India called Evelyn Esponson before dawn the next morning. She did not feel bad about waking her up. “I need you to do me a favor,” she said. “You owe me.”
“I disagree.”
“It will be a favor to you too.”
“I’m more interested.”
“Imagine my shock.” But India told her what she had in mind anyway.
“Why me?”
“Good question.”
“Asking good questions is my job.”
“That’s why,” India said. “Also, you started this. Maybe you can end it as well.”
Then she called Ajax. She felt a little worse about waking him.
“Over my own intense objections,” she said when he answered the phone, “I’m going to do their goddamn interview.”
“Hallelujah.”
“Today.”
“It’s the right thing to do, India. I know it’s hard, but it’s time.”
“In Oregon.”
“Oregon, California, or Oregon, New York City?”
“Oregon the state.”
“Never heard of it.”
She ignored this. “I’ve gone ahead and set it up with Evelyn Esponson. She’s got her own film crew. I’m using a friend’s house.”
“The execs wanted America to see your home.”
“The execs can kiss my—”
“And what about me?”
“You want to kiss my ass?”
“I want to be there to support you. Though less so now than a moment ago.”
“I appreciate that, truly, but I’ve got plenty of support here with me already. That’s the point, actually. But Ajax…”
“What is it, India?”
“I need to tell you something. Before I do this. I don’t want you to hear it on TV first.”
“I already know,” Ajax said.
“You do?”
“I’ve known all along.”
“How?”
“How did I know you were really pregnant? By looking at you. I’m not an idiot. The Lenox costume department is good for a college shop, but it’s not that good.”
“Why would you…” India’s brain spun, reordering the last decade and a half of her life. “Why did you lie?”
“I didn’t lie! You lied.”
“Why did you make me lie?”
“I wanted to see whether you could. As I keep trying to tell you, acting in a role is only part of the job. And I wanted to see how far you were willing to take a charade, how hard you were willing to work. Would you go to an audition half a week after giving birth? Would you come clean when a world-class powerhouse dream agent came courting, or did you want it badly enough to fake that you were faking?”
“What if I hadn’t had the baby a month early?”
“Exactly. I wanted to see what would happen. Fun! But you know what else?”
“What?”
“You didn’t need me. You didn’t need a real fake pregnancy or a star turn as Lady M to get noticed. You didn’t need the part of a lifetime to fall into your lap. If you’d had to do it the old-fashioned way, the hard way—open calls and running off headshots at the all-night copy shop and working the dawn shift at the diner to leave afternoons free for auditions—you’d have made it anyway. You have the talent and the drive. It had nothing to do with being pregnant.”
“This whole time, Ajax, I thought—”
“I know.”
“Why-y?”
“Keep you on your toes.”
“It worked.”
“As I believe I told you the first time we spoke,” Ajax said, “I am very good at my job.”
“This is true,” India agreed. “And thank you. I’m glad to know you knew. It’s a weight off my mind.”
“You’re welcome.”
“But Ajax?”
“Yes, my dear?”
“That’s not actually the something I need to tell you.”
There wasn’t much to get ready. She and Robbie dragged his sofa into the dining room, moved the coffee table against the wall, and pulled two chairs to face each other in front of the fireplace. Simple. There was no need to give a tour of her home because they weren’t in her home, and Robbie’s was so beach-casual she thought she might not even have to wear shoes. She hadn’t packed—they’d left in such a hurry—so she borrowed sweats and a T-shirt to wear while she threw her own clothes in the wash and ran to the drugstore for civilian makeup and hair products.
Evelyn arrived amid a flurry of crew, cords, cameras, and complaints. “I thought you were kidding about Oregon.”
“Why would I kid about Oregon?”
“It’s like a snow globe here.”
“It’s eighty-three degrees.”
“You know what I mean. It’s all kitsch and sand and fudge shops.” Evelyn ran her hands over her hair and suit. “I don’t belong here.”
“True,” India agreed. “So let’s see what we can do to get you elsewhere as soon as possible.”
An hour later, India took a deep breath, held it, let it out slowly. Then she stepped onto the stage that was Robbie Brighton’s rearranged living room and found her light. She was ready. She had only had the morning to prepare, but really she had had a lifetime to prepare. She looked at the assembly before her—Evelyn, the film crew, all the accoutrements required to make television—and at the one behind that, her family, fidgety and awkward and wide-ranging and there. She winked at Fig who winked back with her whole face.
