Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,25
a great big moony smile at her mom. Maya’s parents had met as kids in Brampton when they were paired as science partners in eighth grade. “Only time I ever got an A in science,” her artistically inclined dad always said. They had bonded over the sometimes stressful pressure of being kids of immigrants who had done their growing up—they had both arrived as toddlers—in suburban Canada. “You should have seen how mad I made Nani when I brought home a paisley minidress and announced I was going to wear it to prom,” her mom would say. And Dad would grin and say, “Oh, but you should have seen the dress.”
Dad had followed Mom across the country as she did university, grad school, and a postdoc and finally to Moonflower Bay, when she got a job at a power plant a ways up the lake.
It was gross. It was cute. Maya was jealous.
She was jealous of her parents. She was pathetic.
Her mom set a bag on the table on the deck. “I’ll go inside and get dishes and drinks.”
“You sit,” Maya said. “Take a load off, and I’ll get everything. I’m going to throw in a load of laundry anyway.”
“Machine broken in your building again?” her dad asked.
“Yep.”
Nope. But two bucks could buy a load of laundry or four packages of Jenna’s sale ramen. Or one-third of a glass of Riesling at Lawson’s.
Maya entered the kitchen through the back door, its cheerful, familiar yellow walls and cozy breakfast nook bringing her back to happy days. She and her brother used to let themselves in this door, once they were deemed old enough to come directly home from school rather than kill time at the store waiting for their mom to swing by on her way home from work. That table was where Maya would set up with her homework—or, later, with scripts to memorize.
She’d always imagined having a house like this someday. A smaller one, maybe, but in this neighborhood near the lake. Maybe eventually with a boyfriend as part of the package. On paper, it had sounded like a doable dream.
In reality, her friends were pairing off, she lived in a decaying apartment, and she wasn’t going to be able to make the payments on her commercial mortgage beyond September. So yeah, she could sort of see why the fine young men of the Canadian banking sector were not falling over themselves to lend her money. Hopefully, the Bank of Mom and Dad had lower standards.
Her stomach did a little flip. Hooboy, was she nervous, even though she was pretty sure her parents would give her the money. Her parents were always in the front row at her plays, her dad in particular clapping louder than anyone. It was just more of that icky feeling of having to admit that she’d failed. She should have thought more about her approach tonight. Maybe she should have drawn up some papers? Shown that she had a specific plan for the money? Which she did—she had a list of repairs as long as her arm.
“You coming out?” Her mom popped her head in through the back door. “Everything okay?”
“Yes, yes! Just daydreaming.”
She jogged down the stairs to the basement to empty her duffel bag into the washer and back up to grab dishes and utensils. Her stomach lurched as she went back outside. Having to ask her parents for money made her feel young. And not in a good way. It made her feel small. Five years ago, when she arrived home with a head full of plays and a heart full of hope and they’d offered her a chunk of cash, it had been different. She’d been so confident, so sure she would make it. This time, she was asking out of desperation.
Well. She should just come out with it. Or, no. Maybe she should wait until they’d started eating, because that way—
“We have news,” her dad said.
Oh. Okay.
“We have to get Rohan on FaceTime first,” her mom said to her dad.
“What’s going on?” Maya asked, suddenly concerned. She talked to her brother, and her parents talked to her brother—she assumed—but they never had group confabs.
“Hang on and we’ll tell you.” Her mom poked at her phone.
“Oh my God, is someone sick? Is someone dying?” Here she was prepared to hit them up for money, and something was wrong. She ran through the mental list of their relatives in Brampton and Toronto and Vancouver. Last she’d heard, everyone was okay.