “That was … nice of her. Rebecca.”
“Fuck Rebecca,” Mae surprises me by saying. “If this little girl, if Pearl, stands a chance of doing right by the miracle, she’s going to need us. Her sisters. Her mother obviously has no moral compass.”
Nate whistles. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
Mae crosses her arms. “I want to meet her. As soon as possible.”
I stare at her. “What? You mean, get on a plane and … No. No. We’d have to see that woman.”
Mae gives me a strange, fleeting smile, and I swear for a second it’s Mom looking out at me through her eyes, or maybe even Yia-yia. Someone older and wiser. “Don’t you want to hold her?”
I look at the picture again. My heart burns.
I nod.
I do. I want to hold my baby sister.
“Then we have a trip to plan,” Mae says.
* * *
I wonder if it’s disloyal to Mom to want to hold Pearl.
I think about this as Mae and Nate plot about how and when we’ll go to LA, what we should do about Rebecca. Aunt Nora won’t like it. Because of Mom.
But I’m already wondering what she smells like. What she’ll feel like in my arms. I don’t know if that makes me a bad daughter, a good sister, or both.
We go home, and I help Mae make Italian wedding soup. Ben’s favorite, she says. It has been so long since we made soup just the two of us, but here we are, side by side, chopping and sautéing and stirring.
This isn’t crisis soup. This is happy soup. But I can’t help thinking about the last time someone in our family made it. That was my-husband-is-cheating-on-me soup. Now it’s I-love-you soup. At least, I think it is.
“You have to tell him,” I say, ladling Dad’s favorite food into the large glass mason jar Mae is taking on the train with her.
“I know.” She looks into the pot, wistful. “I wish I’d worked the problem sooner. Four whole months.”
I rest a hand on her arm. “All you have is now. Go get your boy, Mae.”
“You really are the genius of the family. I have to work so hard to know the things that are so obvious to you.” She brightens. “Have