India opened her mouth and delivered her opening line. “Thank you so much for being here, Evelyn, and for joining me for this conversation.”
“It’s my pleasure, India. Thank you for having me and for welcoming us”—Evelyn turned toward her camera—“welcoming all of us into your”—the smallest of pauses—“cozy vacation home this afternoon.”
“It’s just a friend’s house,” India demurred.
“We’re thrilled you decided to sit down at last for a heart-to-heart,” Evelyn rushed on. “I know everyone watching is eager to hear from you in your own words. Shall we start at the beginning?”
“Sure,” India agreed amiably. “Let’s talk eggs and sperm.” Evelyn laughed, which India held for—she was a professional, after all—but she wasn’t kidding. “Kids want to know how their families came to be. Kids want to know how they were made. This is what we tell them. Eggs and sperm. When mommies and daddies love each other. Et cetera.”
Evelyn fake-clutched her fake pearls. “Are you saying that’s not what we should be telling them?”
“I’m saying it’s a story for children. We tell it because it simplifies something complicated, generalizes something diverse, sidesteps something complex.” She paused for effect, then added, “Sanitizes something gross.”
Evelyn laughed again and wrinkled her nose obligingly. “Surely that’s appropriate for children.”
“Of course. Unfortunately, you’re an adult. I’m an adult. The real story is complex and contradictory and, yeah, sometimes messy. It doesn’t fit into a post or a paragraph or a thirty-second clip.”
“And what is that real story?”
“It’s that families get formed in all sorts of ways, ways that sometimes have nothing to do with eggs and sperm, at least not the eggs and sperm you live with. It’s that families also look all sorts of ways and are made up of all sorts of people and still count as family. It’s more complicated than ‘Mommy and Daddy fell in love and made a baby,’ but that’s okay. Life is complicated. And, if we’re lucky, long. We have room and time to tell and to listen to complicated stories.”
“Well that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To listen. Though I have to say, it’s you who’s been, shall we say, a little coy?” Evelyn chuckled to suggest this was all in good fun.
“Me? Coy?”
“Here you are, a woman who enters our living rooms every week, star of stage and screens large and small, who’s graced the covers of a hundred magazines, whose every move generates hundreds of thousands of reactions on social media”—Evelyn paused, and India braced herself—“yet it turns out you’ve been keeping, frankly, shocking secrets.”
“I do not enter your living room every week,” India said. “That’s Val. She’s not me. She’s got magic. I have to make do without it. She has superhuman strength, whereas I only have the regular kind and some mornings not even that, I’m afraid. Her story’s make-believe but pretty straightforward. Mine’s quite a bit harder to understand.”
“You didn’t tell us about the two babies you gave birth to as a single teenager then gave up for adoption because it was hard to understand?”
“Among other reasons, yes.”
“What were the others? Perhaps regret? Even shame?”
India took a beat so that she didn’t shout, The other reasons were it’s none of your goddamn business! on television. “I am neither ashamed nor regretful. In fact, being pregnant was one of the best things—two of the best things—I ever did. By any measure.”
“It wasn’t terrible to give those babies up?”
“It was not,” India said. “There were tears on all sides, certainly. There was sorrow and heartache and loss. But there was also joy and solace and wonder. That was true with the babies I gave birth to and then placed for adoption. It was also true when I became a mother myself.”
“Indeed,” Evelyn drawled, “you are very pro-adoption, a process most of the people involved in one—and I’m including birth parents, adoptive parents, and children here—consider a last resort, an imperfect way out of worse circumstances that one therefore settles for.”
“I think you’re wrong about that, Evelyn. Either that or responsible for it.”
“Me?” Evelyn’s fingertips pawed her chest incredulously.
“It’s true, adoption is sometimes a last resort. It’s true it’s sometimes settled for and worse. But to suggest—to insist—that this is always true, that it’s true by definition, not only does a great disservice to all of those children and birth parents and adoptive parents you mentioned, it perpetuates that harm.”
“How so?”
“Because constantly telling families they were settled for is one of the things that makes them undesirable. Plus, it’s not true. For example, I did not settle for adoption. I chose it. In fact, I chose it three times. The media doesn’t talk very much about those stories, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Lots of people choose adoption for lots of reasons.”
