“Did I say thank you?” I quip back, when really, I should probably thank them all. “How did you guys put this together?”
“Lumen and I share a tutor,” Chasm says, shrugging and using the general chatter and the clink of dishes in the café to keep his words hidden from Tess. “We decided to come to your rescue. After all, I didn’t want Tess to take away my tutoring privileges. Looks too good on my college apps.”
I narrow my eyes at him as Lumen chuckles and unashamedly continues to drink Maxine’s iced chai. She deserves that and a whole lot more, I have to admit.
“Your three suitors, all together at one table,” she says, which makes my face flush red. “Lucky you. You could have your own harem.”
“Speak for yourself,” Parrish snaps, giving Lumen a dark look that she returns. I still have no idea what their deal is. When I first met them, I assumed they were a couple. That, or exes at the very least. Now I’m wondering if there’s a part of the story that I’m missing. My stepbrother turns that punishing gaze of his back to me. “You’re her only girlfriend.”
“Lucky me then,” Lumen challenges back, turning her brown gaze back to Tess. She’s on her way out the door now with a coffee in hand, giving a loose wave to our table before she disappears into the crowd passing by through the front window. “That was a close one, Dakota. You should be more careful.”
And she’s right. If Tess had caught me with Maxine, what then? Would she pursue a case against Saffron? Threaten my grandparents? Hell, Maxine is an adult: Tess could make my sister’s life a living hell.
Speaking of …
“Thank you,” I say finally, even though the look on Parrish’s face makes me want to grit my teeth. “All of you. Excuse me a minute.” I push up from the table and head into the bathroom to find Maxie in a texting frenzy with Maxx.
“X says hi,” she tells me, offering up a watery smile. “Is she gone?”
“She’s gone,” I reply, hefting a tired a sigh. “Did I tell you that she’s forcing me on a family trip this weekend?” My sister’s brows go up as I glance her way.
“Where to?” she asks, sliding her phone back into her pocket. She’s wearing denim overalls today with a t-shirt underneath, a pair of hiking boots on her feet. I suspect she’s going to sneak a hike in before she drives home.
“Bend,” I reply, shrugging loosely. “It’s a town in Southern Oregon. We’ll be so close to you but so far away. I highly doubt it’d be safe for us to see each other while I’m there.”
Maxine watches me carefully for a moment before taking out her phone again and holding it out for me.
“Call grandma and grandpa.” She gestures with the phone for emphasis. “I know you’re mad, but you can’t avoid talking to them. Remember: we don’t have to agree but we always talk problems out.”
It takes me a second to accept the phone from her, but I do, excusing myself from the bathroom and slipping outside the café’s patio. It’s raining—it’s fucking always raining here—but I’m used to it now. Leaning against the side of the building, I make the call and my grandmother answers on the first ring.
“Dakota,” she says, blinking surprised eyes at me. “Oh, Dakota.” Interestingly enough, I can see Saffron sitting at a lounge chair behind my grandmother. Saffron and I haven’t spoken since I saw the documentary four months ago. Seeing her there, the woman I used to call mom, the woman who turned the lives of so many people upside down, I’m not sure what to think.
She smiles at me, but it’s the smile of a broken woman.
“Honey, your grandfather and I have been wanting so badly to talk with you.” Grandma Carmen waves her husband over as I swallow a lump of nervousness and try to still the shaking of my hand. I can see from the tiny thumbnail of myself in the corner of the screen that I don’t look so good.
“Kota!” my grandfather calls out, like we’ve been separated for eons. The sound is enough to choke me. He slides into the chair beside my grandmother, blocking Saffron from my view. “Are you alright? I’m so sorry about the talk show. We wouldn’t have agreed to go on if we’d known what was going to happen.”
“I don’t blame you for that,” I say, trying to get used to this strange discomfort. Saffron. I guess I hadn’t realized how fucking mad I was at Saffron. There’s empathy in me for her, but there’s also this deep-seated rage I hadn’t realized I was holding onto. “But I do blame you for calling that hotline. I hate that I do, but I do.” The words come out in a breathy rush, and I close my eyes tight, thinking about how they might’ve known for two years that I wasn’t their bio grandkid. Two freaking years. What changed? “I’m not even angry that you might’ve known I wasn’t really Saffron’s kid. I don’t care about that. I care that you didn’t love me enough to be selfish.”
The tears brim then, the ones that I promised I wouldn’t shed when I first got here but that keep coming and coming anyway.
“Dakota,” my grandfather starts, exhaling sharply and then glancing over at my grandmother. “I don’t know if this helps any, but I … I regret it, too. I regret it so much.” He drops his face into dirt-stained hands, and my heart clenches so tight that it feels like it might never beat again. He’s been working in the garden and I’m not there to help; he regrets it. He regrets. He regrets it.
“I’m so sorry, Kota,” Carmen chokes, just barely managing to keep herself together. “I didn’t think it would be like this. I thought … well, I thought we’d at least be able to visit each other. But I couldn’t do anything different than what I did. Tess might not be any of our favorite people, but she’s your mother. She’s a woman who lost her baby through no fault of her own.”
I blink through the tears, but it’s hard to tell how much of the wetness is from the rain, and how much is salty sadness.
“Let me talk to Saffron,” I say, my voice hardening slightly. “I want to hear the story from her lips.”
There’s a brief pause as my grandfather lifts his head up and turns to give my grandmother a look.
Before either of them get a chance to reply, there she is, snatching the phone away. Her face is so familiar, so maternal to me. Even though she was never really a mother, she was the only one I ever really had. Her eyes are dark; her hair is dark. We could very well be related. If it weren’t encoded in our DNA … But that’s one thing nobody can hide from, is it? It can’t be wished away or erased; I am Tess’ daughter and that’s a fact.
“Has she told you about your father yet?” Saffron asks, her voice on the edge of hysteria. She doesn’t look well. Actually, she’s never looked well, not once in my whole life. She’s always been sick and sad and broken. Always.
I just blink at her, because what could she possibly know about my bio dad? What does she even care?
“Why did you pick me?” I ask, because that matters. It matters because there’s no way she just happened to stumble upon a child with such similar looks to her own. Clearly, she’d been watching Tess and me for some time before she pounced. “Did you know my sperm donor or something?”