“Not the children.”
“Not the children,” India allowed, “although, as the most capable parent I know recently pointed out, that’s true for children raised by their biological parents too. Most kids didn’t choose the parents they got, and lots of them wouldn’t have. Some adopted kids are misunderstood, unsupported, even maltreated, certainly enraged by their parents. But that’s also true for some kids being raised by the parents they were born to. Unfortunately, some parents suck.”
“Or perhaps are inexperienced,” Evelyn hedged. Or maybe she just wanted the transition. “The first time you got pregnant you were only sixteen. A child yourself.”
“Yes.”
“You were so young. You must have been frightened and overwhelmed.”
“I was.”
“For many young women in that situation, the choice to terminate the pregnancy would be the obvious one.”
“True.” India imagined Ajax on his couch making frantic hand motions begging her to embellish a little bit, but Evelyn had stopped asking questions.
“Especially since it was a choice you were lucky enough to have when so many women do not.”
“It wasn’t luck,” India said. “Abortion is a right. You have the right to rights. You don’t get them because you’re lucky. You get them because you’re a human alive in the world.”
“And yet you did not have one.”
“Two, in fact,” India corrected. “Abortion is the right choice for many people. I did not happen to be one of them. I’d point out this is true of adoption as well. It’s not the right choice for everyone, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right choice for anyone. It doesn’t mean everyone involved in one has settled for it. Nor, for that matter, does choosing it negate all those tears I spoke of earlier.”
“Some people would consider tears to be a sign of lamentation, proof that adoption is, at best, a mixed bag.”
“I mean, sure.” India waved her hand. “Isn’t it always?”
“Adoption?”
“Family.”
“My family”—Evelyn put her hand to her chest and looked away from India to the camera—“means the world to me. They’re my everything.”
“Of course,” India agreed. “Everything. They’re your most precious people. They tend your most precious people.” She met Camille’s eyes, then each of the Andrews’. “They’re the ones who are there for you, even when they least expect it.” She gave Davis the smile that was his alone. “They’re the ones who sign up to help, happily, even after so many years.” Robbie winked at her, and her breath caught. “On the other hand”—her eyes did not leave Robbie’s—“family is a pain in the ass.”
He grinned.
Evelyn looked like she’d stumbled off script, so India helped her out. “You know this, Evelyn.” She turned to the camera again. “You all know this. We don’t make a secret of it. Does anyone think of family and say, ‘Now there’s an easy and uncomplicated set of relationships’?”
“I suppose not,” Evelyn admitted.
“This is true about children too, I’m afraid.” India indicated hers with her chin and raised her eyebrows to Camille, who steered all four kids outside. India watched through Robbie’s slider as Jack tried to fly off the deck using two empty pizza boxes as wings. It was only a couple feet off the ground, but the kids were all shrieking anyway while Camille and the Andrews waved at the throng of high-powered microphones in the living room and frantically shushed them. “I’m sure yours are innocent and lovely and wholly cherished, Evelyn. Mine too, of course.” Jack was now using the boxes to whack Fig and Lewis. Bex appeared to be giving thanks she was an only child. “But kids are also exhausting, often frustrating, sometimes infuriating. Always time- and energy- and soul-consuming, all-consuming really. That’s what’s supposed to happen, but let’s not pretend there aren’t going to be tears.”
“So just so we all understand,” Evelyn leaned in, “you’re pro-children, pro-family, pro-choice, pro-abortion, pro-adoption. You’re even pro–Flower Child, concerns about which are what kicked off this whole mess. With all due respect, that feels a little too upbeat to believe.”
India laughed out loud. “I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I have ever been accused of being upbeat.”
“It wasn’t an accusation.” Evelyn laughed too. “Just an invitation. This is a tell-all. You don’t have to be pro-everything. It’s okay to be embarrassed, chagrined, even distressed by some of the decisions you made when you were sixteen.”
“Most of them, even,” India allowed.
“Whereas it seems like you’re trying to convince us all that you’re perfectly happy with how everything turned out. Given limitless options, this is what you’d have chosen for yourself and all these people you call your family. The children you gave birth to are just as happy with their adoptive parents as they would be with you and their real fathers. Your adopted children are just as happy with you as they would have been with their real parents. You’re just as happy—”
“Yes,” India interrupted, because it seemed like Evelyn might unspool this thread forever and because if she used the word “real” one more time, India was going to say things she shouldn’t on television. “That’s right. I consider my family to be equal. I consider families formed by adoption to be equally strong and equally wonderful and equally worthy and, if you like, equally complicated and fraught as families formed exclusively by biology.”
“But that’s not always true, is it? AHAM’s point, which you agreed was a good one, was that there’s a lot of trauma associated with adoption for a lot of people.”
“This is true,” India said. “It’s traumatic for some people to have babies. It’s traumatic for some people to have abortions. It’s traumatic for some people to be involved in adoption from any side of that equation you like. It’s traumatic for some people to be with their families, biological or otherwise. I agree with all of that.”
“But?”
“But I do not agree that adoptive families necessarily suffer any more trauma than any other kind. I do not agree that they are always settled for, or options of last resort, or, by definition, less than. I do not believe they are not ‘real.’”
“So where does that leave us, India Allwood? It seems like you’ve admitted everything and nothing, and while I don’t think anyone thinks you did anything wrong, per se, I also don’t think those you’ve offended will be mollified. When you tried to apologize earlier this week, it did not go well. Now that you’ve had some more time, as well as everyone’s attention, is there anything you’d maybe like to add?”
“Yes,” India said. “Thank you for asking. One of the things family is famous for is giving unsolicited advice, telling you things you’d rather not hear but need to, providing the perspective only the people who’ve known you best and longest can. A member of mine offered words of wisdom yesterday that I think were all of the above: first love. He was right. And he’s in a position to know. Therefore, effective immediately, with sorrow and heartache and with wonder and joy, I am heartbroken and delighted to announce my immediate retirement.”
Like a sore loser, Evelyn Esponson gathered up her crew and her equipment and left, but India knew she was ecstatic. She had reason to be. That interview would live on the internet forever. India went upstairs to shower off the makeup, the hairspray, the interview, the whole week if she could. Then she pulled Robbie’s T-shirt and sweatpants back on and emerged damp and new-made to talk to the only people whose opinions in all this actually mattered.
“So,” Camille said, “what’s the plan?”
“Mom.” Bex rolled her eyes. “It’s been thirty minutes. She doesn’t know yet.”
“Plans precede their declaration, Rebecca.” It was the first time India had heard Camille call her daughter that in sixteen years. “It’s been thirty minutes since she announced it. It hasn’t been thirty minutes since she thought of it.”
Not thirty, no, but not so many more. The heart wants what the heart wants, however. When you know, you know. Or maybe it’s more that you recognize your loves when they come again. When you’ve had them and let them go and they return, you grab on for dear life.
Bex stopped looking smug at her mother and started looking smug at India and Robbie instead. “On the other hand, I guess you have had sixteen years.”
“To what?” said Robbie.
“To realize you were still in love. That’s what you meant, right?” she said to India. “First love? You two are getting back together?”
India’s hair was still wet on the back of her neck. She looked at Robbie and smiled. “You were my first love,” she agreed.
“And you were mine.” Robbie laughed his Robbie laugh, and she was sixteen again. She felt the years roll away in her chest. “On the other other hand”—he smiled at Bex—“maybe it’s you. First love, first born.”
“I’m not returning her.” Camille held a hand to her heart. “My baby.”
“Eww, Mom.” Bex rolled her eyes. “I’m not a baby.”
“Actually,” said Camille, “I might be willing to negotiate.”
“Duh, it’s us,” said Jack, and India felt his confidence, the fact that he knew it for sure, spark joy in her toes that moved all the way through her. “Me and Fig. She loves us first.”
But Fig said, “Temporarily.” A body blow.
“Always,” India corrected her at once. “Always and forever.”
“No, like you meant first in time,” Fig explained, “not rank.”
Ahh. “Temporally,” India said.
“Robbie and Bex are her first loves temporally,” Fig informed her brother. “We’re her first loves rankly.”
India let that one go, never mind how apt it was.
“It could be Davis,” Lewis piped up. “No offense,” he said to Bex.
“It’s not Battle of the Bio Dads.” Bex rolled her eyes again. Maybe still. Bex rolled her eyes still.
“They look at each other the gross way my dads look at each other.”
Andy made shushing motions with his hands. Drew pulled the mask part of Lewis’s cape up over his mouth. India looked at Davis the way Andy looked at Drew. Davis looked at India the way Drew looked at Andy. It was several long moments before she could speak again, and she had once done the last three acts of Macbeth in tears, tears occasioned by this very love, these very loves.
When she could trust her voice to hold, she informed them, “You’re all wrong. You’re all right, but you’re all wrong.”
“Actually”—Camille cleared her throat—“when I asked what the plan was, I didn’t mean India’s retirement plan. I just meant dinner.”
Robbie took Lewis and Bex into the garden to harvest vegetables. Fig and Jack found paper and colored pencils, all these years later still drawing comfort in homemade menus. Davis and the Andrews went to the store for bread and cheese and wine. Camille scouted the pasta situation and started sauce. India made dough and rolled it out. Being with Robbie Brighton gave her cravings for pie. The kids set the table, even folding napkins into blobs you might have called birds if you were feeling generous, even filling a mason jar with rosemary and lavender they picked by leaning over the side of the deck, even finding candlesticks and an electric lighter Robbie pretended was a wand and taking turns using it to light the candles. Even Fig.
“A toast.” Robbie raised his glass when they were all assembled. His house was small but somehow had space for everyone, like Mary Poppins’s carry-on bag. Through what could only be some similar sorcery, India looked around the table and found her family, nearly all of it, nearly all her loves, together. “To all of you,” Robbie said. “Welcome.”
“Us,” India corrected. “And I think we can do better than that.”
“I cede the stage to you.” Robbie bowed and swept his arm toward India. His right sleeve caught one of the candlesticks and knocked it over, but he caught it with his other hand and flipped it back up without the flame even going out. Everyone burst into applause.
Almost everyone.
At the other end of the table, Fig leaped up. Her legs got tangled in her chair, which clattered to the tiles behind her with a crash that shook the room. She was ashen and wild-eyed, but mostly what she was was out of reach. India had felt only the slightest tug when Fig chose to sit next to Bex instead of her, but now the other side of the table seemed very far away. She considered all the people between her and her daughter and decided to crawl underneath.
But before she could, Bex righted Fig’s chair and pulled her back down next to her. She put her arm around her. “I got you, girl.”
India could see Fig shaking, chattering almost. The blood was gone from her lips. Her mouth was open but no sound came out, just too fast, too shallow breath.
India leaned over and blew out the candles.
Fig’s eyes cut from her mother to Bex to the smoke curling slowly toward the ceiling to the overfull table and back again.
Bex tightened her arm around Fig. She waited till Fig’s eyes found hers again and winked. She smiled at her.
And slowly, still panting a little, Fig smiled waveringly back.
India eyed her daughter across the table. “You okay?”
A deep breath, the deepest. “I’m okay.”
“Sure?”
Fig nodded once and then some more. “Sure.” Her color was slowly coming back. She snuggled closer to Bex under her arm and said quietly, “That was only like the fifth-scariest thing that happened this week.”
Bex beamed at her. “And seriously, did you see those reflexes? Why do I suck so much at sports?”
And everyone laughed. Even Fig.
“Since you’re standing…” Robbie prompted eventually. India’s eyes found his, but she had no idea what the end of his sentence was. “You were going to improve on my toast?”
She’d forgotten about the toast. She cleared her throat and let that sharp, razored feeling that was the hallmark of motherhood ribbon up and away like the smoke. “Fig’s right. It’s been a scary week.” An understatement and an inauspicious start for a toast.
“Hear, hear.” Lewis banged on the table anyway.
“Not yet,” Drew leaned over to whisper.
“But I’ve learned some things,” India kept on, “and I’d like to offer you all an apology. Maybe more than one. I’d like to offer you all some apologies.”
Lewis pulled down the mask part of his cape. “We forgive you. For what?”
“You”—Lewis was seated next to her, so she put a hand on his shoulder—“and you”—she nodded to Bex across the table—“so wanted to know me and Fig and Jack, to know your biological fathers, to know each other—”
“I didn’t know he existed,” Bex interrupted.
“So wanted or maybe didn’t even know you so wanted,” India continued, “that you, Bex, sneaked out of your house and onto an airplane all by yourself well before the crack of dawn, even though you knew you’d get in trouble.”
“Not that much trouble.” Bex shrugged.
“That much trouble,” Camille corrected.
“That you flew across the country on the flimsiest of excuses,” India said to Lewis and his fathers.
“Not that flimsy!” Fig insisted.
“Or climbed into the car of a stranger who used the term ‘baby daddy.’” She raised her eyebrows into her hairline at Davis.
“That was pretty flimsy,” he admitted.
“Or welcomed your high school girlfriend’s college boyfriend into your home like…”
“Like family,” Robbie supplied.
“Or walked through the night and made yourselves invisible to ride four buses for two days over a thousand miles fueled by nothing but faith.”
“So we didn’t have to use the bathroom on the bus,” Jack explained.
“And I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have been that hard. I wanted you to bond with your mom, with your dads. I wanted you to be theirs and them to be yours, one hundred percent. Two buts, though. But what I wanted wasn’t the only important thing. But I didn’t know what I was talking about.”
“Sixteen-year-olds are dumbasses,” Bex said.
“Thank you.” India thought this was meant to be comforting. “It’s true that I chose this family, this kind of family, but I was lucky already when I did. I was lucky that I could. Not everyone would, but more than that, not everyone can, not even all of you. I’m sorry I thought you’d want space and privacy over answers and connection. I’m sorry I didn’t know how to tell the whole world how lucky and grateful and proud I am.”
“If you’d let us on social media—” Jack began.
“I’m sorry you ever thought I was ashamed. I was the opposite. But I’m a mother. Protecting you—all of you—is my first job. I’m glad to know you both.” She looked from Lewis to Bex and back again. “I’m glad to have you know us, all of us, and to have the world know about you. But mostly, Fig is right. More is more. Family doesn’t take away from family. Family begets family. That’s how family works.”
“What’s ‘begets’?” Jack leaned over to ask Andy.
Andy bent and whispered in his ear.
“Gross,” said Jack.
“I thought we were special”—India opened her arms, her hands—“but I was wrong about that.”
“I’m damn special,” Jack said.
“You are damn special, baby.” She kissed the top of his head. “But that’s not what I meant. Before this week, I knew we were family even though we were a different kind of family, not just knew it, insisted on it, that families come in all kinds, varied as leaves. What I learned this week, though, is we aren’t just a different kind of family. We’re also the same kind of family.”
“Cheesy?” said Bex.
“Among other things, yes”—India nodded—“which makes it hard to talk about. It’s too trite. It’s too timeworn. Family is age-old, but so is adoption. And our family is beyond explanation.”
“‘Baby daddy’ is a pretty clear explanation,” Bex said.
“Not ‘beyond explanation’ like it’s unclear.” India was undeterred. “‘Beyond explanation’ like the explanation is just the beginning. We are beyond explanation, well beyond, out in the open ocean, out among the stars.”
Her voice broke, but that was fine. She’d said what she needed to say. She’d said it to all of them together, all at once, a luxury. She knew too, though, that she didn’t need to say everything tonight. There would be other nights. There would be other dinner tables with these people gathered around. They were entangled, not like extension cords you’d thrown in a pile in the garage and when you needed one you had to spend forty-five minutes unknotting it from the others first. They were entangled like fibers woven into threads spun into yarn knit into patches bound into quilts worn into heirlooms, something to pass down, to pass on, to inherit.
Davis met her too-bright eyes and swollen smile. “To being beyond explanation,” he said, and everyone raised their glasses to that, and India’s weren’t the only eyes that were wet.
She took one of the extra menus her kids had made—her own, she’d save for the rest of her life—and tore it into tiny pieces, which she cupped in both hands for a moment before flinging skyward. Her family watched the pieces flutter down and settle, more like snow than confetti, and considered all there was to celebrate, not least that India had extinguished the candles before showering the table with paper.
“Now what?” said Camille.
“God, Mom, stop asking that.” Bex rolled her eyes so hard India worried they wouldn’t come down.
“Rebecca India Eaney, you are in enough trouble already without adding rude, insolent, and uncommonly irritating to the list of infractions.”
Everyone hushed.
“You named her after your grandmother,” India whispered.
“My grandmother and you.” Camille smiled. “And when I said, ‘Now what?’ I only meant dessert.”
“Oh.” India remembered, and wiped her eyes. “I made pie.”
She got a standing ovation, not her first, but also not her last. Or maybe her family was just getting up to clear the table.